Ina May Gaskin Quotes

There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ they would brag about it. So should we

Remember this, for it is as true and true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

It is important to keep in mind that our bodies must work pretty well, or their wouldn't be so many humans on the planet.

Many of our problems in US maternity care stem from the fact that we leave no room for recognizing when nature is smarter than we are.

The way a culture treats women in birth is a good indicator of how well women and their contributions to society are valued and honored.

Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

If you can't be a hero, you can at least be funny while being a chicken.

Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

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.

The Creator is not a careless mechanic.

Your body is not a lemon!

It would be a mistake, though, to consider care by family doctors or midwives inferior to that offered by obstetricians simply on the grounds that obstetricians need not refer care to a family physician or midwife if no complications develop during a course of labor.

The state of relaxation of the mouth and jaw is directly correlated to the ability of the cervix, the vagina, and the anus to open to full capacity.

Ina May Gaskin is the most important person in maternity care in North America, bar none.

When avoidance of pain becomes the major emphasis of childbirth care, the paradoxical effect is that more women have to deal with pain after their babies are born.

What I love about stories the most is the power they have to teach us of possibilities that might not occur to us without them.

When a child is born, the entire Universe has to shift and make room. Another entity capable of free will, and therefore capable of becoming God, has been born.

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.

There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ, they would brag about it. So should we.

The techno-medical model of maternity care, unlike the midwifery model, is comparatively new on the world scene, having existed for barely two centuries. This male-derived framework for care is a product of the industrial revolution. As anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd has described in detail, underlying the technocratic mode of care of our own time is an assumption that the human body is a machine and that the female body in particular is a machine full of shortcomings and defects. Pregnancy and labor are seen as illnesses, which, in order not to be harmful to mother or baby, must be treated with drugs and medical equipment. Within the techno-medical model of birth, some medical intervention is considered necessary for every birth, and birth is safe only in retrospect.

Step one to preventing PPD is to find time to sleep after giving birth, no matter how euphoric you feel.

I have also known of weight estimates by ultrasound to be off by as much as five pounds.

Why should insurance companies continue to get away with limiting the skills that a health profession has always previously required of its members if they were to be considered fully trained?

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.

I have felt incredible energy and life force through my body, and I have really been reborn a happier, healthier, and more confident person. I have learned I can choose to focus on the darker side or the lighter side of all that is around me. I choose the lighter side and have the discipline to keep it up.

I kept thinking while I was pushing, I’m going to get huge. I’m going to get huge!” she said.

Dear Lord, make us truly grateful for what it is that we are about to receive.

Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic.

Only rarely do doctors in training have the opportunity to sit continuously with laboring women for hours. Most are taught to intervene in the normal process so often and so early that they have never witnessed a normal labor and birth.

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 strangest request I have encountered was that of a first-time mother who—just before pushing—asked her husband for a jar of peanut butter and proceeded to eat two heaping table-spoonfuls. She then washed the peanut butter down with nearly a quart of raspberry leaf tea and pushed her baby out. I was impressed.

Contrary to myth, for instance, intrinsic physical characteristics only rarely interfere with the capacity to give birth. In other words, your pelvis is probably big enough for vaginal birth. Nearly every woman’s is. Mental attitudes and emotions, on the other hand, interfere with the ability to give birth far more than is generally understood.

The problem is that doctors today often assume that something mysterious and unidentified has gone wrong with labor or that the woman's body is somehow "inadequate" - what I call the "woman's body as a lemon" assumption. For a variety of reasons, a lot of women have also come to believe that nature made a serious mistake with their bodies. This belief has become so strong in many that they give in to pharmaceutical or surgical treatments when patience and recognition of the normality and harmlessness of the situation would make for better health for them and their babies and less surgery and technological intervention in birth. Most women need encouragement and companionship more than they need drugs.

All I had to do was trust the fact that I could handle what my body was presenting, and all would be well.

One of the best-kept secrets in North American culture is that birth can be ecstatic and strengthening.

guess the most important thing I figured out was that your attitude and how you approach your birth is of the utmost importance

It is good to regard labor as hard work to be done, work that a long line of female ancestors did in the past that enabled us to be here at all.

Mother's milk is soul food for babies. The babies of the world need a lot more soul food.

We are, indeed, fully prepared to believe that the bearing of children may and ought to become as free from danger and long debility to the civilized woman as it is to the savage. —Thomas Huxley

My midwife partners and I at the The Farm learned by observation and experience that the presence of even one person who is not exquisitely attuned to the mother's feelings can stop some women's labors. All women are sensitive. Some women are extraordinarily so. We learned this truth by observing many labors stop or slow down when someone entered the birth room who was not intimate with the laboring mother's feelings. If that person then left the room, labor usually returned to its former pace or intensity.

The pain of labor and birth has an entirely different message. It says: “Relax your pelvic muscles. Let go. Surrender. Go with the flow. Don’t fight this. It’s bigger than you.” This is far different from the message of “Protect yourself!” or “Run away!” that accompanies injury.

And how are . . . Mummy’s stitches?” This, I was slightly thrown by. I knew my mother had had forty-two stitches after the birth, and that she was washing the stitches every day with warm salty water—she made me go and get the warm salty water—but she hadn’t passed on much more information about her vagina than that. I knew from Spiritual Midwifery (Ina May Gaskin, Book Pub Co., 1977) that postpartum women were often loath to share the details of their births with the virgins of the tribe, so I wasn’t unduly concerned about it. Still, I did have some info, and I was going to share it.

Believe me: if you are told that some experience is going to hurt, it will hurt. Much of pain is in the mind, and when a woman absorbs the idea that the act of giving birth is excruciatingly painful—when she gets this information from her mother, her sisters, her married friends, and her physician—that woman has been mentally prepared to feel great agony.

Midwives provide all the prenatal care healthy women need. The midwifery ideal is to work with each woman and her family to identify her unique physical, social, and emotional needs. In general, midwifery care is associated with fewer episiotomies, fewer instrumental deliveries, fewer epidurals, and fewer cesarean sections. Midwives are trained to identify the relatively small percentage of births in which complications develop and to refer these to obstetricians.

How likely is it that you’ll be present when I give birth? • If not, who will be there instead? • Can I meet all of your partners? • What is your policy on ultrasound? • What forms of pain relief do you recommend? • How many women in your practice give birth without pharmacological pain relief? • What do you think about doulas? • How often am I likely to see you while I’m in labor? • What prenatal tests do you do routinely? • What labor procedures do you do routinely? • What methods do you suggest to alleviate labor pain? • Can my baby’s heart rate be intermittently monitored by the nurses? • Do you perform episiotomies routinely? How often do women in your care give birth without episiotomy?

Can I drink and eat in labor? • If I go into labor, check in to the hospital, and my labor slows down before I get very far, can I go home? • What is your induction rate? What methods do you use? • Can I walk around in labor? • Is there a time limit for labor? How long can I push? • Can I choose the position for giving birth? Can I give birth on my hands and knees if I like that position? • What is your cesarean rate? • This may seem a personal question, but [if female] can I ask if you ever gave birth vaginally? • This may seem a personal question, but [if male and a father] can I ask if any of your children were born vaginally? • What is your forceps and vacuum-extraction rate? • Will you cut the umbilical cord after it quits pulsating? • Can you put my baby on my chest (skin-to-skin contact) after birth?

This means that most of the births they have seen were to women on epidurals lying still during labor, waiting for it all to be over. Seeing this kind of birth over and over again causes a subconscious imprint on the mind, and many women develop enough fear of the pains of childbirth that they block the messages their bodies give them about other positions they might take in labor. Others may simply fear diverging from the norm. A woman in the first stage of labor may find it beneficial to try several upright positions: standing, perhaps leaning on a counter or tray table; slow dancing with her partner; sitting while leaning forward or propped up with pillows; squatting; or sitting in a rocking chair. Sometimes one position suffices, but laboring women usually like to change from one position to another as labor progresses. One of the most effective labors I ever witnessed was that of a first-time mother giving birth to a very large baby. She moved through the first part of labor very efficiently by belly-dancing while putting as much of her weight as possible on a long staff she was holding to steady herself. She then pushed her baby out while leaning on the bed in a kneeling position. A woman’s position during labor and birth may affect her ability to breastfeed in a couple of ways. Dr. Roberto Caldeyro-Barcia, an Uruguayan obstetrician, was one of the first to scientifically investigate the effects of maternal position on labor. In 1979 he published a study now regarded as a classic, which demonstrated that mothers in a “vertical” position had thirty-six percent shorter opening stages of labor than “horizontal” women; the “vertical” women also reported less pain than the “horizontals.” Walking helped labor progress as well, because it brought the pressure of the baby’s head against the cervix, helping it to thin and open. And the “vertical” mothers’ babies’ heads were less apt to be extremely molded just after birth, indicating a somewhat smoother passage through the mother’s birth canal. Equally important, the babies of women who gave birth in upright positions had less fetal distress at birth.5 These factors all increase the chances that a woman will have a good early breastfeeding experience. Dr.

A consensus meeting organized by the World Health Organization on appropriate technology for birth held in Fortaleza, Brazil, in 1985 recommended that “no geographic region should have rates of induced labor over ten percent.

The fact is that doctors are no longer in a good position to note that their own presence in the birth room or their hurried manner can often retard labor.

Most women need encouragement and companionship more than they need drugs. That said, be aware that if your labor is accelerated by intravenous oxytocin, you are likely to experience a significantly greater level of pain than you otherwise would have had. Being upright and moving around may help alleviate this.

Your body is not a badly designed machine. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic.

There is in Dutch birth participants a deep-seated conviction that the woman’s body knows best and that, given enough time, nature knows best and that, given enough time, nature will take its course.”2 When I visited Japan, I found similar attitudes among the women and midwives with whom I spoke. “Birth is natural,” several said. “I would be afraid of an earthquake, but not of having a baby without anesthesia. That’s just the work that women do. Besides, if you take anesthesia, you miss the ecstasy. You miss the euphoria.

compared perceptions of labor pain between two different groups of U.S. women: those who gave birth in the hospital and those who gave birth at home. The hospital group rated childbirth pain significantly higher than did the home-birth group.

contracting the arm muscles during labor distracts women’s attention from holding their pelvic and thigh muscles tight to “protect” themselves during labor.

It's not that we haven't had our own activists and friends in the public-health community in the United States working diligently to increase rates of breastfeeding; it's that we have allowed a health-care industry responsible only to corporate boards of directors and stockholders to take the place of what should be a health-care system designed for the benefit of all of our people. A profit-driven health-care industry has no reason to care about increasing breastfeeding rates (or doing anything else to promote health, for that matter), as doing so will do nothing to boost anyone's profits. I consider it a national embarrassment that our Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has never been able to collect solidly accurate statistics on breastfeeding rates for the first year of our babies' lives through any of its agencies.

The goals set by Stanton, Truth, and Anthony that were achieved during the twentieth-century long after their deaths were audacious. Because of these pioneers and the activists who followed them, women can now own property; divorce an abusive husband; vote; be elected to public office; be professors, executives, or astronauts; fly planes; and wear clothes that would have shocked everyone who lived in the nineteenth century (when women's ankles weren't supposed to be seen). All of these are solid and necessary gains, but today, even in states whose laws declare that breastfeeding cannot be considered "indecent exposure," the harassment of mothers for breastfeeding their babies when they leave their homes continues to a degree that is simply unacceptable. This rudeness to strangers and their babies can and must be stopped. In the nineteenth century, most U.S. mothers—if their health was good— nursed their babies, and people took it for granted that this elemental, nurturing act would have to take place as women traveled. I think it would have been hard for people in the nineteenth century to anticipate that advertising and marketing campaigns by infant formula companies would become the dominant factor in parents' decisions about infant feeding and that infant formula companies could so easily convince the medical profession to become the first promoters of their products.

The goals set by Stanton, Truth, and Anthony that were achieved during the twentieth-century long after their deaths were audacious. Because of these pioneers and the activists who followed them, women can now own property; divorce an abusive husband; vote; be elected to public office; be professors, executives, or astronauts; fly planes; and wear clothes that would have shocked everyone who lived in the nineteenth century (when women's ankles weren't supposed to be seen). All of these are solid and necessary gains, but today, even in states whose laws declare that breastfeeding cannot be considered "indecent expo-sure," the harassment of mothers for breastfeeding their babies when they leave their homes continues to a degree that is simply unacceptable. This rudeness to strangers and their babies can and must be stopped. In the nineteenth century, most U.S. mothers—if their health was good— nursed their babies, and people took it for granted that this elemental, nurturing act would have to take place as women traveled. I think it would have been hard for people in the nineteenth century to anticipate that advertising and marketing campaigns by infant-formula companies would become the dominant factor in parents' decisions about infant feeding and that infant-formula companies could so easily convince the medical profession to become the first promoters of their products.

It was impossible for me not to notice that the women's movement in Norway during the 1960s and 1970s took a different, more inclusive course from that taken in the United States during the same period. The main goals of feminist leaders here focused on making it possible (and safer) for women to choose not to be mothers, expanding women's access to higher education and jobs and professions that had previously been closed to them, giving women the means to combat sexual harassment and domestic violence, and creating access to political office. Norway's feminists worked on all of these issues but on another vitally important area as well: They demanded legislation that would significantly benefit Norwegian mothers and babies. Paid maternity leave, onsite nursery care in the workplace, flexible schedules for working women, and parental benefits were all part of the legislative advances made in Norway during the 1960s and 1970s. Architects followed suit by designing shopping malls, airports, and other public areas with comfortable, attractive places for nursing women and their children to use.

… in the ordinary course of a healthy labour, the mouth of the uterus opens by some secret agency; or at least without any apparent force.

Where the techno-medical model of birth reigns, women who give birth vaginally generally labor in bed hooked up to electronic fetal monitors, intravenous tubes, and pressure-reading devices. Eating and drinking in labor are usually not permitted. Labor pain within this model is seen as unacceptable, so analgesia, and anesthesia are encouraged. Episiotomies (the surgical cut to enlarge the vaginal opening) are routinely performed, out of a belief that birth over an intact perineum would be impossible or that, if possible, it might be harmful to mother or baby. Instead of being the central actor of the birth drama, the woman becomes a passive, almost inert object - representing a barrier to the baby's eventual passage to the outside world. Women are treated as a homogenous group within the medical model, with individual variations receding in importance.

emphatically, that I was. After that I decided not to feel sorry for myself or

Optimum functioning of our various sphincters is easier to obtain when we understand how to better accommodate our thoughts to the needs of our bottoms. I often say that our bottom parts function best when our top part - our minds - are either grateful or amused at the antics or activities of our bottoms. It is amazing how much better our bottoms work when we think of them with humor and affection rather than with terror, revulsion, or, worst of all, look away from them in shame. Lord knows, we can't turn our backs on our bottoms.

Stand or kneel with one hand on your pubic bone in front and the other on your tailbone. Notice how far apart your hands are. Now lean backward as far as possible (taking care not to hurt yourself) and continue to notice how far apart your hands are. Next, lean forward until your torso is parallel to the ground.

An Rh negative mother’s blood is said to be “sensitized” when this process has taken place. Procedures such as amniocentesis, aggressive external version, and episiotomy increase the chances of sensitization.

Many midwives work as employees in large hospital practices, where the techno-medical model of care is still the rule. In practices like these, midwives are used to attract women who desire midwifery care, but they may in fact be under constant pressure to practice within the techno-medical mode.

In her insightful Of Woman Born (1976), Adrienne Rich said it very eloquently: “My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness.

noticed that when I tried to look at things, it put me more in a thinking mode, but when I was listening, I was more in a feeling/instinctive mode. For instance, hearing that I was all right really made me feel better. If it had been written down and I was reading it, it would not have made me feel as good. Thinking was scary. Feeling wasn’t. When I was in feeling mode, things didn’t seem so overwhelming.

Looking back twenty-three years to this event, I see that this experience taught me how very important our thoughts are in manifesting the reality we experience as “material.

I gave up complaining, because I saw how it caused me to be angry and blaming. Instead, I try to pay close attention to my thoughts through mindfulness practices. I insert positive, affirming, and grateful thoughts into the stream, and ride them like a raft on the white water of a turbulent mind.

I would lie in bed, imagine being in labor, and imagine encouraging the sensations and welcoming the opening process. I would picture the baby’s head pressing on the cervix and the cervix steadily opening. I had also learned from living on The Farm about the power of words, so I knew that when I was in labor, I could say, “I just want to open up” or “I can integrate this,” and that reality would sometimes follow the statement.

birth is something that women do—not something that happens to them.

The evidence in favor of doulas comes from more than eleven carefully designed studies: Quite simply, hiring one cuts in half the odds of your having an unnecessary cesarean.

Having a doula also shortens labor by greatly reducing stress, pain, and anxiety.

Letting the primate in you do the work of labor is a short way of saying not to let your overbusy mind interfere with the ancient wisdom of your body.

Your body—your choice. Get up and move. Take control. Your body was made for this. You are chosen, not cursed. And birth without fear.

By the end of the nineteenth century, birth chairs were rarely used any longer. “Fashionable” ladies expected to lie down to have their babies. Giving birth in a squatting position came to be considered low-class—far from “ladylike.” Given this history, it is not an exaggeration to call the supine position an invention of the industrial revolution. It is a male-derived position—one invented for the convenience of the birth attendant.

The U.S. induction rate doubled between 1989 and 1998 (from 9 percent to 19.2 percent) and is apparently still rising, although there was no corresponding rise in the size of babies, the length of pregnancies, or the incidence of maternal illnesses requiring induction.

women tend to labor best when their need for privacy is respected and when a trusted and calm person is nearby.

the expression of gratitude for whatever might be brought to mind in an intense situation such as labor and birth; thanks to life, gratitude for the ability to take each breath, for having access to lifesaving help, to be bringing forth this particular child, gratitude for those helping.

Love and gratitude are inextricably intertwined. When they flow together, the oxytocin levels in the birthplace may rise and offer incredible possibilities for transformative moments.

They all testified as to how much more easily birth could go when there was a spirit of gratitude in the room and how this helped when a dangerous situation presented itself.

From early in life, most of us are bombarded with messages that teach us to think that our thoughts and feelings don’t matter when it comes to the functioning of our bodies. In the same way, Western medicine assumes a total separation between mind and body.

learned that true words spoken can sometimes relax pelvic muscles by discharging emotions that effectively block further progress in labor.

Women tend to have harsher, stronger, significantly more painful contractions with chemically induced labors,

they understand that in most cases there are ways of making the sensations of labor and birth tolerable that do not involve numbing the senses with drugs before accessing the amazing chemicals that are naturally released by the woman’s own body.

She suggested I breathe and relax through the first part of a rush, then hold my breath and let the contractions lead me.

Through the process of natural childbirth, I gained a lot of confidence in myself. I left my comfort zone and the culture I had grown up with. I learned that I can work through scary and painful situations and be strong and present when I need to be.

I concentrated on opening up, on keeping my mouth loose, and on thanking God for giving me a perfect, easy birthing.

Four or five false starts are not unusual. Such a pattern is perfectly normal and poses no extra risk to the baby if the water bag has not broken. So why not wait? There is nothing to lose.

When she starts to understand that being amused and grateful actually moves the process of labor along more efficiently, she starts to work toward these feelings herself. Hard work may continue, but she now has the heart for it. Instead of fearing her body, she experiments with trusting it.

our bodies must work pretty well, or there wouldn’t be so many humans on the planet.

Marie Striekwold-Ebben, passed along this piece of wisdom: “Even if you don’t have much money, keep in mind that the bedroom is the most important room in the house. Love and sadness are shared under the sheets, and you hope that your children will come into the world in your bedroom and that you will leave the world there.

In the Netherlands, the government health plan provides for a specially trained nurse/lactation expert to help each new baby’s parents in their home for a full ten days following each birth (with a small co-payment). Hired for three, five, or eight hours according to individual families’ needs, this maternity nurse serves the new parents breakfast in bed, feeds any older children their breakfast, walks the dog, helps the new mother with breastfeeding if necessary, cleans the house, and notifies the midwife if the mother or baby should need medical attention for any reason. The Dutch consider the care provided each family by the maternity nurse to be an investment in good health, which benefits the entire society because it so effectively reduces the number of illnesses mothers and babies experience during the first year of the baby’s life and thus saves money

It will take your breastfed baby an average of five to six months to double her birth weight.

Men can't be fooled about their parts the way women can. Men's convexity makes them as obvious as women's concavity makes us mysterious, even to ourselves.