Greetings, readers. I've been asked to give you a quick introduction
of myself. I'm the mother of 3 grown children, and prior to my recent
move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, I wrote a column for a small-town
Minnesota newspaper and was involved in music production and writing
in a growing church. My husband and I had our first child in 1978 with
the assistance of a nurse midwife in a northern California hospital.
It was the beginning of my husband's sociological study of midwives,
and in my desire to encourage women to think outside the status quo
during their pregnancies. My first birth led me to choose giving birth
to my son and daughter at home. (Here's where I would say, "Did you
know that the first hospital-born US president was Jimmy Carter?" And
his was at a birth center, at that. All those others presidents and so
many of your and my ancestors were born at home and lived long lives.)
When Judy and I were approached by Lamaze to write the guide, we
decided that issues of confidence and trust in our bodies' design and
the need to consider the cost (physical, emotional, financial) of the
medicalization of birth should be central to the book. I'm looking
forward to chatting with you all. There are no better stories than
listening to women share their birth experiences, and we owe each
other and our babies the benefit of better understanding normal birth.
Thanks for the opportunity! Charlotte DeVries