The Birthkeeper of Bethlehem: A Midwife's Tale. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.The Birthkeeper of Bethlehem: A Midwife's Tale

• A sensitive, beautiful retelling of the Nativity story through the eyes of Jesus’ midwife.
• Highly recommended for lovers of Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent.
• A love story to traditional birth practices and midwifery-led care.

We seem to have become invisible. But we were there... I was his midwife. This is my story.

There was a time when birth was considered sacred, a rite of passage, a gift from God, tended to by women with herbs, wisdom, prayer, love, courage and the knowledge of their ancestors to bring new life safely into the world. These were the birthkeepers.

Salome holds the birth stones and birth wisdom for the town of Bethlehem, like her mother and grandmother before her. She has helped so many babies into the world, including a baby born in a stable under the light of the brightest star anyone had ever seen.

This is not the story of Jesus, rather the woman who delivered him. Through her eyes we witness the sacred art of the birthkeepers, the transformational journey of birth and the power of love. An unexpected birth which made ripples that reached across time...

Women's space, women's bodies, women's ways...

We know this story. But we've never heard it quite like this. Bridget Supple conjures the colors and sounds and rhythms of daily life in Bethlehem at the beginning of the Common Era. From the perspective of the midwife, Salome, it's just another birth. Births are always miraculous, only this one is a little more so than usual. There's a new star in the sky. And there are strangers with strange visions. But the mother and baby are the work of the moment and those mysterious things must be puzzled over later.
Midwifery is indeed timeless: a traditionally-trained midwife today would be using the same techniques and medical herbs. In fact, you could actually use these birth stories as a very good midwifery textbook! This book tells a story we all know with great sweetness and a loving heart.
– Gail Hart, midwife of fifty years, dedicated to preserving improving birth outcomes by integrating traditional midwifery methods with appropriate medical care

Enter the inner thoughts and longings of a passionate midwife. Supple weaves her love of Christ with her love of midwifery. The protagonist is smart, brave and competent, bubbling up with quips delightfully befitting the historical and cultural setting.
At the same time, modern midwifery values and wisdom, customs and innovations gently enrich the storyline. If you want to know what it feels like to be a midwife in the home setting, read this book.
– Gail Tully, creator of Spinning Babies® and author of Changing Birth on Earth: A midwife and nurse's guide to using physiology to avoid another unnecessary caesarean

Bridget's writing casts the birth spell magically over me so I may enter the darkened room of women's work, where the primal smells of herbs, aromatic oils, honey, amniotic fluid, sweat, and love, transport me to Bethlehem between 6 and 4 BC, as two stars in the sky draw mysteriously together. Bridget Supple's word-medicine reminds me that we are all woven together, threads of many faiths, cultures, and traditions, mountains and oceans between us, yet we are but one swaddling cloth of humanity. How many thousands of laboring mothers have I kneeled beside to receive her baby earthside, yet the recounting always opens my heart and centers me in the here and now.
– Robin Lim, grandmother, midwife, founder of Yayasan Bumi Sehat health clinics, offering free prenatal care and birthing services in Indonesia. Author of After the Baby's Birth, Wellness for Mothers, Ecology of Gentle Birth and Awakening Birth

Bridget Supple has spent the last twenty years supporting women through all stages of pregnancy, labour, and parenting. A mother of four herself, she works as an antenatal teacher for the NCT, the NHS, in particular a major UK Maternity Hospital and Birth Companions a charity supporting pregnant women in prison. She is the founder of an information resource all about the Infant Microbiome (www.babysbiome.org) and runs workshops on parenting, brain development and hypnobirthing. She has also contributed to and worked on the International Journal of Birth and Parent Education (www.ijbpe.com) since its beginning.Bridget learnt her skills from some of the most influential traditional childbirth figures including Robin Lim (Bumi Sehat) for birth wisdom, Angelina Martinez Miranda (traditional midwifery), and Dr Rocio Alarcon from Ecuador (rebozo and Closing the Bones). She has attended workshops with some of the greats of childbirth such as Ina May Gaskin, Mary Cronk (breech workshop), Sheila Kitzinger (birth trauma workshop), Jean Sutton (optimal fetal positioning workshop), Andrea Robinson (Childbirth education), Gail Tully (Spinning babies).Bridget lives in Shropshire with her husband and four children.