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SUMMERTOWN, Tenn. — Despite living on a commune in rural Tennessee, Ina May Gaskin has had the kind of career success most people only dream about.
A midwife who never formally studied nursing, Gaskin has helped to bring home birth and lay midwifery back from the brink of extinction in the United States. An obstetrical maneuver she learned from the indigenous Mayans of Guatemala has made it into scientific journals and medical textbooks, and her insistence on the rights of a birthing mother empowered a generation of women to demand changes from doctors and hospitals.
I read one of Ina May's books while I was pregnant with my last one. I've always felt as though the medical community made too much of a big deal about childbirth. Somewhere along the way women were placed on their backs to give birth, in my opinion to take their power away. Think about it, for thousands upon thousands of years men were not involved at all in childbirth. Women helped women during the process. Once the men got involved, our power got taken away. Now you have OB/GYN's treating pregnant women as if something is wrong with them. Nothing is wrong at all. Its the most natural thing to give birth. And who told us it hurts? Yes, its difficult, but not really painful in the medical sense. Someone lied to us about that. I wish everyone would read Ina May's books.
Wonderful! We planned a homebirth with our last pregnancy, with a midwife, but ended up having a miscarriage. If we have another baby, we will plan another homebirth. Pregnancy and childbirth in general should not be a medicalized event (complications with mother or baby notwithstanding, of course!).
That's how the women in my family have had children (my mother etc.) & I hope to do the same someday. In normal circumstances, it is much healthier for mom & baby that so hopefully...
Anyone who is able to give birth to a child sans drugs is a saint in my book!!! I couldn't do it ever with any of my 3 labor & deliveries. More power to Ina May and any woman who can get through it!
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