Vanessa Brooks - Lay Midwife
24” x 20” / 60.96 x 50.8cm (Edition of 8)
20” x 16” / 50.8 x 40.64cm (Edition of 25)
16” x 12” / 40.64 x 30.48cm (Edition of 50)
The Story.
Vanessa has been ‘catching’ babies for twenty years, she says, “You don’t deliver babies, you deliver pizzas.” She had her first child in a teepee in Beneficio in Spain and despite originally wanting to be an architect, she sort of fell into being a lay midwife. Since then she has ‘caught’ well in excess of four hundred babies, and has only had to visit a hospital for extra care on less than half a dozen occasions. Midwife refers to the job in hand as opposed to the person themselves, meaning ‘With wife’. Her task, as well as catching the baby at the crucial moment, is to prepare the mother for as natural, easy and pain free a birth as is possible. In twenty years she has never lost a baby. In October of 2013 it became illegal to practice as a lay midwife.