Website design By BotEap.comFinally a book that tells the truth about what really happens when a woman delivers her baby in the hospital with a certified nurse midwife, CNM. Ivy League-educated author Catherine Taylor writes about her own experience as a nurse-midwife and patient, as well as stories from the many births she assisted as an observer or doula.

Website design By BotEap.comThe most amazing thing about the retold childbirth stories is that the author realizes that the certified nurse midwives that pregnant women trust are agents of the medical institutions. Story after story, CNM patients are misled about what to expect from their birth experiences.

Website design By BotEap.comTaylor shadowed several CNMs during their regular work days at their hospitals. CNM care often mirrored the care of doctors and nurses, as busy CNMs left their clients in very active labor. He tells a CNM: “We try to compensate by having a nurse attend to them.” However, while several CNMs expressed a desire to become more actively involved with the women they care for, none provided women with hands-on, ongoing care during their labors and births. Taylor points out that CNMs in hospitals often provide inadequate midwifery care, and do not provide even a modicum of “human presence,” which is a core competency of the American College of Nurse Midwives (ACNM).

Website design By BotEap.comIn story after birth story, the reader becomes aware of the CNM’s inability to prepare women for an empowering, drug-free birth. Woman after woman bought into the hospital’s clever promotions that show beaming new dads and moms holding their little one with the ever-present staff hovering nearby. The harsh reality is that for most women this was a fantasy.

Website design By BotEap.comMidwifery clients were unprepared for the pain of labor and what to do about it. The midwives were too busy rushing from patient to patient to do more than stick their heads in a room long enough to put on a glove and check dilation and make silly suggestions for pain management. The nurses also had no time to provide one-on-one support, leaving the women and their partners alone, without having been educated on what to do.

Website design By BotEap.comA theme that runs through many of these stories is the power the hospital has over the CNMs. Whatever their personal beliefs, they inevitably acceded to hospital administration or doctors if there was friction between what a client/patient wanted. Some of the examples given include handing out bags of “treats” loaded with formula while, in theory, promoting breastfeeding; telling a woman she needs pitocin when in fact she is being given it to speed up labor for the benefit of the staff; and break a bag of water for the convenience of the doctor.

Website design By BotEap.comMany CNMs seem to enjoy their role as mini doctors. IVs, rupturing membranes, ordering antibiotics, pitocin, and epidurals, cutting episiotomies, and pulling babies by vacuum suction are daily activities for CNMs in hospitals. However, the ACNM affirms that one of the main characteristics of a midwife is that of a defender “of non-intervention in the absence of complications”. With the widespread use of routine interventions by CNMs, one must wonder if any of the ACNM publications can be trusted. One CNM told a VBAC client: “With the next baby, if the baby starts to look big, my preference is to induce a week early. You are so small you may have to have a C-section for all your babies.”

Website design By BotEap.comDo CNMs educate their clients better than physicians so that when interventions are offered, they can make fully informed decisions? Taylor wonders about this, too, asking, “Can parents make good decisions in the midst of the unfamiliar and often disorienting experience of labor?” Can parents really be fully informed when a CNM has to please their collaborating or supervising physician or comply with hospital protocol to keep their job? Too often it seems like they side with those who sign their paychecks.

Website design By BotEap.comSome women have been able to hire doulas to provide emotional support and unbiased information about hospital interventions. Unfortunately, this isn’t always what they thought they were getting either. As Taylor points out, doulas are trained never to be judgmental. This means that if a woman suddenly decides that she wants drugs during labor, the doula supports her. Like CNMs, doulas often find they have to walk a fine line to be welcome in a hospital. Sometimes this may mean not 100% advocating for the woman, but guiding her through some unnecessary intervention that will reassure staff and keep the doula in good shape.

Website design By BotEap.comTaylor found that at a hospital, most CNMs had home births. She attended several home births while doing research for this book, as well as at Elizabeth Gilmore’s birthing center in New Mexico. The Taylor thing is that her second child was born at home. After her first less-than-successful delivery, Taylor explains that at home a woman’s ability to give birth is protected rather than controlled. This is what Taylor wants. This is, I believe, the main reason that women in the United States choose to have a home birth.

Taylor’s emotional process of going from a hospital birth to a home birth is detailed in some detail in this book. Those of us who have had home births know exactly what you’re dealing with when you explain your home birth decision to those who only believe in hospital birth. She writes, “I realized that my friend’s viscerally negative reaction to the home birth was probably not based on any knowledge or information, but on unfounded fears.”

Website design By BotEap.comWhile an ideal delivery arrangement is to have supportive medical care ready in case of an emergency, most home birth families and midwives find this very difficult to obtain. Unlike many American women, Taylor had insurance while she was pregnant with her second baby, and she used that insurance to purchase supportive care that CNM was unable to provide for her. While doctors criticize those who plan unsupported home births, these doctors increase the dangers of home births by refusing to provide care they believe is essential for safety. Like Taylor, who faked planning a hospital birth to have emergency medical care available, those with money can buy a safety net. The rest cross their fingers or pray.

Website design By BotEap.comTaylor’s praises Elizabeth Gilmore’s freestanding birthing center in Taos, New Mexico. The practice employs obstetricians who provide integrated support for midwifery clients. Clients can choose to deliver at home or in the birthing center. Though seemingly idyllic, the birthing center has been a labor of love for Gilmore, who has worked tirelessly to keep it viable. Birth politics are everywhere an endless war.

Website design By BotEap.comThis book was written because Catherine Taylor had to write about her birth experience. Like many of The Complete Mother’s subscribers, her birth at her home transformed her into a strong and confident mother and woman. Those of us who have been there and done that will smile that knowing smile as we read about her metamorphosis. It is the secret knowledge that suddenly it is discovered that we had the power all along, but we did not know it.

Website design By BotEap.comTaylor acknowledges that the road to self-discovery is often paved with pain, vomiting, and bodily fluids. “However, it was one of the most vital and powerful moments of my life… my midwife not only assisted in the birth of my baby, she assisted in the birth of a new, powerful, confident and loving part of me.”

Website design By BotEap.comAmen.