Yang Su-ching, 55, is a midwife, one of a tiny number of such professionals plying her trade in the greater Taipei area. More and more modern couples prefer to have their children born in a hospital, and the traditional midwives of today might have only one delivery every few months. With business declining, the midwives find their role shifting from attending women during deliveries to longer-term care.
Yang is a nursing school graduate who began teaching in 1976. Her own mother-in-law was an experienced midwife. The older generation of midwives was just in time to help with the post-war baby boom, and during those years, a midwife might deliver over 100 babies a year. But as the birth rate dropped, the majority of midwives retired, and were not replaced.

Its difficult to find a practicing midwife in Taipei these days. There are four registered in Taipei County. Tsai Sha-ning is one of them, a midwife who performed water births, but she has gone very low-key following an incident involving the death of a newborn. Only Yang and two others are still actively delivering babies.

Yang says that although the majority of pregnant women these days prefer to deliver their babies in a hospital, there are still some expectant mothers who want a natural birth at home. Hospitals are great for high-tech instruments, she says, but a midwife can provide a human touch the hospitals cannot.

For example, if a pregnant woman goes to the hospital when her labor pains begin, she could be laboring for several days, and the doctor cannot be with her the whole time. But a midwife will be at her side from the moment she arrives at the womans home and will talk to her, encourage her, and help her to relax during the process, just like a friend. Yangs longest stay at a laboring womans home was five days and four nights until the baby was finally born.

The Midwives Association believes that the atmosphere in a hospital maternity ward is not friendly at all. From the time labor begins, the pregnant woman is festooned with tubes and leads, hooked up to IVs and fetal monitors, and cannot move easily. But at home, the woman can sleep, lie down, sit and watch television, or walk around as she wishes.

Association head Kuo Su-chen says that 99.9% of pregnant women in Taiwan choose to give birth at a hospital. This means that the traditional art of midwifery is beginning to die out.

In addition to actually delivering babies, midwifes also help with education prior to the birth, as well as post-natal care, playing a more active role in both than doctors. Yang begins with a consultation with the woman early in pregnancy, and can teach women how to care for their breasts, how to use massage and oil in their eighth month of pregnancy to make the muscles of the birth canal more flexible and avoid the need for an episiotomy while enjoying a natural birth.

However, Yang emphasizes that all pregnant women should have regular medical checkups, and if any abnormality in fetal position is discovered, the baby is too large, or the mother has heart disease or any other condition placing her in a high-risk group, she is not a good candidate for a home birth, and should go to a hospital for her labor and delivery.