Well, I have. And to say I am a huge fan is a bit of an understatement. This American woman has created an incredible body of work during her nearly 30 years working as a midwife in the U.S. and educator throughout the world.
Okay, here's where I get going, so please feel free to click away. ;-)
There is a wonderful organization here in Graz called EKIZ, which is an acronym -- meaning "center for parents and children." I regularly check their website as they offer a broad range of classes and hold weekly "advisory sessions" for parents at no cost. They also have a school where they train doulas(female pregnancy, birth, and post partum supporters), something close to my heart. During my time working as a nurse with women in labor I always felt the powerful need for a more consistent support and connection than the nurse was allowed -- given that she/he had to split their time among several patients, charting, etc. When we became pregnant with L, it was an automatic that I looked for a doula knowing what I knew about maternity care as I had experienced it -- lacking in the emotional support of women. I have had the idea in my head for a quite some time that becoming a doula would be something I would be interested in.
What I saw on the website was that they were offering an "Evening with Ina May Gaskin." What? Surely they will just talk about her work. Looked further -- nope, she's coming to Graz! What I later learned is that she actually taught the last three days of the doula training session! How cool is that?
During the time I worked as an intra partum and post partum nurse I was totally disenchanted by the "medicalized births" that 99% of women had, with a seemingly complete disregard for the "normal, natural" process that birth is meant to be. Of course it is wonderful when a c-section is absolutely necessary or there are post partum complications. I started to look at the actual data, which showed that for all of our "advances" in maternal-child healthcare, more women were dying from childbirth-related causes than in most other developed countries. It started to feel like our health care system was providing less of a service to women and babies than was hoped.
Fast forward 5 years. I am pregnant with L and I am scouring the internet to find good pregnancy and delivery reading. You know, the kind that would help me understand how I can prepare for that amazing act that my body inherently knows how to do on it's own. I find Ina May. A woman who was never formally trained as a midwife but rather has a Master's Degree in English Literature. She learned her trade "on the fly," (and eventually with some medical training from a physician) but with such passion and intuition that she has helped to bring nearly 3,000 babies into the world with a less than 2% c-section rate. It was only after 187 "natural" deliveries that she decided a woman needed to be transferred to a hospital for a surgical delivery. And of all of those babies and moms, there was never once a single casualty or injury. She began delivering the babies in the buses in which she and her husband and a band of some 1,500 hundred followers were living while her husband was on a lecturing tour throughout the U.S.
Eventually, she and her husband bought some land in the midwest and they slowly built houses there and developed what she refers to as her "community." It is officially called "The Farm." People travel from all over the world to give birth there, where they lived for many years without electricity or running water. Ina May and her team of midwives have gathered knowledge over the years and Ina May then teaches that knowledge to each new midwife on The Farm. The bulk of her work, however, has been trying to change the state of the maternal health care system of the developed world; she's trying to give women back their power and instill respect again in the abilities of women's bodies and educate on how harmful so many of the interventions of today's maternal medicine are. She is not anti-medicine. Quite the opposite. She believes (as do I) in the incredible importance of modern medicine, but only when it is truly needed. Giving birth, she argues, should not normally require things like an I.V., continuous fetal monitoring, for a woman to stop eating and drinking(for fear of aspiration should she have to be put under general anesthesia), vacuum extractions, forceps extractions, and c-section rates that are out-of-this world (currently 2 times that of 1982 in the U.S.) to name a few. Interestingly, she even has a maneuver named after her -- "The Gaskin Maneuver" -- simply moving to hands and knees -- which is used when the shoulders of the infant appear to not be able to pass through the pelvis. Ina May teaches it to care providers all over the world.
When asked if she thought that this trend "toward ignorance and stupidity" was financially driven, she said no. She believes that "stupid quite simply begets stupid." Ouch.
A fascinating idea that she talks about in her books as well is the idea that human beings were made to function just as well as all other mammals. But that the main differentiating factor is that we have thoughts and emotions that change the whole game.
Birth is, simply put, as emotionally charged as life gets. And the connection between how safe, loved, and supported a woman feels during this time directly impacts all aspects of her labor and delivery, and for women these are hugely defining moments that stay with us for the rest of our lives. It is such a sacred act, and as she says "you wouldn't be able to poop on cue surrounded by bright lights and strangers, so why should we expect people to give birth on cue."
It was an honor for me to hear her, see her, feel her energy. I was giddy all day knowing we (K went with me!) would be hearing her. I had no idea the group would be so intimate and that I would have the chance to ask her multiple questions and visit with her personally and shake her hand afterward.
Here she is talking at The Farm.
If this topic interests you, her books have been translated in to many languages, including German.
Also, this documentary is definitely a must-see for all pregnant women in the U.S.
He sleeps with what he calls his "ta-dae" (Guitarre: guitar). His "pack-pack"(the thing with the stuffed animal on the back) has wheels, too, so it is easier to carry his guitar and pull his things behind him.
