Ina May's Guide to Childbirth: Updated With New Material

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In addition to the stroll down memory lane, we also get a large amount of personal essays and the different experiences from women and men regarding the labors with their children in the hands of the midwives. They actually started sounding redundant so I skimmed past many of them.

This book is essentially a collection of stories from the 70s? about births. There's greater romance than I'm telling here, because the book tells the story also of how this collective of midwives grew from Ina May to a raft of 'disciples' who lived in housebuses in a large community together and served the greater community. The author herself seems to be very particular about what she wants from clients and seems to put a lot of the burden on the laboring woman to "be nice," and I don't believe that that's necessarily the energy that works for everyone When many Americans think about giving birth, the main thing they think about is the pain involved. The fear and anxiety that the anticipation of pain that childbirth can bring often makes the last weeks of pregnancy, as well as the birth itself, a negative experience for many women. However, Ina May Gaskin believes giving birth without fear can make the entire experience of labor and birth a more positive one. Ina May Gaskin is one of the foremost midwives in the U.S. Her ideas about the fear of giving birth have to lead to a drastic change in the way many women and their caregivers or partners approach to birth, so that fear isn’t the primary feeling that accompanies it. Tips To Experience Less Fear During Labor and Birth

Solar power pioneer Huang Ming wins 'alternative Nobel' ". BBC News. 29 September 2011 . Retrieved 19 September 2016. My purpose for reading this book is to brush up on childbirth and strategies to support my partner during her pregnancy and labor. For that, I got less out of this book than I did with Ina May's other book, "Ina May's Guide to Childbirth". Since the early 1980s, she has been an internationally known speaker on maternity care independently and for the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), [1] lecturing throughout the world to midwives, physicians, doulas, expectant parents and health policy-makers. She has spoken at medical and midwifery schools in several countries and at both the Starwood Festival and the WinterStar Symposium, discussing the history and importance of midwifery.

The Gaskin Maneuver, also called all fours, is a technique to reduce shoulder dystocia, a specific type of obstructed labour which may lead to fetal death. Gaskin introduced it in the U.S. in 1976 after learning it from a Belizean woman who had, in turn, learned the maneuver in Guatemala, where it originated. In this maneuver, the mother supports herself on her hands and knees to resolve shoulder dystocia. [14] Switching to a hands and knees position causes the shape of the pelvis to change, thereby allowing the trapped shoulder to free itself and the baby to be born. Since this maneuver requires a significant movement from the standard lithotomy position, it can be substantially more difficult to perform while under epidural anesthesia, but still possible, [15] and can be performed by an experienced delivery room team. [16] Recognition [ edit ] In 2003, she was made a Visiting Fellow of Morse College, Yale University. [18] She was awarded an honorary doctorate in recognition of her work demonstrating the effectiveness and safety of midwifery by Thames Valley University, England, on November 24, 2009. [19] Her maternal grandparents ran a Presbyterian orphanage in Farmington, Missouri, a small town in the Ozarks. Her grandmother, Ina May Beard Stinson, directed the orphanage for many years after her pastor husband's death. She was an avid member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a great admirer of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Jane Addams. Gaskin's paternal grandparents were all farmers. Adam Leslie Middleton, her grandfather, traveled and worked with farmers from Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas in cooperative grain marketing, organizing communities, as well as larger outlets in Chicago and other large cities, to establish local cooperative grain elevators. His work as an organizer took him to Canada to work with wheat growers, and to Washington, D. C., on the invitation of the Secretary of Agriculture under President Warren G. Harding, Henry C. Wallace, father of Henry A. Wallace, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture. I do appreciate that Ina May Gaskin has helped improve the way childbirth can happen in America. The ongoing theme that childbirth takes the time it takes is extremely resonant to me, after a doctor rushed my first birth (she complained so I could hear it twice that my 20-hour labor, precisely on my due date, was making her late for other appointments, before deciding I "needed" a vacuum extraction). And as a woman-centered story of Vietnam-era counter-culture, I suspect I could enjoy this book immensely.

Loved the birth stories even though sometimes the hippie-ness of it is a little off putting. E.g., there are people who've had amazing natural childbirth experiences who don't need to live in the middle of nowhere, prefer the word contraction to rushes and would never use the word "psychedelic" to describe anything and I wish there were more of those so that women considering non-medicated birth could have that "Aah, she's just like me" moment of recognition. But overall the stories were inspiring. I also like the practicality of a lot of the advice. My biggest complaints are that: Having given birth once, I straight up don't believe another gal who says she didn't feel any pain and was thrilled to have 30 people watching. Even if that was really her experience (sure it was), no amount of spiritual midwifery could make it mine. Durand, Mark A. (1992). The Safety of Home Birth: The Farm Study, American Journal of Public Health, 82:450-452. She received the American Society for Psycho-Prophylaxis in Obstetrics/Lamaze Irwin Chabon Award (1997), and the Tennessee Perinatal Association Recognition Award. On September 29, 2011, Ina May Gaskin was announced as a co-winner of the 2011 Right Livelihood Award for "her whole-life's work teaching and advocating safe, woman-centred childbirth methods that best promote the physical and mental health of mother and child". [20] [6] [21]

I will admit it's not a book I read or would recommend reading from cover to cover, and also not one I'd recommend at the end of your pregnancy, because I believe there comes a point where one should disengage from others' experience of birth and focus on the birth, you, your baby and your birthing team are creating.The strongest thing I took from this reading, is that I don't have to be an angry birthing mother-to-be. I can be loving and gentle with my partner. As Ina May says "What put the baby in there, can bring the baby out." So, being loving and even 'smoochy' with your partner (I personally didn't quite make it to the smoochy stage in my 8 hours of birthing) can aid the process. She illuminated the fact that not all birthing stories are challenging or unpleasant and that some people genuinely (they're not lying) ENJOY birthing. We were a transient population with no desire to leave a trail of debts behind us, and we had an ethic that did not allow us to accept welfare. We were aware that many of our contemporaries were accepting the benefits of the larger society at the same time they were loudly criticizing it, and we had no wish to be associated with this position.” Gaskin was born to an Iowa Protestant family ( Methodist on one side, Presbyterian on the other). Her father, Talford Middleton, was raised on a large Iowa farm, which was lost to a bank not long after his father's accidental death in 1926. Her mother, Ruth Stinson Middleton, was a home economics teacher, who taught in various small towns within a forty-mile radius of Marshalltown, Iowa. Both parents were college graduates, who placed great importance on higher education.