Unlike the typical 10- to 15-minute OB check-up, Booher and Doyle spent a full hour together in early March, chatting on a comfortable sofa at Moonstone Midwives Birth Center in Eureka, California. The cozy room where they met has kids' toys in one corner, calm pastel-colored paintings on the wall, and feels more like a friend's living room than a clinic.
For decades, midwives have been stereotyped as fringe birth workers - delivering babies only in candlelit living rooms or rural cabins, far away from modern medicine. (The history behind this is worthy of its own blog post, but that's for another time!) Today, midwives are everywhere: in hospitals, alongside obstetricians, in birth centers, and in homes. And for a growing number of LGBTQ+ families, midwifery care is becoming a new standard for pregnancy, birth, and postpartum support.
As writer Emily Elphinstone considers options for the birth of her second baby, she chats to midwives and a new mum about the benefits of having the technique in your labour 'toolkit'.
