The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS, a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA

Feedback about the Midwife Archives

If you missed the segment about Orgasmic Birth, aired on ABC"s 20-20 on Jan. 2,
you can still catch the mini-segments:

Birth Orgasms: Women Speak Out - Is it possible to have an orgasm during childbirth?

Women Who Prefer Home Birth - For some, delivering a healthy child doesn"t involve a trip to the hospital. [Note - the associated article says, "Modern medicine means not having to go through childbirth alone." It"s more accurate to say "Responsible modern medicine means reserving risky interventions for when the benefits outweigh the risks." I know lots of responsible women who give birth at home with the perfect birth team . . . their partner, their midwife and their doula. They are definitely not alone, and they have all the medical assistance they need, just like a woman giving birth with a midwife in a hospital! Savvy people know the difference between midwife-assisted homebirth and unassisted birth.]

The Orgasmic Birth web site also has a lot of great information about birth in general:
Birth by the Numbers
The Director"s Blog
Birth Stories

I am very happy to receive feedback that will help me to improve the Midwife Archives.

You are strongly encouraged to send me e-mail about:

Broken links- The web is a very dynamic collection of information, and with the very large number of links in the Midwife Archives, it is inevitable that many of them will be obsolete. When you come across an obsolete link, the most helpful thing you can do is to continue your search for this information and send me any useful URLs you come across in your search that seem to replace the broken link. In particular, you can do a verbatim search on the text associated with the broken link to see if you can find that same page at a different URL - my favorite search engine is Alta Vista, especially the Advanced Version, which allows you to compose a complicated query. When you send me information about the correction, please include the URL of the page you're referencing and sufficient context for me to be able to make the correction easily. Thank you for helping me keep the Midwife Archives up to date and as useful to as many people as possible.
Errors of fact - If you have a reliable reference that contradicts something you read in these pages, by all means please send it along. Please be sure to read enough of the relevant Web page to be sure that the inaccuracy isn't corrected further along. The dialogue style of the archives can create confusion for people who read just one snippet. Please include the URL of the page you're referencing and sufficient context for me to be able to address your feedback effectively.
Errors of spelling, grammar or semantics - Thank you for taking the time to help me keep these pages as readable as possible. Please include the URL of the page you're referencing and sufficient context for me to be able to address your feedback effectively.
Suggestions for new links - I enjoy receiving suggestions for links that would be an asset to the Midwife Archives. (It is my policy only to include information that is relevant to midwifery or homebirth, or is strongly supportive of woman/baby-centered birth. In particular, please do not bother to send me suggestions for commercial purposes only; I do not routinely engage in "link exchanges". Thank you.) I am most likely to include your suggested URL if you make it as easy as possible for me. Please provide:

the complete URL you have in mind
the complete text you'd like to see describing that web page
the URL for the section and subsection of the Midwife Archives that would be most appropriate

Thank you's - I put a lot of time and energy into these Web pages, and I enjoy receiving the thank you notes sent by people who find them helpful.
My services - I am available to assist you with your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, as a homebirth midwife or as professional labor support or as a provider of in-home European-style postpartum midwifery care. Please let me know if you would like to receive on-line versions of my literature or would like to inquire about my availability for a specific time. I am also available for hire

You are strongly discouraged from sending me e-mail about:

Your search for more information. The Midwife Archives is a comprehensive resource, although certainly not complete. You will probably find the answer to your question either by searching these pages hierarchically, by starting at the main page, or by using the search facility for this site. If your question isn't answered by the information here, then you will probably want to look at other Online and Offline sources of information. If you would like to hire me personally to help you find more information, I am available to do a customized information search for you. And, if you feel that the information you've found would be an asset to the Midwife Archives, please send me e-mail about it.
Questions about your own health situation. I am licensed to provide midwifery care, not medical care, and I cannot provide midwifery care over the Internet. I am available for hire as a paid research consultant to help you find answers to your questions. Please send me e-mail if you are interested in paying me to do research for you. Otherwise, I encourage you to read the subsection on "Getting Answers About What Happened"
Further questions about what you read in the archives. I am the editor, not the author, of what is written here. Because of the anonymous nature of these pages, I no longer have the information about who wrote what. If you are trying to contact midwives who specialize in a particular area of midwifery, I suggest you join the midwife lists and ask there.
Your aspirations to become a midwife. Much as I sympathize, I cannot be a personal mentor to every aspiring midwife. Please read the information For Aspiring Midwives.
Your opinion that homebirth is unsafe. You're certainly entitled to your own opinion, but unless it's backed up by some facts or statistics, you don't have much to add to the discussion. If you're simply dumbfounded that the hospital environment could change birth from a normal physiological event into a dangerous medical crisis, I strongly encourage you to do yourself and all of us a favor and spend a little time educating yourself. The section on Homebirth Safety/Advocacy is a good place to start.

People who violate these guidelines may expect not to receive a response.

After reading the above guidelines, you can go here to learn how to e-mail me feedback about my web pages.

#include "trailer.incl"