Conference Faculty

Lori Barklage

Lori Barklage is wife of 21 years to Ken; Mother to Travis (15), Andrea (13) and Nicole (11). Her birth experiences range from hospital to home birth including the loss of twins in one pregnancy.  Her family works, schools, and travels together while Lori uses her love of design and information sharing to help create video and audio learning opportunities, set up ecommerce sites, and design as well as promote websites. She is a La Leche League Leader, a Certified TAT® Trainer, and the owner of RedCartSolutions.com.  Through La Leche League Lori has been able to share her love of mothering for over 8 years on both the local and state level — as a Local Group Leader, NC Online Communications Administrator, NC Area Council member, and the NC LLL Area Historian. Lori has been a speaker at NC LLL Conferences on topics ranging from ‘Introduction to TAT’ to ‘Mothering the Mother’ and ‘Safe Sleep while Nursing’. Lori has been using TAT since 1996, and became certified as a TAT Trainer in 2004. In addition to helping individuals with TAT, Lori has been a speaker at the International TAT Symposium, led TAT Basics Workshops, and assisted at workshops given by the founder of TAT, Tapas Fleming. Lori is web administrator of the TATLife website – a source of TAT information, online video/audio training, and support for an international community of TAT Professionals and TAT Trainers.

Lisa Barrett

Lisa has been a midwife for over 20 years. She trained in the UK and worked there gaining experience both in a maternity unit and in the community until 2002 when she, her husband, and 4 children made the big decision to move to Australia.

She is a midwife in the community and holds the space for women to birth in the most natural way. She is an advocate for birth, encouraging women to take their power into their own hands and trust the most basic and normal process of her life.

She takes pride in her ability to encourage women to hold onto their birth spirit in every normal variation of birthing. Over the past 10 years she has become more interested in the lost skills of breech birth and talk all over the country on the importance of keeping these births normal. In her life as a midwife she has spent time studying and learning about birthing women but find the need for endless qualification and research takes away from our ability to trust birth and admire the process of procreation.

Dr. Elliot Berlin, DC

Dr. Elliot Berlin is an award winning prenatal chiropractor. He has established himself as an innovative out-of-the-box thinker seeking and discovering natural solutions for some of the most difficult and mystifying ailments. The success of his alternative infertility program led to the development of a comprehensive prenatal and postpartum care program. Combining his talents together with acupuncture, nutrition, mental health, craniosacral therapy and other modalities, Dr. Berlin founded the Berlin Wellness Group. In 2008 he launched the Informed Pregnancy Project to spread accurate information about normal labor and birth and the choices that women have (or should have) regarding pregnancy, labor and delivery. To fulfill this mission Dr. Berlin has lectured to groups of birth professionals, appeared on Fox News, and multiple birth related television programs, developed an extensive video website and is currently completing an Informed Pregnancy book co-authored with a medical doctor. Dr. Berlin lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

Heather Brock

The first home born child of Carla Hartley, Heather has been a lifelong advocate of home birth. Her long career as a ballet dancer and a certified pre and post natal fitness expert has led her to a deeper understanding of the incredible power of a woman’s body. Heather has had three children at home, one midwife attended and two unassisted births.

Dr. Sarah Buckley, MD

Sarah J Buckley is a family physician (GP), with qualifications in GP-obstetrics and family planning; a writer and lecturer on pregnancy, birth and parenting; and currently full-time mother to her four children, all born at home. Sarah’s book, Gentle Birth Gentle Mothering: A Doctors Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices is published in the US and worldwide by Celestial Arts.

Sarah brings a unique and powerful blend of solid scientific, anthropological and psychological perspectives, along with a deep trust in the natural processes. Sarah’s writing and lectures have been acclaimed worldwide for their clarity and common-sense, and her work is helping to restore faith and trust worldwide in women’s bodies and their superb capacities. Sarah’s articles have been published in midwifery and parenting books and magazines internationally, including Mothering magazine, Midwifery Today, MIDIRS midwifery Digest (UK), and the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, and she has lectured in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada.

Lennon Clark

Lennon Clark is a mother and a midwifery student with Ancient Art Midwifery Institute and is currently practicing as a homebirth midwife. Midwifery has been a part of her life for over 8 years, after attending the hospital birth of her sister-in-law. Her passion in birth centers around using evidence based knowledge and common sense to intervene less, supporting mothers to birth their babies unhindered and in peace. She is the coordinator for AAMI’s Introduction to Midwifery course. In addition to her midwifery work, Lennon is also enjoys supporting nursing mothers as a La Leche League leader. She has 2 sons, born at home, a 17 year old step-son, and is happily married to her love, Walter. They live in the city of Salem, located in the beautiful Willamette Valley in Oregon.

Dana Combest

Dana Combest, co-founder of With Woman, has been a practicing midwife since 1978; she is a Licensed Midwife in Washington State (since 2001) and a Certified Professional Midwife. Additionally, she is a Certified Childbirth Educator, Lactation Counselor, and Labor Assistant. Dana served as the Academic Director for Ancient Art Midwifery Institute from 1994 until 2005, and its Field Opportunities Coordinator since 2004. She teaches introductory classes in neo-traditional & modern midwifery skills around the US. Dana has worked in and/or accompanied students to maternity clinics in Jamaica, Senegal, and Honduras. Dana firmly believes that the future of midwifery lies in the knowledge and skills of the past blended with current evidence-based practices.

Heather Cushman-Dowdee

Heather Cushman-Dowdee is the creator of the webcomics Hathor the Cowgoddess and Mama is… Over the past 7 years she has created 500+ comics about attachment parenting, she has published 4 books, and has had her work reproduced in countless books and periodicals. She’s the crunchy-urban mother of four precociously exuberant children and happily together (20 years!) with an ocean-loving man. She divides her time between unschooling the kids, breastfeeding the baby, passing out kisses and hugs, expounding on her belief system, reading on the beach, going for long walks, drawing with magic markers, and staring at a computer. She is fighting a losing battle to be a neo-luddite.

Heather Cushman-Dowdee, long-time creator of the comic, Hathor the Cowgoddess, is now creating all new comics over at www.mama-is.com. Come by and see what’s happening, last I heard Mama is… breastfeeding her new baby!
AND, you can still see all of the Hathor comics at www.thecowgoddess.com, too.

Carol Denny

Carol Denny is the Founder/President of Helping Mothers & Babies Incorporated. She has traveled to Central America and Africa teaching midwifery and health care classes in remote communities. She is a licensed midwife in the state of Arizona. She is a Certified Professional Midwife and a Qualified Evaluator (QE) through North American Registry of Midwives (NARM). She is also a Certified Childbirth Educator. She graduated from Ancient Art Midwifery Institute in 1997. She has attended over 550 births. She has been a CPR Instructor for both American Heart Association and American Red Cross. She has served on the board of Arizona Association of Midwives for 8 years as Treasurer, Secretary, and Vice-President, and has also served on numerous Peer Review Committees. She has been married for 25 years, has 8 children, and 4 grandchildren.

Jane Drichta

Jane is the co-owner of Equinox Healing Arts in Seattle, Washington. She offers prenatal and postpartum massage, doula services, childbirth education, birth trauma counseling, and breastfeeding support and education. She is a Certified Birth Doula and a Certified Prenatal and Postpartum Bodyworker. VBACs, herbalism and homeopathy are of special interest to her.

Patricia Ann Edmonds

Patricia Ann Edmonds is a certified midwife in Forest Grove, Oregon.  She has been practicing midwifery since 1976.  She is a published author of “Into My Hands:  A Birth Record for Midwives,” “The Birth Guardian:  A Record Book for Doulas,” and “The Placenta:  A Guide to Examination;” and, she is the editor of “Birthing” a Midwifery newsletter in her state.  Patricia is on the faculty of many midwifery organizations and schools and has a tremendous amount of knowledge to share with all who will listen.

Dr. Tiffany Fernandez

Dr. Tiffany Fernandez is chiropractor and mother of two, who is certified in Webster Technique for expecting mothers. She and her husband, Dr. Louis Fernandez, have a family practice in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Dr. Tiffany loves to see the power of chiropractic care at work in all her patients and has a special place in her heart for those who are expecting. She experienced first hand the difference Webster Technique can make in comfort and for baby positioning during her second pregnancy and Home VBAC labor. She is a proud supporter and advocate of local and international midwives and believes strongly in the rights of women around the world to choose how and where they birth their babies.

Dr. Paul Fleiss

Claire Hall

Claire Hall opened her own midwifery practice in 2005, after working in Africa and Australia. She assists women in achieving a natural physiological birth at home. She published her first book, Woman’s Birth Power in 2009, hoping it will help women find their power in their births.

She has diplomas in theology and intercultural studies, and lives with her husband and two beautiful homeschooled sons.

Gail Hart

Gail Hart graduated from a midwifery training program as a Certified Practical Midwife in 1977. She accumulated a variety of certifications over the years; she was a Certified Midwife through the Oregon Midwifery Council, and an LDEM in the state of Oregon. She is now “semi-retired”, and no longer maintains her license, but still keeps active with a small community practice.

Gail is strongly interested in ways to holistically incorporate evidence-based medical knowledge with traditional midwifery understanding.

Carla Hartley

Carla is the proud mother of four, mother-in-law to three, and Baba to six, and wife to her long-suffering, extremely supportive husband of more than 36 years.

Pamela Hines-Powell

Pamela Hines-Powell, CPM, is a homebirth midwife in Salem, Oregon. Her evolution towards gentle, unhindered birth has been a winding path of unlearning and re-learning, resulting in continued personal empowerment. Her blog may be found at www.sagefemme.blogspot.com and her practice website at www.SalemMidwife.com.

Amanda Hofeditz

Amanda Hofeditz is a doula, student midwife, and natural living advocate who lives just outside of Boulder, Colorado. She homeschools her three children and co-owns a web design and hosting company with her husband, Joe.

Laureen Hudson

Laureen is a blogger, a website manager, and an enthusiastic geek enabler who came to birth advocacy as the voice of the consumer. She’s spoken before capacity crowds at birth, engineering, and geek conferences, webinars, gatherings, and hackfests on the topics of new media, communications, online communities, social web, and publication, and consults for worthy projects, such as this conference, on cloud computing and SEO. She’s a scuba instructor, a sailor, a traveler, and an obsessive researcher, who’s chiefly focused on, and delighted with, her husband Jason, and her children Rowan, Kestrel, and Aurora. They live on a 47′ catamaran, s/v Excellent Adventure, in the San Francisco Bay.

Terri LaPoint

Terri LaPoint is a mom, doula, childbirth educator, and student midwife with Ancient Art Midwifery Institute.  She has been a La Leche League Leader and a Breastfeeding Peer Counselor. She also teaches workshops that provide opportunity for healing for women who have had traumatic birth experiences.  In her life before midwifery, she was a Bible college graduate from Toccoa Falls College in Georgia. She has always had a passion for study and learning about what Scripture says as originally written in the original languages. When the birth-bug bit, she started digging deeply in Scripture and history to see if there was more to learn about God’s view of birth and breastfeeding. She found that there is oh, so much more!

Gloria Lemay

She lives in Vancouver, B.C. and travels all over N. America and to Australia in her role as a teacher and speaker. Visit her website to learn more: http://www.glorialemay.com

Jody McLaughlin

She became a maternity care reform activist when the cesarean section rate at their local hospital reached a whopping 10%. Jody has served on many committees and boards as an advocate for maternity care reform, as well as being asked to resign from her volunteer position with the March of Dimes. She also co-wrote the first Genital Integrity legislation to pass into law— www.BoysToo.com.

Jody and her husband Tim have two daughters, two sons-in law and going-on two grandchildren. They live in Minot, North Dakota where Jody has published The Compleat Mother Magazine of Pregnancy, Birth and Breastfeeding since 1989 www.CompleatMother.com.

Dr. Jeanne Ohm

Dr. Ohm’s professional mission is to provide Doctors of Chiropractic with the skills and motivation to care for more pregnant mothers and children. She is committed to educating other practitioners with the information to support natural birthing in their practices. It is her understanding that birth trauma is a current concern, and therefore it has become her goal to eliminate its damaging effects on the newborn. Dr. Ohm is married to Dr. Thomas Ohm, Chiropractor. They have six children who have all received chiropractic care since conception. They were all born at home.

Jodilyn Owen

Jodilyn Owen is a student midwife with Ancient Art Midwifery Institute, specializing in newborn assessment through the Brazelton Institute. She is a seasoned doula and childbirth educator, and Parenting from the Inside Out teacher. She is currently in her second year of apprenticeship in Seattle, Washington with a busy homebirth practice.

Jodilyn has a husband of 16 years, three children and a dog in her life and loves the outdoors, boxing, reading, time with girlfriends and knitting.

Emily Reeves

Emily is the mom of two and a half year old, Abigail, and recent addition, Ryan. Abigail arrived by scheduled and unnecessary cesarean; Ryan arrived unassisted on the bathroom floor mat. In May 2006 Emily completed Ancient Art Midwifery Institute’s Introduction to Midwifery course and plans on enrolling in Advanced Midwifery Studies. Emily has a Bachelor’s degree in Deaf Studies and worked as an American Sign Language interpreter before becoming a mommy.

Debby Sapp

Debby Sapp has been active in breastfeeding and birth since the late 70s. She is a graduate of Ancient Art Midwifery Institute’s Advanced Midwifery Studies, (March, ‘08, with honors) with an emphasis in newborn care and lactation. She is a Certified Lactation Counselor through the Academy of Lactation Policy and Practice, (certificate expires June 30, 2010). A former homebirth midwife, she now works as a childbirth educator, doula, CLC, and herbalist and is continuing her studies through the Clinical Herbalist course with Naturally Healthy. Debby has been married to Duane Sapp for almost 34 years, has 5 children and 2 grandchildren.

Margaret Scott

Laura Shanley

Laura Shanley is a writer, speaker and author of the book, Unassisted Childbirth.

She and her dog Molly live in Boulder, Colorado where Laura maintains a web site devoted to the topic of unassisted childbirth, www.unassistedchildbirth.com. She also writes periodically about the joys, trials and tribulations of being an unassisted birth activist in her blog, www.laurashanley.blogspot.com.

Karen Strange

Midwife and creator of The Midwifery Management of Neonatal Resuscitation. Karen lectures on the baby’s experience of birth its journey and the impact of when things do not go as planned. She shares tools for the family, therapist and birth attendant to help babies integrate what happens at birth and beyond. She has taught throughout the US and internationally.

Her website is www.newbornbreath.com.

Sheila Stubbs

She has experienced a cesarean section, hospital VBAC, three homebirths, and an unassisted homebirth of a premie. She’s been a doula at several homebirths, HBAC’s (homebirth after cesarean), and UBAC’s (unattended birth after cesarean).

Sheila has been involved with La Leche League for over 25 years and has over 200 months of personal breastfeeding experience. She is a member of ICAN, the International Cesarean Awareness Network, and Lactnet, the online resource for lactation specialists. Her ‘other’ nursing experience is in psychiatric nursing, community nursing and pediatric nursing. Both of these nursing backgrounds give her a passion for the rights of mothers and their babies. In her free time she moderates two online community lists for those concerned about potentially dangerous “infant management” parenting philosophies.

Sheila has been married to Bert for 30 years. They are also foster parents to children with special needs, and host parents to International Students.

www.birthingtheeasyway.com

Debby Takikawa

Debby is the producer and director of What Babies Want, an award winning documentary film about babies. A chiropractor by formal training, Debby Takikawa founded the nonprofit organization, Beginnings, Inc. in 2001 as a way of supporting a nonprofit clinic and teaching facility. The purpose of the clinic was to serve children and their families who were challenged by attachment issues, birth trauma, and other health challenges. The clinic was also a teaching facility serving intern candidates for the MFT program. The organization had a mandate for public outreach and education, and it was through this arm of the nonprofit that Debby set about to make the film that ended up to be What Babies Want. She is also co-author with Carrie Contey PhD, of the What Babies Want parenting book series, the first of which has been recently published: CALMS, A Guide to Soothing Your Baby. Debby lives on an organic flower and vegetable farm with her husband and her extended family. To learn more, or to make contact with Debby, visit her website at www.whatbabieswant.com email debwbw@yahoo.com

Jenny West

Jenny taught traditional childbirth classes at two local hospitals for five years, and continues to teach private childbirth preparation classes and infant CPR. In 1999, Jenny became certified to teach American AquaNatal and HypnoBirthing® classes.

She just retired from being the Peer Review Coordinator for all New Mexico licensed midwives after 13 years, is currently a preceptor, and a board-member for the National College of Midwifery in Taos.

Kristi Zittle

Kristi Zittle is blessed to have been happily married for 19 years to the love of her life, Steve.  She has 10 living children whom she has home schooled from kindergarten up. Her oldest daughter recently married and blessed Kristi with her first grandchild in October.  In addition to having a wonderful family, Kristi has been fortunate enough to earn a B.S. in Education from Towson University and work on a Nursing degree at Norfolk State University.  During the pregnancy of her fifth child, Kristi’s interest in midwifery and herbs began.  She spent the next 9 years practicing in several states.  She has a great love in learning about nutrition, herbs, alternative health care such as chiropractic and acupuncture as well as recognizing the body’s ability to heal itself.  She is especially focused upon our natural immunity and the effects of vaccinations, as well as helping others to deal with grief and loss whether from a professional perspective or personal.  Having suffered the loss of twins herself and walking through the valley of death with a few of her clients, she is particularly adept at understanding the unique grief a mother and midwife endures.  After helping many women over the years, she stopped practicing midwifery in the fall of 2008 but continues to consult and help women make wise choices for themselves and their babies.  She has a great passion and joy for  teaching and has been fortunate enough to join staff with Ancient Art Midwifery Institute as one of the instructors for their comprehensive and thorough Midwifery Skillslabs.  As a result of this endeavor, Kristi has been blessed with wonderful new relationships in seven different states thus far in since May 2009 and is greatly anticipating many more opportunities for teaching and relationship building in the months and years to come with this new position!