Between Home and Hospital: Birth Center Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe giving birth, or planning to, at a birth centre or midwife-led unit. Writers chose one for quieter rooms, water births, continuity with one midwife, a second try at vaginal birth after a caesarean, modesty and prayer, healing after a hard first birth, or a centre and doula on their own street. They include a nurse practitioner who knew the statistics for Black mothers, a woman told she was too old at forty-one, a same-sex partner who calls herself the other mom, a sceptical engineer with a spreadsheet, a grandmother, a doula of fourteen years and a nurse-midwife of nearly thirty. Places run from Rotterdam to Cape Town and Hamburg to Salt Lake City, with a lottery for a place in Quebec. Writers describe twenty-six hours and then an ambulance, a baby born eleven minutes after arrival, snow on the road, back labour met with heat, water and sterile water injections, a tear after a water birth, a cord around the neck, gestational diabetes, a breech baby, insurance refusals and midwives visiting at home afterwards. Some births went as hoped; other writers were transferred, told late in pregnancy they had to deliver elsewhere, bled heavily after the birth, or spent three days with a baby in special care.

Who it's for

For pregnant people weighing a birth centre against a hospital, those already booked who want to know what labour there is like, and the partners and grandparents who will be in the room.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 233 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.