Penny Simkin, a childbirth educator and author known as the “mother of the doula movement,” died on April 11 at her home in Seattle. She was 85 years old.
His daughter, Linnie Simkin, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.
A physical therapist turned childbirth educator, Simkin was a pioneer in helping women have a better experience during and after childbirth. Doula means “female servant” in Greek, and was accepted by alternative birth experts in the 1970s and 1980s to describe someone who supports a mother during labor. Ms. Simkin has helped popularize her role with her books, workshops, and training organizations, and she has also worked as a doula herself.
Doulas are not medical professionals. Their role is to provide comfort to women in the delivery room and provide postnatal care at home. That care may include things like snacks, massages, and warm compresses, but it can also include more practical help, like suggesting movements to ease labor pains or helping with breastfeeding.
Simkin's innovation included a device called a squat bar that was attached to her mother's hospital bed to help her squat. The device opens the pelvis and allows gravity to position the person in a position to help deliver the baby.
Her work grew out of the natural birth movement of the 1970s, when alternatives to standard hospital births were being sought. But she was unconcerned about whether she would give birth at home or in a hospital, or about pain relief. Her focus has always been on her mother.
Simkin surveyed thousands of women about their birth experiences to better train doulas to prepare them for birth. “How will she remember this?” she asked her students.
Early in her career, she supported women who had been traumatized during the birth of their babies and described the experience as if it were rape. Later, she learned that the woman had been sexually assaulted, and her knowledge led Simkin to work with her colleague, psychotherapist Dr. Phyllis Krause, to research the pregnancy experiences of abused women. and how the abuse affected their emotions. Childbirth: How the process of giving birth (for example, being on display in a room full of strangers) is unbearable and how you can make it less unbearable.
Their book, When Survivors Give Birth: Understanding and Healing the Impact of Early Sexual Abuse on Pregnant Women, was first published in 2004.
In 1992, Ms. Simkin was the founder of Doulas of North America (DONA), one of the first organizations to train and certify doulas. “This is now the largest such organization in the world,” said Robin Elise Weiss, current president. In 2004 she was renamed DONA International. Mr. Simkin's co-founder was Dr. Kraus. Annie Kennedy, maternal and child health advocate. Dr. Kraus's husband, Dr. Marshall H. Kraus, a neonatologist, and Dr. John H. Kennel, a pediatrician, are two pediatric researchers.
In the 1960s, Dr. Marshall Krauss and Dr. Kennell studied the mother-infant bond and discovered how newborns develop through contact with their parents. The initiative changes the way hospitals handle births, which for decades had been about removing newborns and their fathers from the delivery room. Two researchers continue to study the role of doulas in childbirth and are the first to recognize how doulas contribute to improved birth outcomes, including shorter labor times and lower C-section rates, among other benefits. I became one of the people who did it.
“Birth never changes,” Simkin told the Chicago Tribune in 2008. “But the way we manage it and the way we think about it has changed.”
Penelope Hart Payson was born in Portland, Maine, on May 31, 1938, the third of six children of hardware store owner Caroline (Little) Payson and Thomas Payson. Penny grew up in Yarmouth, Maine, and studied English literature at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he met medical student Peter Simkin. They married in 1958 when she was a junior.
After graduating, she studied physical therapy at the University of Pennsylvania, and when she and her husband briefly moved to England to study medicine, she observed British physical therapists applying their work to childbirth. . That experience of hers sparked her interest in caring for her mother.
In addition to his daughter Linnie, Mr. Simkin is survived by two daughters, Mary Simkin Mass and Elizabeth Simkin. her son Andrew; She has nine grandchildren (she attended eight births). and five great-grandchildren. Dr. Simkin, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, passed away in 2022.
Ms. Simkin is the author or author of six books, including Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Newborns: A Complete Guide, first published in 1979, co-authored with Janet Worley, Anne Kepler, Janelle Durham, and April Balding. He is a co-author and the book is still available for sale. Over 1 million copies sold. According to her estimates, she had 15,000 people (her mother, her partner, and other family members) prepare for her birth.
“Penny's work has inspired everything I do,” says John, now chief medical officer of Maven Clinic, the world's largest virtual clinic for women and families, and a graduate of Harvard Medical School. said Dr. Neil Shah, a former professor of obstetrics and gynecology.
Dr. Shah, who advises policy makers and institutions on maternal and child care, recalled more than a decade ago when a midwife handed him a copy of Ms. Simkin's Labor Progress Handbook (2000). Ta. At the time, he was a chief resident at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
“I was shocked,” he said in an interview. “It wasn't all cotton candy and rainbows. It was something like, 'Here are positions that make sense, both anatomically and physically, that you can do to help labor progress.' did. One reason for a caesarean section is because labor is not progressing. Humans have been giving birth for a very long time, walking around during childbirth until hospitals abolished it. Penny pointed that out and wrote an entire book about how to support people going through the most amazing experiences in their lives. Things I didn't learn in medical school. ”
Furthermore, he added: “It used to be considered a successful birth if a baby was born with all the fingers and toes intact. But that's a low bar. Penny's greatest gift is the one we all deserve. It gave people the courage to imagine maternity care.”