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

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Gardeners know that you must nourish the soil if you want healthy plants. You must water the plants adequately, especially when seeds are germinating and sprouting, and they should be planted in a nutrient-rich soil. Why should nutrition matter less in the creation of young humans than it does in young plants? I'm sure that it doesn't.” While the first half of the book is accessible to everyone, the second half of the book reads more like a how-to manual for midwives and seems less relevant to anyone not interested in being a professional midwife or doula. It is interesting though and is basically a medical manual of the woman's body, the baby, and goes into the nitty-gritty medical details of it all.

Gaskin, Ina May (2014). Spiritual Midwifery. Strawberry Hills, NSW: ReadHowYouWant. ISBN 9781459647077. OCLC 907698021. There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ, they would brag about it. So should we.”Ina May Gaskin, MA, CPM, is founder and director of the Farm Midwifery Center, located near Summertown, Tennessee. Founded in 1971, by 1996, the Farm Midwifery Center had handled more than 2200 births, with remarkably good outcomes. Ms. Gaskin herself has attended more than 1200 births. She is author of Spiritual Midwifery, now in its fourth edition. For twenty-two years she published Birth Gazette, a quarterly covering health care, childbirth and midwifery issues. Her new book, Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth was released 4 March 2003 by Bantam/Dell, a division of Random House. She has lectured all over the world at midwifery conferences and at medical schools, both to students and to faculty. She was President of Midwives' Alliance of North America from 1996 to 2002. In 1997, she received the ASPO/Lamaze Irwin Chabon Award and the Tennessee Perinatal Association Recognition Award. In 2003 she was chosen as Visiting Fellow of Morse College, Yale University. She makes a lot of pronouncements such as: We have a very low incidence of post partum depression here on the Farm. We've never circumcised a male baby on the Farm. My Kindle notes turned from "ugh" (the Buddhist monk rolling around in the pink baby blanket... a photo of a wise older man in a white coat and stethoscope punctuating a story about God helping out midwives) to curses when one mother says that she, her husband, and Ina May "prayed" over a blue, motionless baby while someone ran to get Ina May's husband, who did some goddamned CPR to finally start saving that kid's brain function.

In the 1960s, Ina May gave birth to her first child in which the physician used obstetrical forceps. The experience was so unpleasant that she searched for a better form of childbirth. Before The Farm was established, her husband Stephen was leading a speaking tour caravan in 1971, based on his philosophical seminars in San Francisco. It was for the first time on this tour that she helped a woman in childbirth. [3] On March 16, as the caravan was traveling through Nebraska, Ina May went into labor. The baby, whom they named Christian, was born prematurely by 8 weeks and died the next day. She was not allowed to keep the baby, and law enforcement made her bury the child in Nebraska. [4] Her own personal experiences fueled her interest into midwifery and safe childbirth. The Farm Midwifery Center [ edit ] Top 6 Books of 2011 | International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region". Archived from the original on 2018-04-18 . Retrieved 2018-04-17. Breast stimulation is especially effective in starting labor at term when it is combined with sexual intercourse. Unless your partner is an abysmally poor lover, this combination is by far the most enjoyable method of induction.” Stories teach us in ways we can remember. They teach us that each woman responds to birth in her unique way and how very wide-ranging that way can be. Sometimes they teach us about silly practices once widely held that were finally discarded. They teach us the occasional difference between accepted medical knowledge and the real bodily experiences that women have - including those that are never reported in medical textbooks nor admitted as possibilities in the medical world. They also demonstrate the mind/body connection in a way that medical studies cannot. Birth stories told by women who were active participants in giving birth often express a good deal of practical wisdom, inspiration, and information for other women. Positive stories shared by women who have had wonderful childbirth experiences are an irreplaceable way to transmit knowledge of a woman's true capacities in pregnancy and birth.”

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 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.

Gaskin, Ina May (2012). Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 9780553381153. OCLC 826306709. 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". 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.Touch is the most basic, the most nonconceptual form of communication that we have. In touch there are no language barriers; anything that can walk, fly, creep, crawl, or swim already speaks it.” 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.