Room of Wonders: New Perspectives on Home Birth - edited by Kate McCahill
Product Details:
Paperback : 258 Pages
ISBN : 9781951631734
Cover Design: Gwen Grafft
Cover photo: Carmen Bridgewater Photography
About the Book:
For most of human history, we were born at home, surrounded by family and friends and assisted by midwives. Only within the last century has childbirth moved to the hospital sphere, where it is increasingly governed by rigid medical protocols, insurance and liability costs, and harmful notions of risk, pain, and female strength.
Yet technological advancements haven’t helped modern parents. Today, skyrocketing rates of synthetic intervention, birth trauma, and postpartum depression now characterize childbirth throughout much of the developed world.
In Room of Wonders, editor Kate McCahill presents dozens of interviews and profiles from a diverse range of childbirth experts in her quest for a safe and empowering alternative to hospital birth. In collaboration with leading midwives, doulas, obstetricians, and birth scholars, McCahill explores the benefits, challenges, and logistics of having a baby safely and comfortably at home.
In a world where birth has become impersonal, medicalized, and frequently harrowing, Room of Wonders proposes that joyful, autonomous birth at home may be much closer than you think.
About the Author:
Kate McCahill is the author of Room of Wonders, an anthology about home birth, and Patagonian Road, a travel and teaching memoir. Longtime professor of English at the Santa Fe Community College, McCahill is editor-in-chief of the Santa Fe Literary Review, the college's in-print journal of arts and letters. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals, newspapers, and anthologies, and she holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BA from Wellesley College. McCahill lives with her family in New Mexico. Learn more about her at katemccahill.com