| WHO IS WHO IN THE WATER BIRTH WORLD |
For several decades Michel Odent has been instrumental in influencing the history of childbirth and health research. As a practitioner he developed the maternity unit at Pithiviers Hospital in France in the 1960s and '70s. He is familiarly known as the obstetrician who introduced the concept of birthing pools and home-like birthing rooms. His approach has been featured in eminent medical journals such as Lancet, and in TV documentaries such as the BBC film Birth Reborn.
Along with six midwives he was in charge of about one thousand births a year and could achieve ideal statistics with low rates of intervention. After his hospital career he practiced home birth. As a researcher he founded the Primal Health Research Center in London (UK).
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The Global Maternal Child Health Care
in Portland, Oregon, the manufacturer of our birthing tubs, is guided by a pioneering nurse and devoted water birth practitioner, Barbara Harper. GMCH is a non-profit organization with much useful information about birth in the water. Single with three children, Barbara has dedicated her life to helping heal the way we welcome babies into the world. Her two youngest sons were born at home in water. Her daughter, Beth, was born in a typical hospital birth experience in 1978. Barbara and her children have lived in Wilsonville, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, for the past 13 years. She has been interviewed by hundreds of newspapers and magazines about her work with water birth.
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a photographer, producer, moviemaker and a water birth enthusiast, created an award-winning water birth movie, a wonderful photo gallery, and an international directory of water birth resources.Worth to looking into! The full, hour-long documentary includes intimate scenes of 4 actual water births in home, hospital and birth center settings, interviews with the world's top water birth pioneer doctors, and much more.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words." "WATER BABY: EXPERIENCES OF WATERBIRTH" has over 100,000 pictures (frames) that will amaze and delight you. Get the video that has been honored at 14 film festivals. Call 415-821-0435 or e-mail to order.
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One of the most beautiful and most comprehensive websites about water birth and healing through water is Birth Balance by Judith Elaine Halek, a water birth pioneer and a photographer. Articles, photos, resources, audio and visual material, books about energy healing and more.
She is currently in the process of doing a research project for two books. Any feedback you might be able to share would be greatly appreciated as well as acknowledged in the final project.To find out more about the research please click here.
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Janet Balaskas and the Active Birth Centre in London, England have changed the environment and design of birthing tubs in the last 20 years.
There is also an interesting list of resources about the meditative and healing power of water as well as links to some serious research in the field of water birthing.
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| Elizabeth Noble |
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is an amazing childbirth educator and a visionary therapist that who has helped to create a different outlook on primal experiences in conjunction with a type of birth we might recreate.
Elizabeth's home page here
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| Jeannine Parvati Baker |
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Jeannine Pavarti Baker, not a water birth advocate per se but an amazing soul, a spiritual midwife, a writer, lecturer and an inspiring home birth advocate.
Birthkeeper Forum has been established in 2005 for all who wish to continue dialoguing and supporting one another in the work that Jeannine inspired us to do, as well as honoring Jeannine's memory.
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Suzanne Arms is the founder and director of Birthing the Future
An internationally acclaimed author, photojournalist, visionary and activist, Suzanne Arms has been an acknowledged leader of the international birthing movement for over 25 years.
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Robbie Davis Floyd,
a cultural anthropologist, spent over 20 years researching issues in the anthropology of reproduction, focusing most closely on childbirth, obstetrics, and midwifery care. Her own birth experiences, and those of the 100 women she interviewed, eventually turned into her dissertation and then, after various articles and years of work, became her famous first book, Birth as an American Rite of Passage (1992) and Mainstreaming Midwives (2006).
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| Robbie Davis-Floyd |
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David B. Chamberlain's online Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology provides a multitude of resources about our life in utero and how to heal birth trauma using a variety of therapies including somatic bodywork.
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You can also learn more about the benefits of birth in water by viewing and visiting the following web sites:
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A Homebirth Reference Guide "made in the UK" describes the benefits and the supplies needed for an average water birth at home.
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Visit the home of an unusual experiment by the Sirius Institute in Hawaii which has been observing the behaviour of dolphins among children and pregnant mothers (not properly documented but surely an exciting example of interspecies communication).
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| Further Reading: Birthing in Water |
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