Midwifery Today began as a magazine for midwives, birth practitioners, and parents. We later expanded to offer international and domestic conferences and educational reach through this website. We now offer online memberships, books, and e-books, as well as audios of past conference classes. All Toward Better Birth.
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Village Midwife: Where Has All the Wisdom Gone? by Sister MorningStar I trotted toward the little Mexican village of Salitrillo, trying to keep up with Doña Juanita who was two decades my senior. We were going to make four prenatal home visits where I would observe Doña Juanita offering the Mexican sobada (massage) and rebozo (sacred cloth). All the Mexican traditional midwives used these skills as part of their regular prenatal care. Although I had observed for nearly a decade, I still marveled at what wisdom and art lay in the assessment and application of these simple hands-on tools—oil and cloth. Read more…. Village Midwife: Where Has All the Wisdom Gone?
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Trauma always leaves a scar. It follows us home. It changes our lives. Trauma messes everybody up. But maybe that’s the point. All the pain and the fear and the crap. Maybe going through all that is what keeps us moving forward. It’s what pushes us. Maybe we have to get a little messed up, before we can step up.
Grey’s Anatomy
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Be bold. Be proud. Persist in spreading the word that midwives are not only experts in normal birth, but also expert at keeping birth normal.
Judy Edmunds, CPM
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“Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.”
Kofi Annan
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It was a natural consequence that all obstetric procedures had their indication widened as their relative safety became established. But that any operation, because asepsis makes it reasonably safe and anesthesia keeps the patient quiet during its performance, should be so inordinately broadened in its scope that the suspicion is evidence that it is being done for the convenience and conservation of time of the operator, is a travesty on scientific endeavor.
H. Schwarz, MD. 1919
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…in feeding babies, two substantial mammary glands are more useful than the two hemispheres of a professor’s brain.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
My Winding Path to Midwifery by Sara Dunn When I walked out of my first prenatal with a homebirth midwife, I knew this was something to which everyone should have access. I wanted to find a way to make midwifery care more accessible to the Northern Neck of Virginia. It would be a big task, as the area presents special challenges. The only hospital on the Northern Neck closed its labor and delivery unit in 2004. A standalone birth center opened in 2010, but closed the next year due to financial challenges.
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Read more…. My Winding Path to Midwifery
The Pulsatile Birth Model by Ruti Karni-Horowitz The author shares her three-stage model of birth, which she believes is a more accurate reflection of what acutally happens in the body during this physiological experience.
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Read more…. The Pulsatile Birth Model
Tricks of the Trade
Midwifery Today Issue 73
Throw out the rule book.
Barbara Harper
Tricks of the Trade
Midwifery Today Issue 91
Women’s bodies have their own wisdom, and a system of birth refined over 100,000 generations is not so easily overpowered.
Sarah Buckley
Tricks of the Trade
Midwifery Today Issue 88
…in feeding babies, two substantial mammary glands are more useful than the two hemispheres of a professor’s brain.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Tricks of the Trade
Midwifery Today Issue 71
An Impulse to Soar: Quotations by Women on Leadership, compiled by Rosalie Maggio
Leaders have a passion and they have a picture or vision at some distance from the current reality. They use their passion to move them toward that vision, whether it’s something for their company, for themselves or for their cause.
Sandy Linver
Tricks of the Trade
Midwifery Today Issue 85
It was a natural consequence that all obstetric procedures had their indication widened as their relative safety became established. But that any operation, because asepsis makes it reasonably safe and anesthesia keeps the patient quiet during its performance, should be so inordinately broadened in its scope that the suspicion is evidence that it is being done for the convenience and conservation of time of the operator, is a travesty on scientific endeavor.
H. Schwarz, MD. 1919
Tricks of the Trade
Midwifery Today Issue 72
The greatest use of a life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
Anne and Ray Ortlund
Freebirthing by Deb Fiore Unassisted childbirth is a choice being made by some low-risk women. This article includes testimonials from some of them and suggests that we be less judgmental and try to understand what is motivating them.
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Read more…. Freebirthing
Go to the Store Home
The International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative: A Human Rights Approach to Optimal Maternity Care This article outlines the 10 steps developed by the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative to help ensure that women everywhere are guaranteed the basic human right of humane and evidence-based maternity care. Read more…. The International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative: A Human Rights Approach to Optimal Maternity Care
