Spiritual Midwifery

I think I'm the first _man_ to review this book. In a way that's kind of sad, but hey, I don't mind going first, fellas. Besides, I've reviewed just about everything of Stephen Gaskin's I could find, and it's about time I reviewed Ina May's book.

And here in Ohio we've got a Mennonite midwife named Freida Miller who's doing time in prison. Why? Because she saved the life of a birthing mother by giving her prescription medication without a license. Worse, she's not even in prison for dispensing the meds; she's in prison because she refuses to reveal the name of the doctor who _gave_ her the meds in the first place. This displeases me and causes me to question the legal and pharmaceutical establishments even more than I already did, which is a lot. So consider this review my little blow for the revolution.

Ina May Gaskin wrote the book on midwifery -four times, in fact, as the fourth edition of the book was published in 2002 and it gets longer every time. The new edition is updated with the usual stuff, including yet more stories from the parents and midwives at the Farm (including some stories from the babies, now all grown up, who were the subjects of the _original_ stories) and a new preface by Ina May. And if you're reading this page, you don't need me to tell you that it's the bible of practical midwifery.

What you may _not_ already know is what a spiritual book it is. Of course the title is _Spiritual Midwifery_, but some readers may be inclined to write that off as hippie jargon. As other reviewers have noted, there is some hippie jargon in the book, but I don't think you should read "around" it or "past" it. You should read _through_ it; it's part of the point. The medium really is sometimes the message, and this is the appropriate language for the concepts Ina May wants to lay on you.

What Ina May wants you to know, what she and the midwives at the Farm have successfully shown for thirty years and counting, is that birthing really is (or can be) a sacrament and that _how we be_ has a profound effect on _how we birth_. As Stephen remarks somewhere, the Farm midwives have successfully demonstrated that _vibes are real_. This is good news and it's important to more than birthing mothers -even to more than women.

I don't mean to minimize the importance of the practical midwifing aspects of the book, either; it's just that I didn't read the book for that reason myself. (I was present at the births of both of my children, but they were born in the hospital as my wife preferred.)

The thing is, Ina May and Stephen are good people. In fact they manage to be both kind _and_ competent -a difficult trick and one that I certainly haven't mastered myself. And there are lots of other good people represented in this book, in the stories and in the pictures. (The folks in the photos look like folks you'd want to meet. If you look at them right, you can actually see their souls.)

So this review is partly to help spread the word about midwifery and partly to help spread the word about these good people. Vibes _are_ real, it _does_ matter how we be, and don't let anybody tell you any different.

When I was pregnant with my first baby, what I hungered for were real stories of birth, and especially positive stories, because these are so rare in our medicalised birth culture. My copy of Spiritual Midwifery is a dog-eared third edition, but it's been a great companion to me through the homebirths of my four babies, reassuring and reminding me how simple and ecstatic birth can be.

One reviewer could not believe that all the stories in Spiritual Midwifery could be so positive; I refer her to my article on Ecstatic Birth, which details the scientific evidence for birth ecstasy as our hormonal blueprint for labour, first published by Mothering and expanded for my book "Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: a Doctor's Guide to Natural Birth and Early Parenting Choices". (Read the article on my website www.sarahjbuckley.com) It's the plethora of interventions that make birth unpleasantand not necessarily safer, as I document

Another reviewer responseIna May recommends drinking vodka to delay an early labour: IV alcohol was previously widely used in hospital for women going into premature labour, followed by 3 days of whisky 60 ml (2 oz) every 8 hours.

As a family physician, I also have to mention the excellent section, "Instructions to midwives" at the back, with easy to understand explanations and diagrams that I would recommend for any birth attendant; midwife, physician or parents. I also appreciate the sections on stillbirth and difficult births, and of course the gorgeous photos.

Spiritual Midwifery is a book that has stood the test of time, and continues to inspire and inform women and their carers (including myself) about how amazing and ecstatic birth can be, and the respect that we owe birthing families and newborn babies.

PS If you don't like the hippy language, buy Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, which has more contemporary stories and excellent information about modern birth care. Even better, buy them both!

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I devoured an earlier edition of this book more than a decade before I actually had children, and am enjoying the new "birthing tales" added to the fourth edition. Since my husband was extremely uncomfortable with the prospect of home birth, I gave birth to our three children in hospital, with a wonderful female OB/GYN guiding me through one uncomplicated vaginal delivery; one surprise breech resulting in a C-section; one induced, successful VBAC. The hospital was the right place for me, it turned out. I really believe that the joy of these "birth days" was enhanced by having learned so much from the wisdom of all of the "ladies"--Ina May's down-home term--their husbands, and midwives who contributed their first-person stories to this fine book.

From "Spiritual Midwifery," you'll learn a great deal about your body, your newborn baby, and about the many, many things that can and do comprise pregnancy, labor, delivery, and the postpartum period. Even the very few sad outcomes inspire, and in the least smarmy way possible. I also would call this book appropriate to give to a teenager who is curious about the process of birth.

In retrospect, this fine book beats the unduly jumpy "What To Expect When You're Expecting" by a country mile.

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I'm a student midwife and Ina May is revered in the 'birth world' I exist in. This book isas the many reviews can attest toalmost a Bible of natural child birth and the regeneration of midwifery practice in the US. My understanding is that I am reading the most current version of this book...

The good: Getting to hear and see pictures of many families who went through their births on the Farm was great. I am very interested in birth stories and the internal mechanisms that women/families use to cope with birth. Also, I very much enjoyed finding several stories about loss and unexpected outcomes. It's wonderful to see these kinds of stories and occurances shared for others to use as a map through a similar circumstance. Sometimes, you've never met anyone who's had a loss. Knowing you're not the only one who's felt the way you do is an amazing comfort. Another positive of this book were the stories about the Amnish women who had Farm midwives attend their births. The cultural differences were really interestingI wish Ina May would write a whole book about these births!

The bad: Ok, first and foremost, there were several times that INACCURATE information was put forth in this book. At one point, Ina May suggests that a woman 'toughen up' her nipples during pregnancy if they are sensitive to get them ready for nursing. That's just wrong. She also says parents whould use alcohol on a baby's umbilical cord and around the base on the stomachagain, a care method that has been proven to actually increase healing time. Perhaps these things are minor, but honestly, for someone who is so respectedand who many people will look to for definitive information, this kind of thing should be corrected.

Secondly, I needed a 'Hippie-to-English' dictionary to understand many of the stories! If I hear the words 'tantric', 'psychedelic', 'telepathic' or 'high' again, I think I'll scream. If I read one more description about how someone looked "real soft and pretty" or "real golden and pretty" or "real pink and pretty" again, I'll cry. Honestly, it was as bad as if I had to read someone saying something was 'dope' or 'crack-a-lackin' over and over. The words don't really mean ANYTHING to people who weren't hippies. Maybe invite those who originally wrote the pieced to update them into modern, non-hippie language? I really found it so distracting...

Finally, I got the senseand perhaps I'm totally wrong about thisthat if a woman had trouble dealing with the pain of her contractions it was her own fault. Women were expected to mentally transform the pain into 'an interesting sensation which gets the baby out'. Now, I understand that fear and tension can increase the amount of pain felt during birth, but it seems that the women were expected to be laughing, joking and 'giving some' to others during their labor & delivery. They were discouraged from 'complaining' during their 'rushes'... I feel that placing these expectations on a laboring mother is unfair. Pain is experienced differently for different women. For some women, labor can be an ecstaticeven orgasmicexperience. But to place on a woman that there's a 'good' and a 'bad' way to labor & birth is just... I don't knowit seemed unreasonable to me... Like everyone is being forced into a certain birth disposition and if they don't conform they fail as a 'paddy-ass'.

Anyway, just my two cents. Many people obviously enjoyed the book more that I did. And I really did WANT to like the book so much more than I didI wanted to enter into the spiritual side of the midwifery... Oh, well...

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Yes, the birth stories in this book ARE real. Real women birthing real babies. Listening to their stories can help prepare you for birth whether this is your first child or your tenth.

One of the things I appreciate most about this book is that it discusses in detail aspects of childbirth that no medically-oriented, mainstream childbirth manual will touch, e.g. what it's like when your baby dies. Play-by-play descriptions.

Children with birth defects. These are things I want to know about.

If you are one of those women who doesn't want to hear about any pain, plans on checking yourself into the hospital at the first contraction, and putting your doctor in charge, then you REALLY need to read this book! I especially recommend this book to women who don't know many other women who have birthed a child naturally, because you're not going to get this information anywhere else. If you only hear stories from the point of view of women who are drugged, you're not getting the whole story.

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