Ebook: Birth Matters: How What We Don't Know About Nature, Bodies, and Surgery Can Hurt Us

The importance of birth and birth stories -- Second-wave feminism, birth, and motherhood -- Birth story: Charlotte at the farm -- Sexuality and birth -- A brief look at the history of midwives and medical men -- Birth story: Chloe at the farm -- Technology and empowerment -- Birth story: Teresa at home -- Gathering the power of sisterhood -- What's a father-to-be to do? -- Birth story: Keri at the farm -- My vision for the future -- Birth story: Michaela at the Northern New Mexico Birth Center -- The kind of obstetrics I miss, and its great defenders -- Appendices : A. The mother-friendly childbirth initiative ; B. List of resources pertinent to the midwifery model of care ; C. Further reading/films ; D. The Farm Midwifery Center: preliminary report of 2,844 pregnancies, 1970-2010.;Renowned for her practice's exemplary results and low intervention rates, Ina May Gaskin has gained international notoriety for promoting natural birth. She is a much-beloved leader of a movement that seeks to stop the hyper-medicalization of birth'which has lead to nearly a third of hospital births in America to be cesarean sections'and renew confidence in a woman's natural ability to birth. Upbeat and informative, Gaskin asserts that the way in which women become mothers is a women's rights issue, and it is perhaps the act that most powerfully exhibits what it is to be instinctually human. Birth Matters is a spirited manifesta showing us how to trust women, value birth, and reconcile modern life with a process as old as our species.