Ina May Gaskin Biography

The Farm Midwifery Center, located in Summertown, Tennessee, is founded and directed by Ina May Gaskin, MA, CPM, Ph.D. (Hon.). The Farm Midwifery Center, which opened in 1971, has handled over 3000 deliveries by 2011, with surprisingly positive outcomes. Ms. Gaskin has personally attended over 1200 births. Spiritual Midwifery, currently in its 4th version, is her book. She produced Birth Gazette, a quarterly covering healthcare coverage, maternity, and midwifery topics, for twenty-two years. Bantam/Dell, a Random House company, published Ina May's Guide to Childbirth in 2003, and it has been translated into Italian, Slovenian, German, and French. Bantam/Dell published Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding in 2009, and her most recent book, Birth Matters: A Midwife's Manifesta, was released in 2011. She has given talks to students and faculty at midwifery conferences and medical institutions all around the world. From 1996 until 2002, she served as President of the Midwives Alliance of North America. The ASPO/Lamaze Irwin Chabon Award and the Tennessee Perinatal Association Recognition Award were given to her in 1997. In 2003, she was named a Visiting Fellow at Yale University's Morse College. The Faculty of Health and Human Sciences of Thames Valley University in London, England, awarded her the title of Honorary Doctor in 2009. She was one of four recipients of the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize), which was presented to her in front of the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm in 2011. Ms. Gaskin has given several talks to midwives and physicians all around the world. Her promotion of a low-intervention but a very successful approach for dealing with shoulder dystocia, one of the most dreaded birth problems, has resulted in an increasing number of practitioners adopting the practice. The Gaskin technique was the first obstetrical operation to bear a midwife's name. Her breech delivery stats, as well as a training film on the issue, have prompted a rethinking of the policy of conducting cesarean sections on all breech newborns. The expertise and ability necessary for vaginal breech deliveries have nearly vanished in the last 40 years as the number of such births has decreased. Despite the presence of numerous vaginally delivered breeches, twin and grand multiparas, Ms. Gaskin's clinic is known for its low rates of intervention, morbidity, and death. Their findings were reported in A. Mark Durand's article "The Safety of Home Birth: The Farm Study," in the American Journal of Public Health, March 1992, Vol. 82, 450-452. In the June 1, 1999 issue of Salon magazine, she was featured in the section " Brilliant Careers ". In the January 2012 edition of The Sun magazine, she was interviewed.

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