A Tale of Two Births

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We chose a home birth for our second child.

He arrived on Easter. Kim Garrett and Kathy Ruggles, the certified, licensed midwives we'd gotten to know over several hour-long prenatal visits at Kim's home, dropped their brunches and zipped over to heat towels and boil herbs in our kitchen. They had some drugs and equipment in their kit, but we didn't need them. Wyatt was born into my hands after a merciful four-hour labor.

We can't call our hospital experience a horror story. Horror stories have much unhappier endings. But we resent having been subjected to such a string of indignities and errors, and sometimes we wonder whether Everett's wariness of strangers, his strong need to cling closely to us, might have its roots in those first traumatic days. We certainly know that's where the scar on his wrist came from.

Just as corporate America has seized on organic food, green products, and alternative healing techniques, big hospitals are coopting the language and imagery of the midwifery model, marketing themselves as kinder, gentler birthplaces-yet many of them fail to live up to their own hype. Meanwhile, independent midwives like Kim and Kathy are thriving, attending more and more births with their personal touch and forcing mainstream medicine to accede to the fact that sometimes, nature might know best.

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