Maureen May, CNM, PhD,  began her career with an Associates Degree of Nursing from San Jacinto Community College.  In her nursing rotation the observed births at Jefferson Davis Hospital and saw midwife attended births at the hospital birthing center at JD.  Later she received her Bachelor of Nursing from Syracuse university and worked as a Womans Health Nurse-Practitioner in Syracuse.  in the mid-1990’s she began her learning program with Frontier School of Nurse-Midwifery.  She later did a fellowship at a freestanding birth center in the Rio Grande Valley where she was again exposed to normal, non-interventive birth.  When she finished her doctoral course work in Social Science with a concentration in Anthropology and ethnographic methods, she found a hospital based midwifery service who agreed to let her observe their clinical activities.  She was unprepared for the changes that had occurred in hospital birth since her early training.  Her observations as to the dramatic changes in how labor and delivery and childbirth practices are now organized led to her dissertation and this new book, Epiduralized Birth and Nurse-Midwifery.  Childbirth in the United States.  A Medical Ethnography.

Barbara Katz Rothman, PhD, is Professor of Sociology, Public Health, Disability Studies and Women’s Studies at the City University of New York, where she runs the Food Studies concentration.  Her books include IN LABOR; THE TENTATIVE PREGNANCY; RECREATING MOTHERHOOD: THE BOOK OF LIFE: WEAVING A FAMILY: UNTANGLING RACE AND ADOPTION, and LABORING ON, and the new BUN IN THE OVEN: How the Food and Birth Movements Resist Industrialization.  She is Past President of Sociologists for Woman in Society: the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the Eastern Sociological Society.  She is proud recipient of an award for “Midwifing the Movement” from the Midwives Alliance of North America

Shazia Ashraf has been an educator for over 15 years and is an Adjunct Professor of Developmental Math at Lonestar College.  She is mom to three beautiful boys, born by c- section, natural breech in a hospital, and home birth.  When she is not teaching or spending time with her children, she works to provide programs that empower women and heal the community as part of the Sisters Committee of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston.  She has also spent several years working on promoting the Birth Fair.

Saira Siddiqui is a freelance writer/online instructor who is working on a doctorate in Social Justice Education.  Prior to having children she taught for several years in the public and private sector.  When she is not writing for others she enjoys writing for her own blog, Confessions of a Muslim Mommaholic.  More recently, Saira was asked by Parents magazine to curate a list of books for raising globally conscious children. She currently lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and three never-been-schooled (unshooled) children. (My kids are 8, 8, and 5)…