Sheila Kitzinger
Here you can explore aspects of birth, drawing on things that Sheila has learned from women around the world and her research as a social anthropologist into women's experiences of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding.
Sheila's Work
Sheila Kitzinger campaigns for women to have the information they need to make choices about childbirth. She is a strong believer in the benefits of home birth for women who are not at especially high risk. Sheila is also concerned to give a voice to pregnant women and new mothers in prison and has worked to free them from chains during birth, to keep mothers and babies together unless a woman can be shown to be a danger to her baby, and to provide woman-to-woman help to prisoners during birth.
Sheila Kitzinger lectures to midwives in many different countries. She is honorary professor at Thames Valley University and teaches the MA in midwifery in the Wolfson School of Health Sciences there. She also teaches workshops on the social anthropology of birth and breastfeeding and on unhappiness after childbirth for birth educators and postnatal counsellors, too.
Sheila Kitzinger combines birth activism with research, writing, lecturing and appearing on radio and TV. Her research includes work on women's experiences of antenatal care, birth plans, induction of labour, epidurals, episiotomy, hospital care in childbirth, children's experiences of being present at birth, post traumatic stress following childbirth and the many different messages that touch can give during childbirth
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Sheila Kitzinger died calmly on the evening of 11 April 2015 |
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Last year, Sheila was diagnosed with cancer. After some initial investigation and treatments, she recovered well enough to finish her autobiography A Passion for Birth. When the illness returned, she decided not to have further investigations. Sheila approached death with the same attitude as she did birth - questioning the need for various medical interventions and making her own choices. Just as she believed in thinking about what you would want while giving birth, she also believed in the value of thinking in advance about dying - and making plans. Sheila was cared for at home, as she wished, and that is where she died. On the 12th of April her family carried her body in the brightly decorated cardboard coffin she had requested to a natural burial site for a small private ceremony. We read some of Sheila's own poetry at the graveside and scattered the coffin with earth, sprigs of rosemary and camellia blossom from our lovely garden. In the meantime, thank you for all your kind messages of support for our family, and the powerful testimonies you are sending about the value of Sheila's work and life. As Sheila wrote in one of her own poems:
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