Grassroots Network: Quotes needed for midwife guide book

Dear Friends,

Arielle Greenberg is CfM’s newest Board Member, and she is working on a book about choosing and having babies with midwives! Please read below her request for you to answer some questions that could contribute quotes for this book. You are welcome to forward this e-mail to other individuals and lists.

Please note: Please send your survey answers to Arielle here NOT as a “reply” to this e-mail!

Sincerely,
Susan Hodges,”gatekeeper”


FROM: Arielle Greenberg:

A Mom’s Guide to Giving Birth with a Midwife Survey

Dear friends,

I am putting together a book proposal for a guide to choosing, working and birthing with midwives, tentatively titled as above. I’ve got an agent for this project and am currently working up a sample chapter and other materials, and the organization of which I’m a board member, Citizens for Midwifery, is the “organizational author.”

I am hoping to include useful quotes from actual women who chose to work with and birth with midwives, and I am wondering if you would consider answering the following questions as fully and specifically as possible. My plan is to pull quotes from real moms that illustrate or help explain points throughout the book: I think this will greatly add to the book’s appeal and usefulness. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to skip any questions that don’t interest you or pertain to you; I know you’re busy, so please focus on the questions you most want to answer if you don’t have time to answer the whole thing. I’d rather just get a couple quotes from you than none at all. You can simply fill this survey out and email it back to me at the address below. There is no current deadline, but sometime before May 1, 2009 would be excellent, and any surveys I get back immediately will be used for the proposal itself, which would be extremely helpful

Also, if you have friends who you think would like to participate and be quoted in the book, please feel free to forward this survey to them. I am especially interested in hearing from underrepresented moms, including moms of color, working-class moms, young moms, etc., in order to get as wide a range of voices as possible, so forwarding this survey to such women would be very helpful to me. However, please know that women will be identified only by the first name of their choosing, so all answers will be semi-anonymous or anonymous. I am not including the real names of midwives, either, so if your answer contains your midwife’s name, I will change it to something else.

Thanks very much,
Arielle Greenberg
Email


1. Name You’d Like Used in the Book (first names only; you can use your actual first name or choose another one for better anonymity):


2. Children (please state in what setting each child was born, practitioners involved, and means of birth); e.g., Child A: birthing center, nurse-midwife and OB, vaginal birth):

Child A:
Child B:
Child C:
Child D:

3. Why did you choose the kind of midwife you chose (Certified Nurse-Midwife, Certified Professional Midwife, Lay Midwife, etc.)?


4. Why did you choose to hire a midwife?


5. How did you find your midwife? Why did you choose that particular one? What kind of questions did you ask at your interview? What did you want most in a midwife you chose?


6. What did you see as some of the advantages to working with your midwife?


7. What did you see as some of the disadvantages to working with your midwife?


8. Describe a typical prenatal appointment with your midwife.


9. Was there any advice that your midwife gave you, or anything she helped you with, that was particularly helpful or unusual or thorough?


10. Where did you have your baby? Please describe a bit about what the setting was like. What did you like or dislike about that setting?


11. Did you take a childbirth class? What kind? Did your midwife recommend it? What did you think about it?


12. Did you have a doula at your birth? Why or why not?


13. What was your midwife like at your birth? What did she do that was most helpful? Least helpful?


14. Describe a typical postpartum visit with your midwife.


15. Is there anything you wish you’d done differently, or said, to your midwife?


16. Is there anything you particularly loved or were grateful for about your midwife?


17. Since your birth, have you done any activism to support midwifery in the US? What have you done?


18. Anything else you want to say about choosing, finding or working with a midwife?


Thank you so much!