Mayra – Moves from Manhattan to New Jersey, gives birth at home with midwife Cara Muhlhahn.

Jen – Chose to have her baby at a birthing center. “You have that natural high that people describe. You feel so accomplished. Nothing compares.”

Dr. Michel Odent, OB/GYN – “We are completely lost and we have forgotten to raise the most simple questions. What are the basic needs of women in labor? The fact that midwives have disappeared is a symptom of the lack of understanding of the basic needs of women in labor.”

Susan Hodges, President, Citizens for Midwifery.

Dr. Jacques Mortiz, OB/GYN at Saint Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital and Birthing Center, New York City – Abby Epstein’s obstetrician and supporter of midwives in normal pregnancies and deliveries.

Dr. Robbie Davis-Floyd, PhD in Medical Anthropology and author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage.

Carolyn Havens Neimann, Certified Nurse Midwife

Elan Vital McAllister, President, Choices In Childbirth – “It can be a beautiful, incredible, empowering, life-altering experience or it can be a devastating, traumatic, scarring, literally and figuratively, experience.”

Ina May Gaskin, Certified Professional Midwife and Executive Director of The Farm Birth Center – “We wanted the choices. We didn’t want somebody else making the rules that didn’t understand us, that thought we were machines instead of people with feelings. Because we knew that feelings affected birth.”

Dr. Marsden Wagner, Former Director of Women’s and Children’s Health, The World Health Organization – “The best thing to do is get the hell out of the hospital.”

Louann Brizendine, MD, author of The Female Brain

Eugene Declerq, PhD, Professor of Maternal and Child Heath Boston University School of Public Health

Tina Cassidy, journalist and author of Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born – “They’ve told women, ‘Come to us. We’ll take care of everybody’s birth, it doesn’t matter what kind of birth you want, we’re open to anything.’ Then you get there and you realize the hospital system is really set up one way, to handle one kind of birth. And you get put through that system and it’s a fight to get out of it.”

Nadine Goodman, Public Health Specialist – “It’s like you switch on a light bulb and you go to the moon. It’s an otherworldly experience. So if you don’t have the reverence and respect for that where do you go from there?”

Anna Verwaal, Doula (labor support specialist) – “A woman, as long as she lives, will remember how she was made to feel at her birth.”

Ana Paula Markel, Childbirth Educator and Doula

Cara Muhlhahn, Certified Nurse Midwife – “A woman doesn’t really need to be rescued. It’s not the place for a knight in shining armor. It’s the place for her to face her darkest moment and lay claim to her victory, so that she can lay claim to her victory after she’s done it.”

Cathy Tanksley, Certified Nurse Midwife – “Women come to see me all the time that have had births in a traditional OB/GYN setting and it is a totally different experience, and they spread the word, but it’s not enough to turn this around for us.”

Lesley Cragen, Certified Nurse Midwife – “It really is the heart of midwifery to support a woman to do what a woman knows she can do. It isn’t that our view of her birth is what prevails.”

Patricia Burkhardt, Clinical Associate Professor, NYU Midwifery Program – “Hospitals are a business. They want those beds filled and emptied. They don’t want women hanging around the labor room.”

Dr. Ronaldo Cortes, OB/GYN – “The mother is active and that’s very important, she’s participating. As opposed to when she’s laying down, and the doctor is telling her ‘push!’ There’s no need for this. The vertical birth is on her own time and the baby will slide down on its own.”

Dr. Michael Brodman, Chief OB/GYN, Mount Sinai Hospital – “To me, delivering a baby at home for instance with a midwife or some other birth person is like me saying to you, ‘Oh, you don’t need to wear your seatbelt in my car because I’m a safe driver.”

Dr. Abbe Wain, OB/GYN, Mount Sinai Hospital – “The risks of a vaginal delivery are much less than a C-section and what most people don’t know is a C-section is major surgery.”

Paulo Netto, Abby Epstein’s boyfriend and cinematographer.

Carol Leonard, Midwife and Director of New Hampshire Birth Center

Sylvie Blaustein, Midwifery of Manhattan

Dr. Michael Silverstein, OB/GYN

Dr. Eden Fromberg, OB/GYN – “I would say in obstetrics you are numbed by the technology. Your ability to understand the more sacred and spiritual aspects of birthing is extremely numbed.”

Matteo – Born to Abby Epstein and Paulo Netto June 15, 2006