Keynote Speakers

Gillian Smith   :   Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg   :   Dr Michel Odent   :   Dr Denis Walsh   :  Prof. Helen Ball   :   Mary Cronk MBE       

Gillian Smith - RCM Director of UK Board for Scotland
Chair

BIOG:
Taken from the RCM website: Gillian Smith (née Lenaghan) was born in Monreith in the South West of Scotland. She was educated at Portwilliam Primary School and later at the Douglas Ewart High School in Newton Stewart. She did her nurse training at the Victoria Infirmary Hospital in Glasgow and then trained as a midwife in Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, qualifying in 1978. She practiced as a midwife in Rutherglen Maternity Hospital, where she became an RCM steward. She combined her role as a steward with that of a Health and Safety representative and for a short while she was secretary of the Glasgow branch of the RCM.

In 1985, Gillian was seconded from the Greater Glasgow Health Board to the Sultanate of Oman to try and help improve the maternity services there. A pioneer in maternity services in the country, she was the first person to do ultrasound scanning on pregnant women in the south of Oman.  During this time, she also delivered a number of babies, some by breech, but considers one of her most exciting experiences delivering triplets vaginally. On her return, Gillian completed an Advanced Diploma in Midwifery and later a BA in Health Studies at Paisley University. She has worked with the RCM in Scotland since 1995 as a national officer and since July 2007 has been Acting Director & Director since 2008. She has extensive experience of representing members in different settings. Gillian completed an MSc in Industrial Relations from Stirling University and sits on the Employment Appeals Tribunal in Scotland, having been appointed in 2003.

Gillian married in 2006 and inherited a ready-made family complete with a grand-daughter. Gillian is passionate about midwifery and developing midwives to show their full potential and is striving to engage with all the stakeholder groups in Maternity services in Scotland. She also has a particular interest in getting students involved.
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Ina May Gaskin
Birth Matters

Taken from inamay.com : Ina May Gaskin, MA, CPM, is founder and director of the Farm Midwifery Center, located near Summertown, Tennessee. Founded in 1971, by 1996, the Farm Midwifery Center had handled more than 2600 births, with remarkably good outcomes. Ms. Gaskin herself has attended more than 1200 births. She is author of Spiritual Midwifery, now in its fourth edition. 

Ms. Gaskin has lectured widely to midwives and physicians throughout the world. Her promotion of a low-intervention but extremely effective method for dealing with one of the most-feared birth complications, shoulder dystocia, has resulted in that method being adopted by a growing number of practitioners. The Gaskin maneuver is the first obstetrical procedure to be named for a midwife. Her statistics for breech deliveries and her teaching video on the subject have helped to spark a reappraisal of the policy of automatically performing cesarean section for all breech babies. As the occurrence of vaginal breech births has declined over the last 25 years, the knowledge and skill required for such births have come close to extinction.

Ms. Gaskin’s center is noted for its low rates of intervention, morbidity and mortality despite the inclusion of many vaginally delivered breeches, twin and grand multiparas. Their statistics were published in “The Safety of Home Birth: The Farm Study,” authored by A. Mark Durand, American Journal of Public Health, March, 1992, Vol. 82, 450-452. She was featured in Salon magazine’s feature “Brilliant Careers” in the June 1, 1999 edition.

Ina May Gaskin
Please go to the Pinter & Martin website to purchase Ina May's book 
Birth Matters : a midwife's manifesta

Kerstin Uvnas-Moberg
Oxytocin: the impact on motherhood

BIOG:
Taken from Pinter & Martin: Kerstin Uvnäs Moberg, M.D., Ph.D., is recognized as a world authority on oxytocin. Her research takes place at the famed Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, where she is Professor of Physiology. The author of more than 400 scientific papers and a previous book, She and He, Dr. Uvnäs Moberg lectures widely in Europe and the United States. Her work has been influential in a variety of fields, including obstetrics, psychology, animal husbandry, physical therapy, pediatrics, and child development. The mother of four children, she lives in Djursholm, Sweden.

Dr Michel Odent
Womb Ecology

BIOG:
Taken from Midwifery Today: 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.
wombecology.com

Dr Denis Walsh
Labour rhythms, not stages & progress

BIOG:
Denis Walsh is an Associate Professor in Midwifery at the University of Nottingham and one of the country's most influential practising midwives.  His emphasis is on evidence-based midwifery care, normal labour & birth, pain in labour, homebirth and caesarean section rates. 

He has lectured throughout the UK, Europe and Australia and is Editor-in-Chief of the new journal: The International Journal of Childbirth. He has edited and authored a number of childbirth books, including the best seller ‘Evidence-Based Care for Normal Labour and Birth’.
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Dr Denis Walsh

Prof. Helen L Ball
Is Co-sleeping Wrong?

BIOG:
Taken from Durham University's website: Helen Ball obtained her PhD in Biological Anthropology at the University of  Massachusetts, Amherst in 1991. Her undergraduate degree was in Human Biology, and her interests span both biology and anthropology. Helen spent several years in the Caribbean where she conducted her PhD research on the rhesus macaques of Cayo Santiago, and later ran a Marine Biology Field School with her husband in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Following her appointment as a Lecturer in Anthropology at Durham in 1993 Helen established the Parent-Infant Sleep Lab.  Her current research involves behavioural and physiological investigations of infant and child sleep - particularly of co-sleeping parents and infants from an evolutionary perspective, and the effect of sleep on child obesity. She conducts research in various local hospitals and the community, and contributes to national and international policy and practice guidelines in infant care. 
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Prof Helen L Ball

Mary Cronk MBE
Unusual Births

BIOG:
Taken from Wikipedia: Mary Cronk MBE, is an independent midwife from England who was awarded her MBE for services to midwifery over her many years of practice. She was born in 1932. She first studied nursing at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and in 1957 she started training as a midwife at Queen Charlotte's in London. Mary has worked for the National Health Service in the UK where she has facilitated more than 1600 births, mainly as home births. In 1991 she opened her own practise and started working as an independent midwife. 

Mary also became involved in the political side of midwifery when she joined English National Board of the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting, Midwifery Committee, the Professional Conduct Committee and the Health Committees, and on RCM Council from September 1999 to August 2003.  She has also written many articles on midwifery which have covered a variety topics, such as the delivery of breech babies, and these have been published in Midwifery Matters and AIMS Journal.

While retired she continues to 'Share the Skills' by hosting popular study days alongside fellow independent midwife Jane Evans in a bid to disseminate information on unusual but normal births (for example Breech Birth) to ensure these seldom taught skills are not lost.2003. 
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Mary Cronk MBE
sharingtheskills.co.uk


.Session Leaders

Dr Roch Cantwell   :   Melody Weig   :   Adela Stockton   :   Debbie Gilmour   :   Mia Scotland   :   Dr David Hutchon   :   Dr Sheena Kinmond
Geraldine Butcher   :   Cassy McNamara

Dr Roch Cantwell
Perinatal Mental Health & the implications for care

BIOG:
Roch Cantwell trained in Cork, Edinburgh and Nottingham. He is a consultant perinatal psychiatrist, honorary clinical senior lecturer at Glasgow University, and clinical lead for the Glasgow Perinatal Mental
Health Service. The service provides specialist community mental health and maternity liaison for Greater Glasgow, and an inpatient mother and baby mental health unit for the west of Scotland. 

Dr Cantwell is Chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Section of Perinatal Psychiatry, and of the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) Development Group on Perinatal Mood Disorders. He is Scottish and Central Psychiatric Assessor to the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths and a member of the writing panel for the most recent Enquiry. He has co-written recently published RCOG good practice guidance for the management of mental illness in pregnancy. 
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Melody Weig RM
Homebirth in Practice

BIOG:
I am a self-employed independent midwife who has chosen career satisfaction over job security. I am on call 24 hours a day and can be reached easily, night or day.   I realised I wanted to be a midwife while completing a degree in Women's Studies in the USA. Having exhausted the possibilities for training in America, I left after finishing my degree to train in England, qualifying in 1979. 

I came to independent midwifery in 1981 out of a passionate belief that getting to know a woman well by providing continuity of care was crucial to keeping the experience normal for her and her family. That belief has been realized many times over through years of satisfying work. 

In 1985 I was a founding member and first secretary of the Independent Midwives Association (IMA), one of the organisers of the First International Home Birth Conference in 1987 and sole  organiser in 1989 of the first national conference for the IMA, The Midwife as Practitioner: The Way Forward for Midwifery. 

On my return to midwifery in the Unites States in the ‘90's, I was vice president of the Iowa Midwives Association and chief lobbyist to the Iowa Assembly in our attempt to broaden the laws governing midwifery practice. While there, I trained in a method to assess the female pelvis externally. I returned to the UK in 2001.  

I have lectured widely in England and abroad. Lectures and workshops have included such diverse topics as: breech birth; homoeopathy in pregnancy, childbirth and aftercare; alternatives to  immunisation; the politics of midwifery; keeping birth normal; the importance of post-natal care; independent midwifery; assessing the pelvis; baby massage; suturing; and how to reduce the caesarean rate. 

I trained with the London College of Clinical Hypnosis (LCCH) and qualified as a clinical hypnotherapist in 2004. LCCH is accredited by the University of Greenwich and the Royal College of Nurses and it was a year long course of study. I specialise in preparing women for labour and birth. I have a small private practice and work with people to overcome phobias, stop smoking, lose weight, and to deal with various anxieties and life transitions. 

I am a mother and a member of the Royal College of Midwives, the Association of Radical Midwives; and the British Society of Clinical Hypnosis. 
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Melody Weig
birthrites.uk.com

Adela Stockton & Debbie Gilmour
From Midwife to Doula & Doula to Midwife

ADELA'S BIOG:
Taken from Adela's website: Born in Perth, Scotland, in 1961, my early work experience as a TEFL teacher in Peru & Portugal duly informed my later practice as an NHS midwife in Edinburgh, London, Stranraer, Madagascar (with Marie Stopes) & in Glasgow.
 
I have been writing since I can remember and have been involved in childbirth related work for the past 18 years. The Royal College of Midwives journal published my first article in 1997 and further to my daughter's gentle 'undisturbed' home waterbirth in 2000, I was inspired to establish Birth Consultancy. This led me out of midwifery and into working as a doula and childbirth homeopath. Since 2003, I have provided preparation courses for women who wish to work as doulas: Mindful Doulas.

DEBBIE'S BIOG:
Debbie began her career as a veterinary nurse before completing a degree in Biochemistry. She settled in Scotland and became a lecturer and tutor in Chemistry and Biology. After the births of her first two children, one caesarean and one home VBAC, Debbie became a Doula. Following the birth of her third baby, Debbie decided to retrain and has become a student midwife, now entering her second year. She lives with her husband and three children in the West of Scotland.
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Adela Stockton
adelastockton.co.uk
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Debbie Gilmour

Mia Scotland
Compassionate Midwifery Workshop

BIOG:
Taken from Mia's Your Birthright website: Mia is a qualified  birth doula, recognised by Doula UK (having completed paramana doula training with Michel Odent). She is a fully qualified clinical psychologist and has worked in the NHS in Adult Mental Health since 1990 and is accredited with the British Psychological Society.  She is also a recognised HypnoBirthing® practitioner, and has co-devised, set up and run the Mindful Mamma® one day class, which is now available throughout the Midlands. How your thoughts affect your feelings and behaviour is central to good birthing. Mia specialises in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, which focuses on thoughts, feelings and behaviour.  Mia's classes have always been received with praise and thanks.  Mia is a proud mother of 3 boys, and a passionate believer in giving women the knowledge and confidence to work towards the birth that they want.
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Mia Scotland
www.yourbirthright.co.uk

Dr David Hutchon & Dr Sheena Kinmond
Avoiding immediate or early cord clamping

Dr Hutchon BIOG:
MB ChB graduate Edinburgh 1970.  Trained in Edinburgh, Dundee and London.
MRCOG 1979 FRCOG 1995
Consultant Obstetrican and Gynaecologist Memorial Hospital 1982 till 2010
Sabatical year in Greymouth, New Zealand 2005. During this year I learned about the full implications of early cord clamping. I saw the midwives prepared for resuscitaion with the cord intact by bringing tubing from the resuscitaire to the delivery table to allow initiation of resuscitation without clamping the cord.

President of the North of England Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society
2011

_Relevant Publications_
  • Why do obstetricians and midwives still rush to clamp the cord? Hutchon DJR. /*BMJ* 2010;//341:c5447 /
  • Cord clamping: NICE is encouraging artificial intervention Hutchon DJR*BMJ *2007;334:651
  • A view on why immediate cord clamping must cease in routine obstetric delivery. Hutchon D. /*The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist* 2008;10:112–116. /
  • Thirty second delayed cord clamping at preterm delivery: how can it be achieved ? Hutchon D. Poster presentation, /*RANZCOG New Zealand Annual Scientific Meeting*, Nelson, New Zealand.19 October 2005./
  • How to resuscitate the neonate with the cord intact at caesarean section. Hutchon DJR. /*British International Congress of Obstetrics and Gynaecology*, 6 July 2007, London//./

Dr Sheena Kinmond BIOG:
Aberdeen graduate, post-grad. training in general practice in Inverness and in paediatrics and neonatology in Inverness and Glasgow. Interest in timing of umbilical cord clamping stemmed from involvement as a registrar in work by Charles Wardrop and Barbara Holland on neonatal red cell volume (Kinmond S, Aitchison TC, Holland BM, Jones JG, Turner TL, Wardrop CAJ. Umbilical cord clamping and preterm infants: a randomised trial. /BMJ/ 1993;*306*:172-5).

Consultant Paediatrician and Neonatologist in Ayrshire since 1992.

Outside work - diverse interests - mainly outdoors (a wee bit of cycling, hill walking, cross country skiing etc. and a fair bit of open water swimming in summer (swam the Hellespont last year)), travel, also curling (not very good but current president of Irvine Curling Club) and collecting Edwardian topographical postcards of Aberdeen!
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Dr David Hutchon Photo courtesy of Lenita Burman
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Geraldine Butcher & Cassy McNamara
Challenging Choices

Geraldine Butcher's BIOG:
After training, and working, as a general nurse Geraldine became a midwife in 1987. After gaining extensive experience within hospital and  community posts she moved her interests into clinical development. In 2007 Geraldine was appointed as a Consultant Midwife, specialising in the normality
of childbirth. Her role is divided between working clinically in a busy labour ward, staff development and support, as well as facilitating a weekly clinic for women who wish to discuss options following a caesarean birth and for women who have a fear of childbirth. Geraldine is also a Supervisor of Midwives.

Nationally Geraldine is currently working with HIS (Healthcare Improvement Scotland) on developing the midwife formulary. She was also a key member for the action group for HIS that have developed the new guidelines for midwives and other healthcare professionals, in caring for women who have been sexually abused.

Geraldine is a mother and grandmother who lives on the North Ayrshire coast.

Cassy McNamara's BIOG:
Cassy trained as a midwife in England in 1996. After gaining extensive experience within hospital and community posts she moved her interests into self employed practice after returning to live in Scotland in 2004. She has been self employed in independent practice since then. She has extensive experience of home and waterbirth and is a Supervisor of Midwives in Ayrshire and Arran.

Cassy is a mother of three who lives with her husband and youngest son in South West Scotland (her other two having ‘flown the nest’ to university).

 
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Geraldine Butcher Consultant Midwife
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Cassy McNamara Supervisor of Midwives