Spirit in Action

Birth and Midwifery with Ina May Gaskin, author of Spiritual Midwifery

Ina May Gaskin is an internationally recognized leader in advocating for Spiritual Midwifery. She is also an author, activist and advocate whose spiritual insights and empowerment have been part of the incredible exploration which is The Farm, the spiritual-based intentional community in Tennessee, founded in the early 1970's.

Broadcast on:: 20 May 2007
Audio Format:: other

I have no hands but yours to tempt my sheep No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep I have no arms but yours with which to hold The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old I have no hands but yours with which to see To let my children know that I am out and out is everything I have no way to feed the hungry souls No clothes to give and make, the ragged and the morn So be my heart, my hand, my tongue Through you I will be done The enders have I none to help and die The tangled nuts and twisted chains that strangle fearful minds Welcome to Spirit in Action, my name is Mark Helpsmeade. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands Being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life I have no way to open, people's eyes, except that you will show them how to trust the inner mind My guest today on Spirit in Action is Aina Mae Gaskin. Aina Mae has been an internationally recognized leader in advocating for spiritual midwifery since the early 1970s Spiritual midwifery is the title of her first book, initially published in 1976, now in its fourth edition Aina Mae is an author, activist and advocate whose spiritual insights and empowerment have been part of the incredible exploration, which is The Farm, the spiritually based intentional community in Tennessee, founded in the early 1970s Her newest book, Guide to Childbirth, published in 2003, continues Aina Mae's quest to educate and raise awareness, empowering women to choose the birthing that will give them the deepest health, connection and well-being She joins us today from Summertown, Tennessee Welcome Aina Mae to Spirit in Action Thank you, it's good to be here Why did you spend the winter or the summer in South Australia? Ah yes, well there was the 24th, I think it was annual Home Birth Australia Conference So I've been checking in really, you know, visiting every now and then to Australia, their Home Birth movement was pretty much coincidental with ours here And having the chance to travel a lot, a year or two or three after the first publication of Spiritual Midwifery gave me a unique opportunity to see how people give birth in different countries, how different the ideas are about what a midwife is or who could be at a birth or could they even happen at home safely You've been doing midwifery for a long time, 35 plus years, how did you get into it and why? My university training was in English, I got a master's degree and had my first baby during the year I was getting that degree Learned by the experience I had giving birth to her or her being delivered by forceps, not my idea, nor was it necessary, I certainly know that now But coming to understand that birth had been changed from being considered something that women do to something that could only be safe in retrospect and safe if attended by a surgeon ready to do abdominal surgery at the drop of a hat Now that wasn't quite true when I gave birth because that was mid 60s, the C section rate was less than 5% then but what they did instead was forceps And you couldn't be an English major and not know that forceps come from is pretty nasty and you couldn't be a curious kid and not know forceps were not something nice So when I went to a physician for whom it was obligatory and I knew this was crazy, but I still lacked the stuff to bow out and get a different one I thought I could change it, which is where I was very wrong but that's what it took to relieve me of my naive take in relation to how childless policies put together because it has nothing to do with pleasing individual women And I thought actually the core of my philosophy is that that's exactly what you need to do I knew that if you treated the mother well she could do better And so after I left the place where I'd given birth to the first child and heard about people giving birth at home attended by a person with nurses training whose arm they had twisted to stay there and watch and make sure everything was going well These people started giving birth at home under these conditions and their reports of their experiences was entirely different And I was speaking to people who were euphoric, strengthened, changed forever by the experience And I thought now I know what I want to do so that's really helped the path occurred to me this one I'd like to take And then when my husband Stephen, who had been holding a class in San Francisco called Monday Night Class since 1966, which adjourned for a speaking tour in 1970 at a time when 1500 people per week were attending and taking part in this conversation The speaking tour covered 42 different speaking places, universities, churches sometimes, babies started being born because 300 people came with us and some of them were pregnant And so that was my unusual entry into midwifery and I think the amazing thing is that with a little help from some kind-hearted and wise an obstetrician in Rhode Island And a family practice doctor near where we settled in Tennessee, these two doctors got us started with some timely help that we needed occasionally or just to get equipped with the right tools that a midwife would need to be able to help women give birth safely To give prenatal care and a little bit of direction at the beginning and we were able to have success and birth, safe births in one account of the C-section rate for, let's say, the first 400 births, it was less than half a percent The interesting thing about that is that nobody knows that's possible unless they've had a similar experience Your English degree didn't come in particularly helpful in this process, did it? Well, I think it did, but maybe not in the way that one might have expected, English degree teaches critical thinking So you certainly, you quickly learn that just because something's written down on a page doesn't mean it's true Or that there might not be some more important truth lying under what appears to be said in the words You can also learn that words have a lot of power and some of the words we speak can matter a great deal at certain times So I think there's a training that you get there where you know that words have effects on people And certain words certainly you might choose above others if you're in the presence of somebody's giving birth for instance So yeah, in a odd way I think it was very good and I would recommend more of that in the training of people who deal with the human body You know, the human mind body, I don't really like to separate that much Because we're taught that our brains are separate from our bodies, our brains are superior bodies And that's kind of badly designed to have to get fat What's it matter, why I take care of it? It's probably messed up anyway So the assumption that a great deal of medical care and a great deal of pharmaceutical products will be required to get through this life I mean these aren't ideas that people have had very long And of course we did without all these things, perhaps that's why we did so well We weren't taking the latest you know over the counter drug or very few people were taking prescription drugs People weren't watching television so they didn't hear a lot of scary report about birth Because we just landed here, put all of our money into land and didn't have cash or credit cards We lived very simply and that meant we talked to each other a lot So when one person had a baby, everybody heard about it quickly And if she had a wonderful time, which fortunately happened in some of those early births Things that we didn't know could happen did You want to hear about one of those? You bet Okay, getting ready for the caravan This was then SAGA turned out to be about half a year traveling around the country With lectures going on you know at Northwestern University and University of Minnesota And Princeton and all kinds of things like that Of course they had all of our living gear with us There was a bed in each school bus that was converted so we were nomadic This couple, one of them was working on the buses, the husband, they were expected the first baby And she was cooking in another site a few miles away from San Francisco He started to feel very ill and began to wonder if he had appendicitis Hiked on homes in quite a few miles Lay in bed wondering if he's going to die Toward the end of the day she drove home Found him there, miserable, massaged him He underwent a pretty miraculous improvement to the point where they were both ready to eat and head a meal And then she started feeling not so good Went in and sat on the toilet and very soon was calling him saying Everything's coming out and he got there in time to catch the baby before he hit the water Now that's not the usual birth story that one hears It happened to somebody that we knew and we knew she didn't embroider it She didn't exaggerate it, it was real, it happened to her There's a word for this, a French word called cuvad And I had heard of this because I used to read encyclopedias for fun sometimes When I was a strange kid But here was an example of it Transferred pain, male feels pain instead of woman She gives birth, didn't know she was in labor Very much like an animal Well, then it gets you thinking Why would the rest of us have such a hard time If one person didn't do that and you know them, they're real Well, I had read something when I was 16 Grandly Dick Reed wrote a book called Childbirth Without Fear He was a British doctor and he saw a couple of painless births after having seen probably hundreds of very painful ones And he was struck the same way What's the difference? How does this happen? We found our way to that just by knowing it was a possibility Our group of people, once we decided to share with each other, trust each other And be close in talking to each other about relationships We settled here in the woods, little money But with an eye to having a good relationship with our neighbors So that they would become helpful to us as they did But then we wanted to live our own way, that we did have home births But we wanted a good relationship with the people at the hospital We had people who actually worked at the hospital instead of, you know, service in Vietnam If you were a conscientious subject or do your time being a hospital age or something of a client So we had people who did that and again, you know, it just reinforced this idea that Sweetness and love and tenderness actually makes for fewer complications And when people get hurt through a process of having a baby Which really should be called baby separation rituals or something This is not giving birth Giving birth certainly has the idea of the activity and the agency of the mother So much of the medical model of care and how it's been developed in this country Has ended up being all the things that we do to the mother And then we spend loads of money justifying why we do these things But they often separate the baby from the mother in ways that it's difficult to get the two back together So that they do have that first relationship that humans are supposed to have Is that intimate connection with the mother? That's what Mother Nature has designed, you could say, created to this And if we fail to have that first relationship take place My sense is, and my experience is that the human and beyond human consequences can't be counted But they're enormous A child arrived just the other day He came to the world in the usual way But there were planes to catch and bills to pay He learned to walk while I was away And he was talking for I knew it and as he grew I'm going to be like you, dad You know I'm going to be like you And the cats in the cradle and the shoes move A little more to the man alone When you're coming home that I don't know when But we'll get together then You know we'll have a good time then [Music] My son turned ten just the other day He said thanks for the ball that the ball let's break And you teach me the throw I said a nod today I got a lot to do, he said that's okay And that he walked away but he smiled every time he said I'm going to be like you Yeah, you know I'm going to be like you And the cats in the cradle and the shoes move A little more to the man alone When you're coming home that I don't know when But we'll get together then You know we'll have a good time then [Music] Well, it came from college just the other day So much like a man I just had to say Son, I'm proud of you Yet you sit for a while, you shook his head And they said with a smile What I'd really like dad is the bar of the car keys See you later, can I have them please And the cats in the cradle and the shoes move A little more to the man alone When you're coming home son, I don't know when But we'll get together then You know we'll have a good time then [Music] I've long since you tired my songs moved away I called him up just the other day I said I'd like to see you if you don't mind He said I'd love to dad if I can find the time You see my new job's a hassle and the kids are the flue But it's your nice talkin' to you dad It's mature nice talkin' to you And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me He'd grown up just like me My boy was just like me And the cats in the cradle and the shoes move A little more to the man alone When you're coming home son, I don't know when But we'll get together then We're gonna have a good time then [Music] Why do you think it is that women in the U.S. are so afraid of home birth? I think that we're afraid of home birth Simply because we are the first huge area in the world To completely eliminate an age of profession that's been with us Maybe for 30-40,000 years We've had humans for 40,000 years My sense is that mid-wife-free women helping women Was something that probably happened very soon When we start having humans Other species are pretty happy to get birth helping themselves When did it as a practice start tailing off? Well, it was actually made illegal The first state which actually made mid-wife-free illegal Was Massachusetts And that happened around 1910, not 2011 And that was right around the time when physicians were organizing To the point where they really wanted to monopoly So I think there was a combination of urban life And the culture that starts I think it was that we didn't have professional medical societies That said what it was and was not medical These professional societies existed in countries of comparable wealth And industrial development And they would've kept medicine separate from mid-wifery Midwifery in Europe is very important And it's always helped by It's assumed that most babies will be born into the hands of the midwife All of these countries have them And in most countries when that moved toward hospitalization Came about midwives went with them And this meant less intervention of birth In Europe as compared with the United States That was one of the big surprises for me when I first began visiting Europe in late 70s early 80s Do they do a lot of home birth in Europe? There's one country where the percentage of home birth has never been as low as it is In all the other wealthy countries and that country is the Netherlands They still have more than a third of Dutch babies are born at home In the presence of a midwife More than that would start out with the labor at home And maybe for one reason or another it would be a transfer onto a hospital The government actually promotes this as safe and wise choice And Dutch statistics, outcomes for mothers and babies health are among the very best in the world So I think that effectively punctures that myth that there's something wrong with women's bodies I think that our minds are confused and there are some other interests That have more influence on how childbirth policy is made than probably should have I think the best way for it to be designed should come out of what women find true themselves What you need now is a lot of information to even know how your body works Women are taught to think that they got it done And it just probably won't work so why don't you just go ahead and get the surgery on a day when you schedule it Rather than the day that that would happen on its own Can you tell me a little bit about statistics? You've got a wealth of experience, more than a couple thousand babies born through the farm What kind of incidents do you have of things like home birth, of people who have to go to the hospital Who have to have cesarean sections, episiotomies, how much maternal death, all those kinds of outcomes Okay well just no maternal death, use that for starters Everybody that wanted to join the community was allowed to no matter their health condition How many cesarean sisters it had or how big their hips looked Her difference between their height and that of their partner None of those things were imposed on people We did have healthy lifestyles, nobody smoked cigarettes And people were vegan, full vegetarian but supplementing vitamin B12 Everybody got a lot of exercise that was pretty much mandatory because you didn't have your own car You didn't even have your own bicycles, there was a lot of walking going on Above all, we had very little fear Perhaps almost no fear about birth They could look around them and they could see all that baby's born, that one, that one, that one They know everybody's stories and they could see for themselves it was safe This adds to a feeling of safety when you get birth We also learned important things like birth can go backwards when a mother's afraid This can create a belief in people who deserve this happening in the hospital That there's something wrong with the woman's body when actually she doesn't have enough privacy and her body can't open Now we all know these things happen when, you know, when we're defecating Everybody knows it works that way, well, it works the same way with a woman having a baby Think about it, it's even bigger I call that stinker law, by the way When you create an atmosphere in which a woman can labor well And this will be an atmosphere, free of fear Hopefully with some laughter going on because that's the best anesthesia Then you actually find that women can give birth and they're not needing to have anesthesia Every time you add a drug or you put a mother in a position she would not seek on her own You're slowing down the birth, you're messing with the birth in some way Or you're creating a situation where something could go wrong that's going to require another intervention Then something can go wrong with that and then you end up with major surgery for something that shouldn't happen that way All of that's reflected in our statistics And so county from the first birth I ever saw was took place in a parking lot at Northwestern University in November 1970 And then I began recruiting certain of my friends to be mid-wise Because I was still having babies too, I needed help, there were a lot of us and I knew we were going to be busy So we taught each other, we learned, and it took 186 babies' birth before we encountered a labor where we actually needed a necessary section This is a very low C-section rate, it destroys the myth that a lot of people have a body that just can't do it What's that compared to the standard in the United States or in Europe? The C-section rate rose quickly from the mid-70s, it began to 70s at 5% And then before you knew it, it was up to 15% and then 20% and then 25% Then it began to go down, there was a lot of pressure to do this And we actually lowered the C-section rate from around 25 to 26% down to about 20% So what would you say the statistics are? Europe, US, the farm? The United States latest was over 29% C-sections, that was for 2003 There are certainly plenty of physicians who are saying really that close to 100% would be acceptable to them And there are others who think that that is crazy But there's a lot to suggest, in fact we know very well, that the chance of maternal death raises by 3-4 times when you compare the cesarean with a vaginal birth The cesarean rate in, for instance, in the Netherlands is around 12-13% The World Health Organization suggests, in fact, makes a recommendation that it be below 15% And that when the cesarean rate gets over 15% that you actually find it causing more problems for the women and for the babies I can't tell you how many times I have been told by a physician that, up to a certain point in their life, deep into their professional career, they have never seen a normal birth Well, if you haven't seen a normal birth, you don't know how the body works And you don't know that it works better when you respect how it works I'm sure this is why we were successful at this profession, we just plunged in and learned by doing We've even had such good statistics, and I was often asked to speak in medical schools and people went, "Oh, wow, I didn't even know that was possible" Looking at videos that we had shot here of people giving birth Instead of seeing a woman screaming in fear, they'd watch a woman turn her partner's head to her and kiss him on the mouth while having a contraction and you'll have both sexual moans and we'll go, "Oh, you mean that could be part of labor" What did you say the statistics have been for Caesarean's section at the farm? Oh, I don't think I said that, less than 2% It started out less than half a percent, and then as we began taking in women who, some of them were in pretty distressed circumstances Our Caesarean rate actually tripled, but that only put it at 1.5% And again, that's under what most medical people are taught is humanly possible Let's talk about something that's considerably less pleasant and that is maternal death and maybe baby death, loss of the child and loss of the mother What is your experience with that at the farm and what is it like in our American society? I know that a lot of people think that the U.S. has the best health care in the world But I think our statistics don't generally bear that out Well, that's really true when it comes to death of a mother in pregnancy or birth or just after, from causes directly related to the fact that she was pregnant with the care she received during that At least 30 countries do better than we do So that should be sobering right there And then no other country has to admit that it's as far off in the estimation of how many die prey here The epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control say we could easily have three times that many dying and not know it Why is that? Because it's all on our system and this reporting doesn't have to happen There's no penalty for not reporting Now I think most hospitals report that people died But what happens is they get misclassified and it never goes into the way to get retrieved as a woman who died because of her pregnancy It's just woman died, loss of blood, something like that, not connected with pregnancy But when they sort out these statistics it has to be coded in there right and I think that's what the CDC is saying That they probably only get it right a third of the time What kind of statistics are we talking about in the U.S., Europe, or in the farm? Well, in the farm there has been no maternal mortality Both infant and maternal death rates have been going up in the United States over the last several years In relation to newborn deaths and for more than 20 years with respect to women And it's not because we're reporting better, that's not the reason We should report well, that's what we have to start with We have to be honest with ourselves, we have to require honesty That's the reason for the safe motherhood quilt I'm showing people that these were loved women These were women who were maybe 17 years old, maybe 30 years old, maybe 32 years old They were families that loved them, they were healthy They didn't know this could happen Very few of these were deaths that could not have been prevented Some had the mistakes that can happen after cesarean and diabetes Because the mistake wasn't corrected or couldn't be corrected Some were induction mistakes and they died suddenly from taking this drug side attack Because they were afraid to call against the doctor saying you can't go past up 40 weeks of pregnancy Or we have to give you this pill Well, women have been going past 48 and 41 weeks of pregnancy for centuries You mentioned the Safe Motherhood Quilt Project, but I don't think you said what it was Okay, the Safe Motherhood Quilt Project really is inspired by the AIDS Quilt And because we don't do accurate counting and maternal deaths We have too high a rate in the United States It's not sufficient to have an honor system For this you really need accurate and real information that could be audited And it needs to happen in every one of the 50 states And it needs to be the same standard in every state Only by looking at all the maternal deaths, identifying every one of those that happens And then by studying what happens And there is a system that's a precedent for this that's used in the UK, the United Kingdom Of every time there's a maternal death, a multidisciplinary team You know, that would be, you know, in life, obstetrician, epidemiologist, perhaps Pediatrician, perhaps, traveling to the site of the death Normally this would be a hospital and it would go through all the records They would see what there is to be learned about this death Could it tell us anything about how to prevent another such unnecessary death from taking place? So this would happen, you would have a full report, recommendations would be made Their feedback would be given, not punishment, feedback That's what happens in the United Kingdom in the UK And for that reason, they've had a steady decline of maternal death We don't have anything like that And unlike the UK where they're lowering their maternal death rate Over the same period of time, ours is being leveled out and then started going up What got me really was when a couple applied to have a baby here And both of them were obstetricians that were about to finish up their residency And I was pretty amazed that they would even ask us And then when I found out they were doing it because they were afraid to get birth where they were learning You can imagine how I felt Wow, that's really voting with your feet Yes, so they did manage to have their baby just fine And they said over and over they couldn't have done it where they worked But what I've collected is, and this is very hard information to get Because anybody who works at a hospital who gives me the name of a woman who's died since 1982 And that's the parameter for the quilt I want the name and the date of death and the age of the woman And where she lived of any woman who died since 1982 in the United States For reasons directly related with her pregnancy I want her name so that I can commemorate her in this quilt Which now is made up of five different panels of women's names, 20 names to a panel And it stretches out 15 feet long by a yard high, each panel And then there's one that's more 81 inches by 81 inches Each of these women has a piece made perhaps by a sister, a friend, several friends One case, the obstetrician who couldn't save the woman's life made the piece And sometimes I volunteer and they're very beautiful The first panel was displayed at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta I think that women will want to, I mean even though this is a depressing topic It's also the kind that makes you perk up your ears and go "Oh, why wasn't I told that before?" This has got to be one of the best kept secrets in our society right now And it has profound implications I think, or women's health care What I'm trying to do is get congressional attention So that we could have legislation that would provide for a system like that in the UK So the message is we shouldn't be having all these orphans No more than three women per hundred thousand should be dying It shouldn't be a big risk to have a baby, and I'm sorry to say right now in my country It's getting to be a bigger risk We're going the wrong direction That's what I want to do something about And if this quilt gets the kind of attention that I think it should And if I could potentially get every name in since 1982 of every woman that died According to the estimates, we're talking about more than 20,000 women You're putting together another quilt, aren't you? That's right, the other quilt is just so that all the work isn't sad There's a joy associated with birth The women that have given birth here are kind of a special sisterhood Because they know that the fact that they gave birth here made it easier for them That others were doing it, that there was something to be shared In terms of knowledge, in terms of realizing the strength that women have Is not one that's best expressed individually Yes, you can have strong individuals There's another kind of woman's strength that's best accessed and best expressed when it's shared And I have to say motherhood's one of these things About the quilt project for the farm babies You're trying to contact everybody who's had a baby there? Or who knows somebody who was born there And come to my website, I'll have that part up there soon That's why I'm going to go on to my website That's quite a crowd, you should have a reunion of them all Well, I think we will, because what's happening now We're having these quilting circles that are taking place all over the country And, you know, some people aren't even in the country, they're sitting in Germany With their needlework and, you know, sometimes they're sitting down together And the stories are going again And that means the next generation gets to hear them And that's how you build a culture of birth Nature being no fool, you know, gives us arms So that we can hold those babies And the breasts are supposed to work But we have, again, we come to a point in this history of industrialization Where we have a large and rather imposing kind of culture that insists that these things should be discontinued That it's really a lot better if we mechanize this whole process Than we inject as much technology as we can into this process And pretty soon you can get it to where women don't even know Bresses what their breasts might be for Or if they do know, they accuse women who use them for that purpose Of being exhibitionists and people who need to be corrected Not allowed to feed the baby in a way that wouldn't also feed some large corporation Have you found a correlation between attitudes on sex And how well birthing and raising of children goes? Well, you know, I haven't ever sort of surveyed people on that subject But I did put out a survey asking women if they ever had an orgasm during labor and birth And I got some attitudes back on that because clearly a lot of people never heard of it And I suspect that would be true if you're listeners And they would say, "Well, no, I didn't, who did?" And I knew a few people would say yes What I wasn't prepared for was that more than a fifth of 151 women said yes So that's a big one that doesn't get talked about I suppose that doesn't happen when you're under anesthesia I'm sure you're right about that About three years ago helped a young woman who's from Brazil and she was working as a doula labor assistant And a translator became pregnant and she wanted to have the baby at home And she went on with the pregnancy very nicely and even though she was to have a large baby I was sure she could do it But what surprised me when I got there was that I had showed her a videotape of belly dancing This prenatal preparation that is done in parts of North Africa and Middle East And when I got there she was playing Brazilian music as you know there's a lot of hip shaking going on And samba, another Brazilian dentist that you might see at Carnival So anyway she was leaning on a long staff putting a lot of pressure on that downward pressure with her hands and arms Doing figure-its with her hips and not having any pain Quite striking how little pain she had She went all the way through the birth of a near ten pound baby and had fun And proved to me that dancing is very important and it was probably done much more by people in preceding times When they weren't so confused or inhibited by structures imposed by a larger culture that wasn't so sensitive to the needs of women I'm sure that a more woman friendly culture in these have existed included a lot of wild pelvic gyration that became socially And what should I say, theologically restricted? Who knows how long ago it happened that Europeans were made to dance with straight spines and never deviate from these really rather unnatural postures But this leaves deep imprints on women of these cultures and these women won't get birth as easily as they might have if they were less inhibited Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Somebody Is there a different culture present at the farm or is sex looked at differently? Is the body the body mind as you mentioned? Are they looked at differently there? Well, I suppose to some degree we talked about it from the early days. We certainly learned that kissing and cuddling in labor can release hormones that dampen pain. They can also release hormones that hasten labor. So both of these would be good. Love-making can induce labor when a woman is at term and the baby is ready to come. To have a culture in which it would be forbidden to me seems rather nutty. I think you're used to being a maverick in the world. You've probably had a few decades of crusade here trying to bring the system around to something more sane. Have you encountered a lot of resistance? Do you still encounter a lot of resistance as you preach your kind of revised gospel of handing it over to the hospitals? You don't get resistant to get ignored basically. When spiritual midwifery was first published a lot of the country was interested in getting closer to nature. And there were very few books about childbirth and spiritual midwifery was kind of this exuberant and explosive all these wonderful stories of babies being born and people looking pretty happy and healthy as they were doing it and then some information in the back about how it was all done and everything. Nowadays you have tons of books out there but what the information tends to and many to reinforce the idea that it's kind of a, the card you're dealt more or less and you just don't know what kind of a body you get and like it's not you're going to be unlucky and you get one of the bodies that doesn't work so well. And then eventually you have to have a cesarean and then it was a good thing that doctor was there your baby would have died and people make the assumption that their body would perform the same way in any setting and that's not the case. That's why I talk about what I call sphincter law to illustrate what I mean. Sphincters by the way are the group of circular muscles around the bladder of the anus. And also we have the cervix and you can't just command them to open the louder somebody would shout in fact and less likely it would be to open. I think we all know that but we don't put it together that this is also the case with the cervix. The opening to the uterus is supposed to open itself regularly and rather quickly no matter what is done with the mother. No matter what position she might be in or how she might be feeling or how she's treated and what kind of fears or lack of fear she carries around with her. In reality all these things matter these are huge huge factors and completely concovering what happens. I learned that in the first 10 births we had a woman whose cervix refused to open and stayed three quarters of the way open. Baby's still in good condition having hard contractions and getting nowhere until a friend came by and let it be known that this mother had grown up thinking that her mother her biological mother had died in childbirth. And that had been the reason for adoption and when this was said aloud it released her from the power of that fear and then the cervix that wouldn't dilate suddenly opened all the way. It was impossible to believe that that was any kind of a coincidence of course that was caused in effect and the saying of that truth and the opening of her cervix. So that's pretty exciting to get to work with that and I don't get attacked. When I go into medical circles I get treated like a wonderfully strange I guess creature from a different culture. The younger they are the more eager they usually are to take in this information and the older they are little less palatable I think. You're an advocate of spiritual midwifery. What is that compared to non-spiritual midwifery? Well the essence of it is what I was talking about a little bit earlier when I was mentioning that mother's feelings actually do matter. That hard time can be so much easier if there's kindness. And so I actually think it comes down to we need to be kind to mothers so mothers can be kind to their babies so these babies can grow up to be humans that know how to be kind. My observation is that when we don't do that too often these babies grow up to be people who literally don't know how to love others, don't know how to treat others. And they're the ones that threaten to tear the world apart. Wonderful baby living on love the Sandman says maybe he'll take you above up where the girls fly on ribbons and bones where babies float by just counting their toes. Wonderful baby nothing but new the world has gone crazy I'm glad I'm not you. At the beginning or is it the end it goes in and comes out and starts over again. Oh you wonderful baby living on love the Sandman says maybe he'll take you above up where the girls fly on ribbons and bones where babies float by just counting their toes. Wonderful baby I watch while you grow if I knew the future you'd be first to know but I don't know nothing or what life's about just as long as you live you never find out. Wonderful baby nothing to fear love whom you will but doubt what you hear they'll whisper sweet things and make you untrue so be good to yourself. That's all you can do your wonderful baby living on love the Sandman says maybe he'll take you above up where the girls fly on ribbons and bones where babies float by just counting their toes. I want to ask you some more about the roots of your spirituality what are your views or your beliefs about the soul and about things like the sacredness of life. We proceed from a realization that we're actually one that what hurt you may hurt be I'm not saying that you don't ever have situations where you might have to defend yourself obviously you do but in general that if things are handled from a standpoint realizing or essential oneness you don't have such horrible conflicts erupting that they can't be solved short of violence war certainly I think it's possible for humans to outgrow war I wish we get on with it but I think there's a lot that makes that difficult and some of what makes it difficult I think is the way we are born because I think a lot of times it's hard for somebody who's felt fear and cruelty from the time they were born and separation from the mother and where that yearning to be reunited with the mother was denied literally the baby's nervous system doesn't form in the same way and baby doesn't get such a high development of the part of the brain that makes it possible for that child to behave in a social manner and not to lash out at others is midwifery something that men can do too? Yes but it doesn't mean any man can do it I think that there are certain men that can be good and sensitive midwives of course there are some you know they might do things a little differently than women might because of the gender difference but there's no gender that has a monopoly on sensitivity and that's really what we're talking about this needed the ability to observe a woman in labor and not to make her feel watched or dominated in any sort of way just to be there in a supportive way so your website is iNMA.com can you spell that? iNMA.com and there you can find information about the induction drug side attack you can find information about farm statistics about ways to give birth that are maybe out of the ordinary but very affected and can quell or make pain manageable and you can find out about both quilt projects the Safe Motherhood Quilt Project its goals and purposes and the background and the same with the Farm Quilt Project those babies who were born who landed into the hands of a farm midwife since 1970 up to the present day and so we want to have contact with everybody that we can and if there's a family member that wants to make the piece that's what we'd like to know and if anybody wants to volunteer to make pieces for the project that's welcome to and so are donations. Could you give me a brief snapshot you know particularly for our listeners of what the farm is like today versus what it was like before I mean it was an immense kind of alternative community a commune back in the 1970s. In the early 1980s I think it was that it ceased to function as a commune what is it like there today is there still this motherhood midwifery community is that still going on there. Oh yes the midwifery sector I guess never really made that much of a change although we did have to begin charging for our services in the early 80s when we changed our economic organization from everybody throwing everything they had into this central treasury and then doing our spending it from that standpoint to a point where we still own all the land and the buildings that's collective but in other ways we have separate incomes and we then pay and monthly dues for the water system to maintain certain community services and so on. Now we started out at about 300 people we swelled during the 70s and early 80s to about 1300 people including visitors and people waiting to have babies. Then we went back to about 200, 250 people we're around that number now although we still do get visitors and we have midwives or people learning to be doulas we have some workshops that can be and there are links on my website that cannot take you any listeners who are interested in these to our information about how to take part of these things. So yes we never stopped being midwives and having this I guess you could say sisterhood of midwives I mean what's unusual I suppose about us is that we've worked together all of us for more than 30 years and we've actually attended each other's births and we created this system that really worked very well from us right from the beginning and we haven't changed that much but we have encoded a lot of what we know and we found that as the years have gone by this what is being called authentic midwifery is held in high value in countries where this sort of thing has been lost and my books are used in the curricula of midwifery courses and our statistics and outcomes are respected and seen as a benchmark for what is possible for instance I was able to lecture in a city near Vienna Austria three years ago where the chairman of the OBGYN department hoping to create an atmosphere in which their physicians would maintain the skills they have and not succumb to the increasing use of unnecessary technology to sort of favor business interest at the expense of the welfare of the mother and baby he cancels all the elective surgery that day so that all the department would listen to me for about five hours now when that day comes in the US maybe we can make some changes well you've done a lot of work over the last few decades and it sounds like you're setting yourself an agenda for a few more decades of work well it could happen that way if I'm so lucky I mean I'll work long as I can but I certainly have more books to write and I've been able to learn things I'm still learning things I'm sure that sustainable life is going to require a relearning and re-establishment of a midwifery profession that is held in high regard by the medical profession we have to keep holding that vision in mind well I'll just say you go girl thank you thank you so much for your witness and your teaching of so many people over the years okay well I appreciate it we all live in this big old house eight adults six kids and one pet mount two dogs three cats and a parakeet got a great big garden and we never eat meat the rooms upstairs and down the hall it's the one with the crayons all over the wall three other kids share the room with me with just one big crazy family I got five moms and three dads may sound strange but it ain't so bad if you get tired of one you can go find another it's a whole lot better than one dad and mother I suppose someday when I'm all grown up they could survey to see if I'm screwed up asking all of us hippie kids well we think of what our parents did I'll have to ask which parents they mean I got a whole lot more than those kids I've seen and if we haven't solved all the problems yet at least you've come up with a whole new set because I've got five moms and three dads may sound strange but it ain't so bad if you get tired of one you can go find another it's a whole lot better than one dad and mother so come on by and visit us we're the house with the black VW bus there's a swing out front and a beat up car a beer sign from some western bar Sunday is our potluck night whatever you can bring it'll be alright they'll be games and songs and fun jokes I'll introduce you to all my folks 'cause I've got five moms and three dads may sound strange but it ain't so bad if you get tired of one you can go find another it's a whole lot better than one dad and mother You've been listening to an interview with Iname Gaskin internationally recognized leader in Midwifery music featured on this program has included Cats in the Cradle by Harry Chapin, Samba De Janeiro by Bellini, Wonderful Baby by Don McLean and Five Moms and Three Dads by Tom Hunter you can hear this program again via my website northernspiritradio.org and you can find other useful links and information on that website as well The theme music for spirit in action is "I Have No Hands but Yours" by Carol Johnson thank you for listening I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit you can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net may you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light this is spirit in action ♪ I have no higher call for you than this to love and serve your neighbor enjoy and selflessness to love and serve your neighbor enjoy and selflessness ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING]