Interviewing Ina May Gaskin: What do YOU want to know?

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Permalink Reply by Rosie Peterson on April 25, 2011 at 3:20pm

I loved Ina May's new book!  I may read it again and resolve some of my birth career issues!  I look forward to meeting Ina May someday.

I am a doula recovering from supporting a very long labor where baby was persistent posterior.  Mom spent two days at home in active labor (one day prodromal labor).  Why did this mom have to have a cesarean section? She is a Swedish woman who had such a healthy birth outlook.  I have to continue to believe The Farm's c-section rate is possible but how can we recreate that belief system around birth, educate women, support families if, like in this case,  mom drives three hours a day on a freeway to help support her family? ends up with severe back labor and ultimately a cesarean birth?

What can I do to heal myself from this birth?  I still think there is something that I was suppose to learn but cannot yet see what that is.

I feel that mom is okay emotionally with her decision.  When SHE made the decision to have a cesarean should I have encouraged her to keep going, to wait a few more hours? I don't think so.  She had worked so hard for so long.  She was dilated to 8 and then went back to 6 with swollen cervix, stayed 6 and baby stayed at -1 the whole time.

In ten years of doula work I've rarely been as affected. ♥

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Permalink Reply by Kassedi on May 24, 2011 at 2:05pm

I would love to ask Ina May how she feels maternity care is failing teenage mothers and what she thinks midwifery can do for the underappriciated teenage mothers and their access to harmful birth interventions that are mostly unnecessary

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