About Carol

Carol Leonard, a "foremother of the modern midwifery movement," is a New Hampshire certified midwife who has been practicing for the last three decades. She is co-founder of the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), which represents all midwives in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and served one term as its president. Her work to improve maternity care in Moscow, Russia, was featured on 20/20 and was written into the Congressional Record. She is currently building a four-hundred-acre farm in Ellsworth, Maine, named Bad Beaver Farm.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

· First midwife certified to practice legally in NH in 1982.

* She has delivered approximately 1,200 babies safely in their own homes.

· Received the Bronze Medal for Bravery from the Australian government in 1984.

· Appeared on the Today Show with Jane Pauley in 1985.

· Elected President of the Midwives Alliance of North America (the professional organization for midwives in the US, Canada and Mexico) in Wheeling, WV in 1986.

· First American to deliver a Soviet/Russian baby in a Moscow rodom (maternity hospital). This was filmed and featured on 20/20 with Barbara Walters in 1991.

· Leonard’s unpublished manuscript of Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart was installed in the Margaret Sanger Archives at Smith College in 1999.

· As a lobbyist for the New Hampshire Midwives Ass’n, Leonard won a heated legislative battle mandating insurance coverage for home births in NH in 2007.

· 10/2008, Leonard’s self-published memoir Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart, A Midwife’s Saga was awarded the Mothers Naturally award of excellence for Outstanding Book, 2008 in the Traverse City Opera House, Michigan.

Carol can be reached at Carol@badbeaverfarm.com.

Carol is available for book signings, lectures and workshops. She can be reached at ~

Carol Leonard, NHCM, 585 Hopkinton Road, Hopkinton, NH 03229, 603-224-4596

UPCOMING EVENTS~

Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart on YouTube! Check it out!

YouTube - A Midwife's Saga

Apr 28, 2010 ... Celebrate Womens Health Month with Carol Leonard, foremother of the modern midwifery movement and NHs 1st licensed lay midwife.

www.youtube.com/?v=ghKARrPULAk

A midwife’s saga

Carol Leonard, BS, NH Certified Midwife, Author of

Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart: A Midwife's Saga,

Bad Beaver Publishing, 2008.

Goffstown Public Library

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

6:30 PM

This Power Point Presentation presents a brief herstory of the social context that led up to the emergence of the new “modern” midwife, then a spirited, personal account from the first midwife practicing in New Hampshire, created by those brave homebirth families of the 1970’s. This talk showcases Carol’s all time favorite midwifery photos that briefly address the legal/legislative issues faced by the “lay” midwife, the obstacles placed by the medical community to homebirth practitioners, and how the midwives began to organize, nationally, to share experiences, support one another, and to learn from each other. There will be a Q&A session immediately following.

Carol Leonard is the author of Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart: A Midwife’s Saga, Bad Beaver Publishing, July 2008, which was awarded the Mothers Naturally award of excellence for Outstanding Book, 2008. Ms. Leonard, a “foremother of the modern midwifery movement,” is a NH Certified Midwife who has been practicing for over three decades. She was the first midwife licensed to practice legally in New Hampshire in 1982. She is a co-founder of the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) representing all midwives in the US, Canada and Mexico, serving one term as President of MANA. She has delivered approximately 1,200 babies safely in their own homes.

~ Monday, 8/25/08. Carol was on NH Public Radio on The Exchange with Laura Knoy, discussing Midwifery in NH. It was a fabulous show and can be heard anytime at www.NHPR.org, click on The Exchange, then on Midwives Today.

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~On October 17, 2008, Carol Leonard’s book, Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart was awarded the prestigious annual Mothers Naturally award of excellence for "Midwives in Media" for Outstanding Book, 2008! The award was presented in the beautiful Traverse City Opera House in Traverse City, Michigan.

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Carol on the radio reading from Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart ~ 3/19/09.

WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine ~ Audio Archives

Baby Talk 3/19/09

March 19th, 2009

Producer/Host: Cathy Jacobs
Studio Engineer: Joel Mann
Topic: Midwifery (Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart)
What is the history of midwifery in the U.S.? What is Carol Leonard’s new book Lady’s Hands, Lions Heart all about? What are some of the politics of midwifery?
Guest: Carol Leonard
Call in show

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Why I Chose to Self-publish (and How RJCommunications Probably Saved the Day)

by Carol Leonard ~ April 14th, 2009. Filed under: Vanity & Pod Publishing Vs. Self-publishing.

I was this close to publishing with a “subsidy” publishing house, but by Divine Intervention, I was saved. I was noodling around on the Internet when I saw a site that said, “Warning: Your book will be registered in the name of the vanity publisher and the ISBN number is not transferable. It is not owned by you and is not registered in your name. If you do not own your own ISBN, you will not have the rights to your book.” Oh my god. This stopped me dead in my tracks.

I had published previously with a large publishing house (large as in: Viking Penguin.) It was an experience I didn’t wish to repeat. I ended up feeling that I had lost all editorial control over the content of my first book. Well, actually, I had lost all control. The book was based on two decades worth of work I had done with women’s groups…but by the time they were done sanitizing and civilizing every experience I had written about, there wasn’t a naked woman running around in the woods anywhere in the final version.

And the [first] cover they did was horrific; it had nothing to do with the content. I say “first cover” because they finally changed it to one I designed myself after I had such a sh*#-fit, that I think they feared for their lives. Plus, the marketing of that book was dreadful. It sat on the book-shelves for six months, and then they pulled it. In the end, I didn’t own the rights to my own work that I had done for over twenty years. Not good.

I certainly didn’t want that to happen with my current book, my memoir, Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart, A Midwife’s Saga. This book was my life’s story, had all my blood, sweat and tears in the telling of a saga full of joy and pain as New Hampshire’s first [modern] midwife. I had to own my story. So, I returned to that site…and my relationship with RJCom was born.

The first thing I did was buy the ISBN for my title from RJCom for $99 for a single number. The man I spoke with about this was Bob Powers, a book “coach”. He said in order to purchase an ISBN, I had to form a Publishing House and what was the name of my publishing house? I wasn’t prepared for this question, so I blurted out the name of the farm I am building in Maine.

I said, “Bad Beaver”.

He said, “Excuse me, what?”

I said, “Bad Beaver…Bad Beaver Publishing.” I told him I was going for name recognition.

There was a very long, pregnant pause. He said, “Alrighty then, Bad Beaver it is.”

The next step was editing. RJCom offers several levels of editing; I opted for the simplest line-edit/copy-edit feature, as I was fairly smug in my writing ability and my grammatical prowess. How complicated could this be? I was astounded to receive back about 40 “balloons”, or editorial suggestions/changes PER PAGE! Holy Obsessive Compulsive! It took me about a month and a half to make all the changes that I agreed with.

The editing process made me deeply appreciative and aware of the “faceless” editor’s commitment to having me keep my own voice in the telling of my story. I could choose how I wanted the language to be. In the end, the writing is simply “brilliant” (and all the reviews agree with that too!)

Next came the cover…ahhh, that cover! I sent Jonathan Gullery my manuscript and a couple of things I liked, but I had absolutely no idea what he was going to do. As I said before, I had a bad experience with cover design, so I was a little trepidatious. (Is that a real word?) Jonathan was working on my cover while I was slogging through the line edits. When he finally sent it to me, I was speechless. I just stared at it. It wasn’t at all like anything I had imagined it would be. Then I started to cry. It was beautiful and powerful and, a little mysterious. I absolutely LOVE my cover. Really, I am crazy about it.

This next step is an important one that I almost blew off. I had the option of doing book formatting/text layout through RJCom’s designers. I thought, “Nah, it’s all just text, so why would I need this additional expense?” I could do it myself. But because of my positive experience with Jonathan—and the fact that he highly recommended it—I decided to go for it. I think it is one of the best decisions I made in regards to my book’s “professionalism”. It is amazing to me how many people who know books have exclaimed that they didn’t think it was Self-published because of the polished, professional interior.

When my book came back from the printers, I was ecstatic. It was like I had birthed my “baby”. HA! Little did I know the hard work was just beginning. I think one of the disadvantages of self-publishing is the marketing and public relations of self-promoting. It’s a full time job. One doesn’t have the big media “push” that’s available to large publishing companies. Many times I would whine and plague Coach Bob about how exhausted I was trying to get media attention for my book. He was very patient and never once told me to stop being such a wimp.

Early on, before I decided to self-publish, traditional publishers said they didn’t want my book because it was only geared toward a “niche” market; to midwives and health professionals interested in childbirth, therefore, the numbers were too small. While this is true, in the self-publishing business, “niche” books do best, especially as I have a targeted audience to appeal to.

An added bonus for me is that, lately, midwifery has become the new, hip Amazonian profession. Thousands of young women have become Doulas—or childbirth attendants—and are eagerly buying my book as fast as it can POD because it addresses this dream. This is a whole brand new market I didn’t even factor in originally! So, at the expense of jumping-the-gun, I’m getting ready to say to those nay-saying traditional publishers, “Na-na-na-na-na.”

Ms. Leonard has just self-published the soon-to-be bestseller, Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart, A Midwife’s Saga, Bad Beaver Publishing, 2008. For further information and 5 star reviews, go to: www.badbeaverpublishing.com

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! From the United Kingdom~

Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 | American Literature

This memoir by Carol Leonard is an absolute page-turner. I found myself giggling non-stop with story after funny story; moved and fascinated by the diversity of people’s lives. Carol was one of the first midwives in the resurgence of homebirth midwifery in the ‘70s in the USA. After an apprenticeship with an aging doctor, she takes on most of the births in the area, and is instrumental in the training and registration of midwives through the 70’s and 80’s. At the same time she falls in love with an obstetrician, ironically enough, and it’s as much their story as hers. He was obviously an exceptional doctor and man.

There’s certainly a lot of hippies, with communes and ashrams and people squatting in shacks in the wood, but there’s also inner-city births, a few emergency hospital births, and her own rather horrific story. Alongside births there’s abortions and illegal family-planning and women’s health examinations - including one pretty funny story involving a diaphragm painted like a blood-shot eye.

As a piece of history it’s great, but as a read it’s just brilliant; funny, moving, human and absolutely un-put-downable. A highly recommended book.

~ Bookrblog.com

For the First Annual Mothers Naturally Award ~ As a MANA member and a NH licensed midwife, I nominate the book Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart, A Midwife's Saga by Carol Leonard.

I feel this book definitely demonstrates excellence in the portrayal of childbirth and midwifery. I believe Carol's way of writing draws you in and puts you in her shoes, no holds bared. Her book has every part of midwifery in it from those precious moments treasured between sister midwives, to the legislation, to the devotion of life that must be given for the women we serve. Carol is also a past president of MANA and also a life time member of MANA as well as a life time member of our state organization NHMA, and our faithful and devoted lobbyist. She has done so much for midwifery and childbirth in our state and nationally her book is sure to send a ripple across the country as it finds it's way
into the hands of women desiring to know the hands and heart experience of a midwife in this day and age.
Thank you for the opportunity to nominate a book worthy of such recognition.