Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

Bohjalian's book has been compared to Map of the World and To Kill a Mockingbird, and it lives up to its reputation. It's beautifully written, thought-provoking and tells a compelling story. Sybil's story seems much like that of Penny Simkin, highlighted in last Sunday's Pacific Magazine in the Seattle Times-PI. She is committed to providing viable birth options for women who want them, and determined to give women the power to control what happens at this very vulnerable time in their lives.
In Vermont, in the 80's, according to Bohjalian, there was no process for women to have their babies at home with anyone other than someone like Sybil Danforth. Says her daughter, Connie, "That's one of the main reasons that my mother became a lay midwife instead of a medically trained nurse midwife, or perhaps an obstetrician-gynecologist: no college degree and - over time - the conclusion that she didn't need one.... If doctors and nurse-midwives deliver babies at home, they do so without malpractice insurance or state sanction. So from my mother's perpsective, there was no reason to get any sort of medical degree. She knew what she was doing." (37) When accused of being a renegade, Sybil smiled and said, "I prefer to think of myself as a pioneer."
Most of us are privileged to attend a birth only if it is our own child. If you are actually giving birth the chances of being in a position to enjoy and even savor the experience is quite slim, even in the most natural of circumstances. If you are the father, chances are you are distracted with many responsibilities and fears as well. To witness a birth is indeed a miraculous thing: even on films it is incredibly moving. I love the description of Sybil's experience of her first birth: "This was life force she was witnessing, the miracle that is a mother's energy and body - a body that physically transforms itself before a person's very eyes - and the miracle that is the baby, a soul in a physical vessel that is tiny but strong, capable of pushing itself into the world and almost instantly breathing and squirming and crying on its own." (42) My neighbor, Mike, is an Anacortes Firefighter. Recently he was part of a team that delivered a baby in a van. The couple was arriving by ferry from one of the San Juan islands, and simply did not make it to the hospital. Mike's response: "I wish I could do that every day!"