Biographies

Gloria Lemay

Gloria Lemay is a lecturer, midwifery educator and traditional birth attendant in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She specializes in VBAC and waterbirth. She has served birthing women since 1976 and is an advisory board member of ICAN and the Canadian Doula Association. Gloria has three grown daughters and one teenage granddaughter. She wants her tombstone to read, "She spoke up for babies." [ PHOTO BY A. PRESSMAN ]

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Marina Lembo

Marina Lembo, RM, has worked in maternity units with 20 births a day, confronting OB/GYN interventions and gender violence. She started homebirths assistance after time in Canada. She is the co-founder of the first birthing centre in Argentina. She advocates homebirth and independent midwifery.

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Heloisa Lessa

Heloisa Lessa is a midwife from Brazil. She does homebirths and teaches at the University of Rio de Janeiro. She works with traditional midwives and indigenous groups in the Amazon forest. She has also successfully organized conferences to help her country recover from the escalating cesarean rate. Heloisa is interested in international midwifery and represents the Brazilian Network for the Humanization of Childbirth (ReHuNa) by promoting partnerships.

Linda Lieberman

Linda Lieberman has been harvesting herbs and attending homebirths since 1976. Her three daughters were all born at home (1975, 1978, 1981). After many years of attending births as a direct entry midwife, Linda became a CNM and now provides both well woman gynecology and homebirth services to women and families in Southern Oregon. Her nurse-midwifery practice is traditional and holistic, and includes herbal medicine, waterbirth, and CAM modalities. She has full prescriptive privileges and can practice autonomously in Oregon. Her current interests include writing a column for Midwifery Today on the business aspects of midwifery including business development for midwives, adequate professional reimbursement, and organizational tools to use in the midwifery practice setting.

Robin Lim

Robin Lim is a mother, grandmother, author, poet, midwife and educator who lives in Bali with her husband and children. Ibu (mother) Robin is a Certified Professional Midwife, with the North American Registry of Midwives and Ikatan Bidan Indonesia. She is a founder and executive director for Yayasan Ibu Bumi Sehat Birth Center in Bali. Lim splits her time between the birth center and the Tsunami Relief Clinic in Samatiga Aceh, Sumatra. Along with receiving babies, Ibu Robin is an author. Many of her articles, stories and poems have been published in Midwifery Today magazine and The Birthkit newsletter. Lim has been given the Alexander Langer International Peace Award.

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Nidia Lobo

Nidia Lobo is supervisor of the maternity unit in one of the largest and oldest public hospitals in Costa Rica, called San Juan de Dios. Nidia has fought tirelessly for the rights of birthing women and their babies in institutions.

Vivian Lowenstein

Vivian Lowenstein is a nurse-midwife providing prenatal, postpartum and lots of GYN care to women throughout their life cycle. She is no longer attending births, but volunteers her time in political efforts to unify and motivate midwives. She believes that we must work together so that women have access to health care and a choice of a safe health care provider.

Mirjam Lukasse

Mirjam Lukasse is a research and education midwife at the Rikshospitalet in Oslo, Norway. She qualified as a midwife in Belfast, Ireland, in 1984. Mirjam worked as a midwife in Pakistan for almost 10 years, which gave her a special interest in midwifery in developing countries. She has also been involved in projects in Ethiopia and Bangladesh. Mirjam completed her MSc in Midwifery in 1998 and moved to Oslo in 1999. There she worked for over three years at the ABC unit before moving to her present job. Mirjam is currently working on a PhD focusing on fear of childbirth.

Dorthe Madsen

Dorthe Madsen works as a private midwife at the birth centre, "House of Birth," in Copenhagen. She is engaged in human development-physical, emotional, mental and spiritual-especially in pregnant women.

Venus Mark

Venus Mark, Midwife, RN, LM, CNM, BA, is the owner and Managing Director of Amicus Maternity Center in Trinidad and Tobago. A midwife since 1958, she is a foundation member of Trinidad and Tobago Association of Midwives (TTAM) and Midwives and Nurses Research Society Trinidad and Tobago (MNRSTT), Life Member of MANA, Examiner of the Nursing Council of Trinidad and Tobago. She initiated the first set of television programs educating mothers about their choices of childbirth and the role of the midwife. She has lectured to students-midwives and also at the Midwifery Today Bahamas Conference 2005, and as a keynote speaker at Mana Conferences 2000 and 2002.

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Ditte Marså

Ditte Marså is a direct entry midwife from Denmark who works with her two midwife partners in a birth centre in the heart of Copenhagen. She considers continuity of care as one of the most important tools available to midwives.

Janice Marsh-Prelesnik

Janice Marsh-Prelesnik has practiced and taught traditional midwifery, massage therapy and herbalism since 1981. She has four homebirthed, homeschooled children and lives in rural southwest Michigan near Kalamazoo. Janice loves to watch her students grow, develop their intuition and integrate midwifery and the natural healing arts into their lifestyles. During the summertime Janice can be found in her organic gardens preparing herbal remedies for her business, Granny Janny Herbs. Her book, Natural Mothering Through the Seasons of Pregnancy, is scheduled for publication in 2005.

Piper Martin

Piper Martin, B.Ed., DS HomMed, is a classical homeopath, second attendant and a mother. Piper has a thriving family practice in which she attends births and supports families through homeopathic medicine. She is the creator of Homeopathic Medicine for Pregnancy and Childbirth, a six-part course designed for midwives and doulas. Piper writes and lectures extensively in the fields of pregnancy, birth and newborn care. In her free time she enjoys listening to Ani Difranco, traveling with her family and digging in the garden.

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Irina Martinova

Irina Martinova is a midwife and psychologist practicing in St. Petersburg, Russia. She graduated as a specialty nurse-midwife from medical school in Novgorod, Russia. While working as a midwife for three years in a Novgorod maternity home, Irina attended more than 3,000 births. In 1980, Irina joined Russian male midwife Igor Charkovsky's research group in Moscow and assisted her first waterbirth. By the end of 2009, Irina had attended 765 homebirths as a midwife.

Tiffany Mazurek

Tiffany Mazurek is a psychotherapist and massage therapist in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Sue McDonald

Sue McDonald is a psychotherapist experienced with using art in a therapeutic context in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Linda McHale

Linda McHale, CPM, EMT, has worked with the birthing community since 1976. Apprenticed trained, she became a licensed Texas midwife in 1983. She took the NARM test in 1992, became a CPM in 1995 and is a Qualified Evaluator. Linda has served as the Fundraiser Chair for Midwives' Alliance of North America (MANA) and is currently the region 2 representative. During her first term, she worked, successfully, to have New Jersey recognize the CPM credential. Believing in unity among midwives, she has taken MANA's message to as many groups as possible. Linda has also spoken at Midwifery Today conferences, birth rallies, parents groups, MANA regionals and The Open Center. She currently attends homebirths in New Jersey, serving a diverse population.

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Karen McLean

Karen McLean, PhD, is a feminist and birth activist affiliated with the Danish organization Parenting and Childbirth and cofounder of the Childbirth Lobby. An American living in Denmark, she works as a freelance translator, editor and writer.

Marion Toepke McLean

Marion Toepke McLean, CNM, attended her first birth as primary midwife in August 1971. She received her nursing degree from Pacific Lutheran University in 1966 and her midwifery and family nurse practitioner degree from Frontier Nursing Service in 1974. From 1976 through 2001 she did clinic, hospital and homebirths, while also working as a family nurse practitioner. In 1980 she taught a year-long program for local midwives, returning to Frontier Nursing Service to teach during the summer. In June 2000 she completed a BA in International Studies at the University of Oregon, with concentrated studies on Mexico. Since 2002 she has worked in a reproductive health clinic and attended an occasional homebirth. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, and is a contributing editor to Midwifery Today.

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Cassy McNamara

Cassy McNamara works between the National Health Service (UK) and as one of three independent midwives in Scotland. She believes in the ability of most women to grow, birth and nurture their babies without medical intervention and in the vital role of midwives in supporting families to achieve a positive experience in pregnancy and natural childbirth.

Uva Meiner

Uva Meiner, Holistic Midwife, has worked for 15 years with couples, mothers and families during preconception, pregnancy, birth, postpartum and beginnings of parenting. Uva's path is to help form conscious families who embrace this journey as a very important contribution to peace inside ourselves and out, as well as creating a joyful and sacred celebration of life.

Judi Mentzer

Judi Mentzer, CPM, began practicing midwifery in 1980 after six months of training. She became a CPM in 1997. She has attended over 2,000 births as primary. Judi works primarily with the Amish and Mennonites in home settings and has attended 27 sets of twins, 89 breeches and numerous VBACs.

Judi lives in the Blue Mountain Range of South Central Pennsylvania with her husband, Jim, in a house she and her children built with substantial help from friends.

Annett Michelsen

Annett Michelsen is a Norwegian midwife with a homebirth practice, in addition to providing prenatal care as a community midwife just outside Oslo. Her community has a homebirth rate of nearly 10%, which is 10 times the rate of Norway as a whole.

Angelina Martinez Miranda

Angelina Martinez Miranda is a traditional midwife living and practicing in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. She is the inheritor of three generations of midwifery knowledge; her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were all traditional midwives, practicing for around 40 years each. Angelina combines their wisdom with the many courses she has taken in midwifery and related subjects to keep up-to-date with evidence-based obstetrics.

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Fernando Molina

Fernando Molina is family physician, Certified Prenatal instructor and midwife in his hometown of Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela, population approximately one million people. He tells us how women are giving birth in Venezuela using 2006 figures of who attends births: 98% MDs and 2% traditional midwives in rural areas.

Unfortunately, in Venezuela midwifery is not recognized in the infrastructure of perinatal care. Having an MD degree, Fernando asked the Public Health and Sanitary Deptartment to allow him to register births he attends directly in the official department of newborn registration without the hassle implied in outside hospital births. He tells us: “They could not understand me and were very reluctant at first, so I had to hire a lawyer to help me in the matter. Finally we won the case. I became (with pride) ‘el Partero.’”

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Shafia M. Monroe

Shafia M. Monroe is a mother, midwife and author, and speaks professionally to promote midwifery to reduce infant mortality. She is the founder of the annual Black Midwives and Healers Conference and trains Diva Doulas. Visit www.sistahmidwife.com.

Laura Monschau

Laura Monschau is a psychologist at the University of Michigan's Counseling and Psychological Services. She is experienced with the treatment of sexual trauma.

Kathleen Moore

Kathleen Moore is an award-winning performance vocalist, teacher and boardcertified music therapist in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Åse Grette Mørch

Åse Grette Mørch is a Norwegian midwife with a homebirth practice. She attended the homebirth in 2005 of Princess Martha Louise.

Sister MorningStar

Sister MorningStar has dedicated a lifetime to the preservation of instinctual birth among native people. Experientially she was raised in the Ozark Mountains within the influence of Cherokee traditions. She birthed her own daughters at home and has helped thousands of other wimyn find empowerment through instinctual birth. Politically she has served on state, national and international boards helping to oversee the development of midwifery certification programs. She serves on the C.A.S.A. International Advisory Board helping to oversee the continued stability of Mexico's first accredited Midwifery School and Maternity Hospital. She is the founder of a spiritual retreat center and author of books related to instinctual and spiritual living. She lives as a Cherokee Hermitess and Catholic Mystic in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. Visit at www.sistermorningstar.com.

Brigid Mulloy

Brigid Mulloy trained as a certified nurse-midwife (CNM) at Frontier Nursing Service and has a strong cross-cultural and international background. Her first experiences with midwifery and homebirth in the early 1970s were in the, then very isolated, Costa Rican community of Monteverde. She lives on the Island of Molokai in Hawaii where all babies are born under the care of midwives.

Alexander Naumov

Alexander Naumov, an obstetrician who specializes in baby yoga and Dynamic Gymnastics, has been attending homebirths for more than 17 years. During this time, Alexander attended more than 500 homebirths, which did not use a single syringe, and prepared in-depth studies for the pregnant couples.

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Carol Nelson

Carol Nelson, LM, CPM, began attending births in 1971. She became a Florida licensed midwife in 1982 and a CPM in 1995. She lives on The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee, and works as a midwife at The Farm Midwifery Center. She was a co-founder, member of the board of directors, instructor and preceptor for the South Florida School of Midwifery. She wrote and lobbied for the CPM law in Tennessee, which passed in 2000. Carol is the Midwifery Education and Advocacy Co-coordinator for Midwives' Alliance of North America (MANA) and she represents the profession of midwifery on the Governing Council of the American Public Health Association. She is the treasurer and Director of the Applications Department for the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM).

Andrea Noll

Andrea Noll is board member and international contact coordinator for the Hungarian Association of Midwives, www.midwives.hu. She is also Midwifery Today's country contact for Hungary. Andrea is currently in the process of translating Anne Frye's Holistic Midwifery into Hungarian. She is founding co-editor of Bábák, szÁlésznok, the Hungarian Association's midwifery magazine. She's currently studying at the Maternidad La Luz midwifery school in El Paso, Texas. On her graduation and return to Hungary (planned for March 2005), she will be the first modern-age midwife of her country with out-of-hospital training.

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Michel Odent

Michel Odent, MD, has been influencing the history of childbirth and health research for several decades. As a practitioner he developed the maternity unit at Pithiviers Hospital in France (1962–1985). With six midwives, he was in charge of about one thousand births a year and achieved excellent statistics with low rates of intervention. Odent is familiarly known as the obstetrician who introduced the concept of birthing pools and home-like birthing rooms. He later founded the Primal Health Research Center in England.

His approach has been featured in eminent medical journals such as The Lancet and in TV documentaries such as the BBC film Birth Reborn. After his hospital career he practiced homebirths.

Odent is a contributing editor to Midwifery Today magazine.

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Jeanne Ohm

Jeanne Ohm, DC, is an international lecturer, post-graduate instructor for numerous chiropractic colleges and author of many papers on pregnancy, birth, children and chiropractic. She is also Executive Coordinator and Executive Secretary for the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association and editor of its quarterly magazette. Dr. Ohm's professional mission is to provide doctors of chiropractic with the skills and motivation to take care of more pregnant mothers and children. Dr. Ohm is married to Dr. Thomas Ohm, Chiropractor. They have six children, all born at home, not vaccinated and living drug-free, healthy lives.

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Marta Orbis

Marta Orbis is a midwife with a deep respect for how the physiological and spiritual aspects of pregnancy and birth interact and show themselves. She is profoundly interested in continually collecting, combining and refining midwifery arts and skills to best support the journey of the baby, the mother and the new family.

Together with two midwife friends she runs a private birth centre and homebirth practice based on holistic values in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Carlos Orozco

Carlos Orozco, MD, is Costa Rican and has worked for many years as a paediatrician. He has complimented his training as a medical doctor with homeopathy and other natural healing modalities, and he supports the work of midwives throughout Costa Rica.

Jeannine Parvati Baker

Jeannine Parvati Baker, June 1, 1949–December 1, 2005, was the founder of Hygieia College of Womancraft and Lay Midwifery. Her legacy will live on in her many writings, including Prenatal Yoga and Natural Childbirth, Conscious Conception and Hygieia: A Woman's Herbal.

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Debra Pascali-Bonaro

Debra Pascali-Bonaro, is co-chair of the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative, IMBCI, where she works with international organizations, ministers of health and grassroots community organizations to create optimal models of maternity care. She is an inspirational international speaker.

Debra has spoken about doula care at the White House and serves on national and local maternal/child health boards. She is a Lamaze International certified childbirth educator and teacher trainer with a passion for birth. Debra serves on the Childbirth Connection Board of Directors. She served on the first Board of Directors for DONA International and is a DONA approved doula trainer.

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Katerina Perkhova

Katerina Perkhova,editor in chief Domashniy Rebenok (Home Child) magazine, journalist, photographer and mother of two homebirthed children. Katerina and her husband, Philipp Perkhov, the magazine's publisher and art-director, say they first envisioned their magazine after their second child, Masha, was born at home, surrounded by a close group of loved ones. Their first son, Michael, had already introduced them to the worlds of "natural parenting" and "attachment parenting." Katerina explains that, in the Soviet Union, information about natural parenting had been closed, like secret knowledge. Today, there is more than enough information available about natural childbirth, breastfeeding, using a sling, natural medicine, natural health, alternative education and a healthy lifestyle. With Home Child magazine, they hope to make these resources more easily accessible and to help parents separate fact from opinion, and scientific evidence from mythmaking.

Anne Persson

Anne Persson has worked in a homebirth practice in Denmark since 1998 and attends about three births a month, mostly waterbirths. She does ante- and postnatal care, teaches birth preparation and practices acupuncture.

Mollie Petersheim

Mollie Petersheim, an Amish midwife, is a serious but loving and caring midwife and mother. She is busy with many motherbabies driving up her driveway to give birth!

Elena Piantino

Elena Piantino, CD, is a childbirth educator and a HypnoBirthing practitioner. She is also founder and director of Formation Doula Suisse Romande and an optimal birth advocate. She has a university degree in Communication Sciences with a specialty in film and TV production. Born in Mexico, she now lives in Switzerland with her husband and three children.

Waleska Porras

Waleska Porras is a social communicator, La Leche League Leader and homebirth mother. She is the author of the breastfeeding book "En busca del oro líquido." All too often, she supports mothers and babies who were separated after birth and therefore have breastfeeding difficulties.

Julia Postnova

Julia Postnova, midwife and osteopathic doctor-in-training, has been involved with midwifery since 1991 and founded a natural childbirth school in 1995. While studying to be an osteopathic physician, Julia continues to prepare couples for flexible leave and teaches them how to care for their newborn children. Julia is the mother of five children born outside of a medical institution—in the Black Sea and at home.

Malu Prates

Malu Prates is a Brazilian singer and doula. In her practice, she is interested in lullabies and exploring the power of music, especially singing as a tool in the process of pregnancy, childbirth and becoming a mother.

Debbie Pulley

Debbie Pulley, CPM, has a homebirth practice in Atlanta, Georgia. She serves on the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) Board as secretary, is the Director of Public Education and Advocacy and is the Legislative Committee Chair for Midwives' Alliance of North America (MANA). She is married with two grown children.

Ileana Quirós

Ileana Quirós, MD, has taken on the task of bringing medical practice up-to-date. She has spent the past few years implementing evidence-based midwifery (EBM) in public hospitals, She is very familiar with World Health Organization (WHO) initiatives and can assist with the implementation of WHO recommendations and the obstacles she faces from the medical establishment.

Jessica Ranek

Jessica Ranek has been working in television and film since 1997 when she also became a doula and childbirth educator. She has combined her interests by making documentaries on birth. Jessica is also an aquanatal and prenatal yoga instructor.

Keri Redding

Keri Redding is co-owner, with her twin sister, Alice, of Wellsprings Massage Therapy and Bodywork Center in Seal Beach, California. She works full time as a massage therapist, specializing in pregnancy massage. Over the years she has trained to become a massage therapist, Reiki practitioner, birth doula and midwife's assistant. Keri loves the outdoors and is addicted to hiking, camping and travel.

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Lynn Baptisti Richards

Lynn Baptisti Richards, BS, Ed, LM, is a performing and visual artist, a midwife and a writer. She primarily served women who had previously experienced traumatic births. She published The Vaginal Birth after Cesarean Experience: Very Beautiful and Courageous, and then went on to speak and teach. She is currently working on a book-ballet entitled Flying From Darkness.

Hella Riedel

Hella Riedel is a midwife elder from Wildbad, Germany, who likes to "cook things up" in the midwifery kitchen. She is also an actress and storyteller.

Jan Robinson

Jan Robinson had a career in Midwifery Education for many years then branched out into independent practice in the early 1990s, attending homebirths mostly in the southern suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, where she lived. She now maintains a small clinical practice in the inner Sydney city area while continuing to be involved in midwifery education on a casual basis. Apart from homebirths, Jan’s current project is completing her booklet “Setting up an Independent Midwifery Practice in Australia.” She also enjoys meeting as many like-minded midwives as possible which happens when she conducts perineal repair workshops for midwives around the countryside. Jan tells us: “It is gratifying to see rural midwives beginning to take on their own ‘caseload’ and taking responsibility for providing total maternity care of healthy women.”

Caroline Rodgers

Caroline Rodgers has 20 years experience as an editor in daily and weekly journalism. She currently works as a freelance writer, specializing in writing for nonprofit organizations.

Mayela Rodríguez

Mayela Rodríguez is an independent reporter with a PhD in philosophy. She writes about gender equality as well as sexual and reproductive issues. She is director of the newspaper Huella where she works with other independent female reporters.

Anita Rubin-Meiller

Anita Rubin-Meiller is a psychotherapist in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is experienced in individual and group therapy for survivors of sexual trauma.

Dana Rudloff

Dana Rudloff, CPM, has been involved with birthing since 1978. Her college training initially began in social work/psychology with a child development minor, years later taking the path of childbirth education (Bradley and Informed Homebirth Instructors, LLL), which led to becoming a homebirth midwife. For the past 18 years she has served 6 different Amish communities surrounding her home in western PA.