The Natural Birth Movement

I learned of Ina May Gaskin and the birth movement that she is so known for, after the birth of my first child; I'd had a nightmarish, medicalized hospital birth and felt reasonably sure that I needn't perpetuate that legacy for the deliveries of my subsequent children. The current trend of highly medicalized births in the US is something that I've always found disconcerting; it took my own experience for me to take steps to educate myself about birth options, birth practices throughout the rest of the world, and the best way to spread a message that isn't just overlooked, but I find to be critical to the ongoing health and wellness of mothers and babies, nationwide.

In the early 1971, Ina May Gaskin and her husband, Stephan, bought a parcel of land in southern Tennessee that became know as The Farm. What started as a communal living space has become known the world over as the home of one of the premiere birthing communities and learning venues for birth without intervention and fear. Listed below are a few links to websites that discuss Ina May and her work as a pioneering midwife with a career that began in the 1960s and has spanned every decade since with no signs of slowing down.

She has worked tirelessly to bring women to and through labor and delivery in a calm, natural setting without intervention and invasive procedures. She believes fully in the female body and its ability to birth freely in its own time, on its own terms. She has made strides in the birth movement such that she actually has a medical procedure named after her, The Gaskin Maneuver; this is a method by which practitioners are able to deliver babies with shoulder dystocia without surgical intervention, nor with an end result of an infant having a broken collar bone.

http://www.inamay.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/magazine/ina-may-gaskin-and-the-battle-for-at-home-births.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Here is the description of her latest book, taken from the jacket of Birth Matters: A Midwife's Manifesta, published on March 22, 2011 by Seven Stories Press; forward by Ani DiFranco.

 

Renowned for her practice's exemplary results and low intervention rates, Ina May Gaskin has gained international notoriety for promoting natural birth. She is a much-beloved leader of a movement that seeks to stop the hyper-medicalization of birth—which has lead to nearly a third of hospital births in America to be cesarean sections—and renew confidence in a woman's natural ability to birth.
Upbeat and informative, Gaskin asserts that the way in which women become mothers is a women's rights issue, and it is perhaps the act that most powerfully exhibits what it is to be instinctually human. Birth Matters is a spirited manifesta showing us how to trust women, value birth, and reconcile modern life with a process as old as our species.

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Sharing the work of Ina May Gaskin and midwives nationwide is something very close to my heart; it's my honor to use this platform to further spread the information that every woman deserves to know before, during and after her pregnancy and delivery. My third child was delivered in the comfort of my living room with an amazing midwife and her assistant in attendance; it was a life-changing experience for which I will forever be thankful.