Peggy Vincent: Can't possibly think of the most memorable. Well, I guess it would be my own home birth! The most harrowing were the three times I discovered a prolapsed umbilical cord and had to make a hair-raising trip to the hospital by speeding car or ambulance.

Crescent Blues: Now that you no longer deliver babies, what connections do you maintain with the medical/midwife community?

Peggy Vincent: Some of my best friends continue to be the nurses (some are now midwives) who functioned as my assistants during the home births we shared together. But whereas my nursing and midwife associates used to make up my group of close friends, they have now been replaced by writing friends. One of the pleasures of writing this book is that it has put me back in contact with those people from my past, including a large number of former patients (or clients, as most midwives call them).

Crescent Blues: What do you see as the necessary factors for a revival of interest in home birth? What's working against that possibility?

Peggy Vincent: I'm not sure. Malpractice insurance is again available to cover midwives to do home births, so that's not the issue. But fewer doctors are willing to offer backup to midwives now. And the country is heading toward care by HMOs, and they don't pay midwives as a rule, so midwives have less access to receiving insurance fee-for-service payments. Epidural anesthesia was rare for normal vaginal births until about 1990, and I believe with its availability now, fewer women are interested in natural birth. And midwives themselves, those coming out of midwifery schools now, seem to want "a life." They don't want a solo practice, being on call 365 days/year, etc. They want regular hours, benefits, a regular paycheck...

Crescent Blues: How important is the birth experience for the mother, father and child?

Peggy Vincent: My gut instinct tells me that it's very, very important. It's too powerful and potentially life-changing an experience to treat it casually or callously. But in any discussion of this nature, it gets down to the unanswerables of nature vs. nurture. The studies done on the subject are soft science, so we don't have good data on either side to support the claims of hard science. Indeed, there's plenty of evidence of well-balanced adults rising from dreadful beginnings -- and the opposite, people with solid and loving beginnings who go badly astray.

I guess my response would be that giving a baby a start in life that is cradled in love and that supports the natural process surely can't hurt, in the long run, and who knows? It really might help more than we now even comprehend. The concern over bonding, in my opinion, has been both overrated and underrated. I've seen women give birth to severely depressed (this is a medical term, not psychiatric -- it refers to cardiac and respiratory depression, a low-APGAR baby) babies, and obsess about bonding and breast-feeding issues when a whole crew is working to get the baby's lungs to work. Healthy and emotionally babies can still be the end result of a difficult stay in the intensive care nursery.

On the other hand, the definition of "normal" in both obstetrics and newborn care has become so narrow (medical paranoia) that far too many babies are separated from their moms/dads/families to "treat" conditions that probably don't even need treatment or to do procedures that could easily be dealt with while the baby lies in its mother's arms. A huge advantage of home birth is that the babies are never separated from the family unless hospital transport is indicated, and that was so uncommon it hardly bears mentioning. With one-to-one attention, it is very easy in a home birth setting to do whatever is needed by the newborn right at the mom's bedside or in her arms.

Crescent Blues: What does home birth provide that can't be found in a hospital setting?

Peggy Vincent: Oh my. Everything. Freedom to behave as you please. The assurance that there will be no one at the birth who is not there by personal invitation. The world revolves around the birthing mom; everything is arranged for her comfort and confidence. Hospitals are arranged to function around the needs of the organization; the priorities of the laboring mother are way down on the list. [In home births] guaranteed there will be no medications used except as needed for "situations." Definitely no narcotics. Guaranteed there will be no separation of mother and baby. Labor occurs in a familiar setting. The mom doesn't have to decide when to go to the hospital. She stays home and the world comes to her. Her needs are not secondary to the needs of the hospital to function on an efficient and convenient routine.

Crescent Blues: In a number of the stories, doctor appear to be the villains of the piece. In your opinion, do doctor's victimize women in childbirth?

Peggy Vincent: I don't believe this is actually true, or at least not in more than a couple of instances. There are far more instances in my book of the support of my back-up physicians. If doctors do "victimize" women, which is not a term I would choose to use, they certainly do it unintentionally. I think the issue is that many physicians don't believe in the concept of normal birth. They are fearful of the process, fearful of being sued, and they intervene too soon, too aggressively and the intervention itself can too often contribute to the downward spiral of labor. All this helps contribute to the execrable 25 percent and higher Cesarean rate in this country. I believe very few doctors in the US have ever seen a home birth, and until they have, I don't believe they can say that they've seen a true "natural birth." Witnessing it can be a life-changing experience, and too few doctors ever have the opportunity.

Crescent Blues: What can women do to ensure that the birth is good for them and their babies?

Peggy Vincent: Choose a midwife with experience, skilled assistants and a solid relationship with a backup doctor and hospital. Choose other support people to be in attendance who understand and will respect the mother's wishes.

Crescent Blues: How has the medical community responded to your book?

Peggy Vincent: To date, to my knowledge, only two physicians have read it in entirety, and they were both already strong advocates for home birth and midwives. They were both extremely positive about the book, from every aspect.

Crescent Blues: How has the publishing world reacted?

Crescent Blues: Do you plan to follow up this memoir with a book on how "your" babies grew up?

Crescent Blues: When you closed your practice, you passed the mantle to a young Muslim woman. Are you still in contact now that she's returned to the Middle East?

Peggy Vincent: No, but I talk to her mother-in-law every so often; she spends part of each year with her son, his wife, and their five children.

Crescent Blues: Have you followed the progress of her practice in the Middle East?

Peggy Vincent: She is a health educator in her community, but having five children under the age of twelve -- and home schooling them -- doesn't leave her much free time.

Crescent Blues: What other career paths have you followed besides nursing, midwifery and writing?

Peggy Vincent: For five years I was an athlete, but no more. I completed the AIDS bike ride (560 miles in six days) from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but that was my swan song.

Crescent Blues: I've been told you can tell a lot about a person by what they keep in their freezer. Tell us what's in your freezer -- or has been in your freezer?

Peggy Vincent: In addition to the normal stuff (coffee beans, home made soups and sauces, nuts, batteries, candles, leftover sourdough bread, pizza crusts, CostCo® steaks and chicken breasts, etc.), I also have three canaries (dead, of course) and two Lady Gould finches in my freezer. [Lady Gould finches] are the size of a canary but have the coloration of an Amazon parrot. Unbelievably beautiful.

I used to always have a spare placenta or two on hand, used for educational purposes, but sometimes we had people who wanted us to save healthy placentas for them. They ate them for various health reasons.

The birds are a little harder to explain. I really liked them, and it seemed rude to just toss them in the trash. On the other hand, it seemed like a bit too much to dig a deep hole (so raccoons or dogs won't dig them up) for a three-inch long bird (minus tail) that weighed about two ounces. And it was winter and raining when the first one died, so digging a grave was not at option at that moment. While I tried to decide what to do, I put him in a baggie in the freezer. And that's where the next one went. And the next one... Now it's become a conversational topic whenever we have guests. I don't think my kids would let me toss them out.

Crescent Blues: You mention an Internet group in your acknowledgments. What role did this group play in the development of Baby Catcher?

Peggy Vincent: The Internet group I became involved with was helpful in many ways: editing, tightening, making me aware of passive verbs and places where I needed to explain what were to me common obstetrical terms but were foreign to non-medical people, places where I lapsed into clinical language, and restructuring some of the chapters to make them flow better.

Crescent Blues: What authors and books influenced you?

Peggy Vincent: When I'd written about ten chapters and was beginning to read them to others, almost invariably someone commented that they were reminded of the structuring of James Herriot's books based on veterinary practice. But I didn't set out to write the midwife's answer to All Creatures Great and Small. It just turned out that way.

Crescent Blues: I see author and fellow Californian Anne Lamott (author of Operating Instructions) wrote a blurb for your book. How did you meet?

Peggy Vincent: Annie is the personal friend of the woman from whom I took my first-ever writing class, four years ago. Also, the doctor who delivered Annie's son used to be a nurse-anesthetist in the hospital where I worked, so we had that connection, too. Our mutual friend gave me Annie's address. I sent her a brief letter, and she agreed on the spot to read the galleys and write a blurb.

Crescent Blues: Reviewing your life and achievements from the perspective of your 60th birthday, what would you do differently if you could choose to live your life over again?

Peggy Vincent: Have a fourth child.

Crescent Blues: What advice do you have for other writers?

Peggy Vincent: Write! And don't believe the people who tell you it's almost impossible for an unknown author to get published.

Crescent Blues: Anything else you'd like to add?

Peggy Vincent: Readers with further questions might like to visit my Web site where the first chapter of my book can be read under "Excerpt." I'd like to thank Felicia Eth (my agent), Jane Rosenman (the editor who bought the original manuscript), Jake Morrissey (the editor who nurtured the project to completion) and all the other writers in my life who urged me on when I thought I was stuck. No one ever promised I would get published, but no one ever told me I wouldn't, either. To new writers, I'd say, "Keep the faith!" If I can get a book on bookstore shelves, so can other unknowns.

Click here to learn more about Peggy Vincent.

Click here to read Dawn Goldsmith's review of Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife

Dawn Goldsmith

A multi-published writer of non-fiction and short stories, Dawn Goldsmith also reviews mass market books for Publishers Weekly.

Readers Respond

I just read the write up by Dawn Goldsmith on Peggy Vincent's first book Baby Catcher. What a wonderful article! If I didn't already have the book I would run right out and buy it today! I have purchased three copies of this book besides the one that was given me as a gift. I plan to give each of my daughters one for mother's day. Ms Goldsmith is a wonderful writer in her own right. Thanks so much for the article and review!

Mary from Ohio