Ina May Gaskin

Ina May Gaskin ( born March 8, 1940) is an American midwife (in the USA Certified Professional Midwife, CPM), as the " mother of authentic midwifery " ( "mother of authentic midwifery " ) was called. She is co-founder of The Farm commune in Tennessee. It is also referred to as the " most famous midwife in the world".

Family

Gaskin was born into a Protestant family in Iowa ( Methodist on one, presbyterian on the other side ). Her father, Talford Middleton, was from a large farm in Iowa that was lost shortly after the accidental death of his father to the bank. Her mother, Ruth Stinson Middleton, was a home economics teacher. She taught in various small towns around Marshalltown. Both parents were college graduates, the value placed on higher education.

Gaskins maternal grandparents initiated a Presbyterian orphanage in Farmington, a small town in the Ozarks. Your grandmother, Ina May Beard Stinson, the orphanage headed for many years after the death of her husband, a pastor. She was an enthusiastic member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a great admirer of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Jane Addams. Gaskins 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 a grain cooperative, organized societies, as well as direct sales in Chicago and other major cities, to build local cooperative granaries. His work as an organizer led him to Canada to work with wheat producers and to Washington, DC, at the invitation of the Ministry of Agriculture under President Warren G. Harding.

Ina May Gaskin is married since 1976 with Stephen Gaskin, who belonged to the first 1980 people who have been awarded the Right Livelihood Award ( the " Alternative Nobel Prize ").

The Farm Midwifery Center

In 1971, Gaskin, with her husband in Summertown, Tennessee, a community that became known as The Farm. Here they founded and other midwives of The Farm Midwifery Center, one of the first non-clinical obstetrics centers in the United States. The methods of the center were developed on the recommendation of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Family members and friends are commonly present and are encouraged to play an active role in the birth. The center has proven to be an extremely low rate of medical interventions at birth consistently good progress over now almost forty years.

On the importance of Gaskins activity

According to Carol Lorente (1995 ) would have been the work of Gaskin and the midwives can not have the influence, if not Gaskins book Spiritual Midwifery (1977 ) had been published:

Gaskin was with the advent and popularization of independently operating midwives in the U.S. since the early 1970s agree (direct -entry midwifery DEM, similar to the midwives in Germany, which may serve healthy pregnant women and new mothers without consulting a doctor according to the law ). Between 1977 and 2000 it published in the quarterly magazine Birth Gazette. Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. Her second book about birth and midwifery, was released in 2003 by Bantam / Dell. Her books have been translated into several languages, including the German, Italian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Spanish and Japanese.

Since the early 1980s, she is an internationally known speaker on the care of mothers for the Midwives Alliance of North America ( MANA ), and, whether it gives lectures all over the world from midwives, physicians, doulas, expectant parents and health politicians. She spoke in many countries for medical and midwifery schools, the Starwood Festival and before the Winter Star Symposium to discuss the history and importance of midwifery.

She founded the Safe Motherhood Quilt Project, a national movement to raise public awareness of the current maternal mortality rate carefully and to remember the women who have died in the last twenty years as a result of pregnancy.

Gaskin appears in several films, for example in Ricki Lakes Orgasmic Birth ( 2009) and The Business of Being Born ( 2008). Also in With Women: A Documentary About Women, Midwives and Birth ( 2006) is to see them.

The maneuver by Gaskin

The maneuver by Gaskin, also called all fours, was introduced in 1976 by ​​Gaskin in modern obstetrics. She had learned the position of a Belizean woman who had in turn learned this position in Guatemala, where it was originally created. Gaskin is thus the first midwife, according to the obstetric position was named. In this position, the mother helps a shoulder dystocia itself by going down on all fours, so that the shoulder can be solved. By changing the position to the position of the pelvis, which the wedged shoulder allows to solve itself, so that the baby can be born will change. Since the introduction of this position, there was a significant development away from the lithotomy position during labor. If the parturient received an epidural anesthesia (PDA), the quadruped is more difficult to perform.

Tributes

Ina May Gaskin has lectured and lectured on midwifery conferences and at medical schools around the world. On 14 June 2008, she led a workshop A Guide to Natural Childbirth at the New York Open Center in Manhattan. She was 1996-2002 President of the Midwives ' Alliance of North America. She received the ASPO / Lamaze Irwin Chabon Award ( 1997) and the Tennessee Perinatal Association Recognition Award. Also in 1997 she was a visiting Fellow at Morse College at Yale University.

On 24 November 2009 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Thames Valley University in London.

On 29 September 2011 the jury of the Right Livelihood Awards announced that she was awarded along with Jacqueline Moudeina and the organization GRAIN the "Alternative Nobel Prize ". The jury evaluating Gaskins so that they teach birth methods, and spreading that put women at the center and promote the physical and mental health of mother and child, she clubs scientific analysis with extensive experience in the practice of natural medicine and is the pioneer become the midwifery education and " thereby preserving a unique knowledge that was in a world dominated technically births largely forgotten ." The award was accepted Gaskin on December 5, 2011 in Stockholm contrary.

Quote

Bibliography

Books (select English and German )

Article

• A Summary of Articles Published in English about Misoprostol ( Cytotec ) for Cervical Ripening or Induction of Labor. 5 September 2005, accessed on 19 November 2009.
• Gaskin Maneuver Is Gaining Popularity. OB / GYN News, 1999, accessed on June 24, 2009.

Movies

• 2006: With Women: A Documentary About Women, Midwives and Birth
• 2008: The Business of Being Born
• 2009: Orgasmic Birth