Articles

Time was when every obstetrics text included a description and discussion of pseudocyesis, otherwise known as false, imaginary, phantom, hysterical, or spurious pregnancy. Textbook authors typically explained that even experienced physicians could make a mistaken diagnosis when there was not an actual pregnancy, because the outward signs and symptoms of this condition can be so convincing.

“To sustain” means “to keep in existence,” “to maintain,” and “to keep going.” In order to create a sustainable midwifery profession, educators, policymakers, and activists must avoid short-term thinking and make ever greater efforts to consider how their words and actions—both individual or collective—will impact future generations of midwives and birthing women in all parts of the world.

Little did I know, when I witnessed my first vaginal breech delivery at a small county hospital in middle Tennessee in 1972, that I was seeing a physiological process that was being rapidly phased out in the US. The birth was to a mother having her first baby. She had planned a homebirth, with me as her midwife.

Ina May Gaskin looks at how obstetrical knowledge and medical hierarchy has undermined and ignored uterine capability

I learned a new Spanish word while lecturing in New York City on a book promotion tour during the spring of 2003. The Puerto Rican nurse who explained it to me said that in the countryside where she grew up it is used like this:

One woman might say: "I heard that your sister was in labour. Has she had the baby yet?"