Rating: 
Summary: Fun Summer Reading that is also good childbirth preparation.
Review: Truly delightful! Peggy Vincent has delivered a gem of a baby this time with her documentary of the life of a midwife in Berkley in the 1980s! What I enjoyed the most was the "light summer reading" nature of the book. The chapters are short and descriptive, even dreamy. But the messages were clear and each story gave me something to ponder throughout my day... something about the gloriously unpredictable nature of birth, the political nature of medicine, or the ramifications of litigatious society in which we live. I am recommending this book to the students in my Childbirth Education classes because it, more than anything else I have read, takes the reader inside of the birthing experience. As I read about the "perineal cry" I could almost feel that intense sensation of a baby descending (even though my own children are now 20, 17, and 13.) It is something that I have struggled to describe in my classes, and Peggy has done a dynamite job of making it real. For second and third time moms "Baby Catcher" is a good choice because the short chapters allow for a quick read while toddler is napping. The stories also include several examples of siblings at birth, which would be meaningful to someone deciding whether to have an older child there for the big event. There are a couple of scary chapters in "Baby Catcher" and for a moment or two I pondered how it would affect the expectant couple to read them. Maybe I shouldn't recommend the book to pregnant parents???? Thinking, however, of the onslaught of negativity that my students are subjected to by television shows I quickly decided that Peggy's tales were not too scary... in fact they are informative and tell us just what we would want to know about the risks associated with childbirth, just the kinds of things my students ask about! Way to go Peggy!!! I am anxiously awaiting volume 2...
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