Before the birth of my first child, I had never been around a new baby. I had also never seen a woman in labour, so I wasn’t remotely prepared for my own. My first came close to an emergency caesarean, because after six hours of pushing I still had not gotten my daughter out. When she was finally born, weighing over nine pounds, I felt overwhelming gratitude for the women who had stayed by my side through it. I will always remember one particular midwife with short-cropped grey hair and a barking voice, who coached me through the contractions like an unrelenting PE teacher. Without her, I don’t know if I could have done it. In her commanding presence I was part of a team, and we had won a great victory together. But when the night shift ended, she left without saying goodbye. To her, it was just another night shift. But for me it was the greatest achievement I had ever accomplished. In the mighty struggle of childbirth, a bond of kinship had formed between me and that midwife. When she left, I felt bereft.  

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In the recent past, that bond would have lasted longer, and it likely would have been with women I already knew well. Up until the era of hospital births, when a woman went into labour, other women living nearby would flock to her—mothers, sisters, aunts, friends, neighbours—all helping her through labour and its........

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