Allison Nash oral history

Interview with Allison Nash, 2/22/21 and 3/1/21 Conducted using Zoom videoconference

ZARA DEHRI: Okay. This is Zara Dehri interviewing Allison Nash. It is February 22,

2021 at 1:24p.m. Mountain Standard Time or 2:24p.m. Central Standard Time. I’m speaking

from Sugar Land, Texas and Allison is speaking from Prescott, Arizona.

So Allison to begin with, um, I guess just you can start with your background for

education and midwifery and how you got started. ALLISON NASH: Um, okay, well, um, my

midwifery started as a lay midwifery practice. We basically were learning as we went along.

We, you know, consumed a lot of books at that time and a lot of - we were

fortunate to have a practicing physician who offered us a lot of assistance. Dr Milton, really,

was the the assistant to the practicing doctor in Austin and, over time, we also acquired some

other doctors, especially pediatricians Dr. Jimmy Justice, Dr Philip Canton - Cantor. I’m not sure I

can - actually can't remember his last name. DEHRI: Do you mind spelling

Dr. Milton’s last name? Sorry. NASH: Railey. I believe it’s R-A-I-L-E-Y.

DEHRI: Okay. NASH: And and the phys- the pediatricians were

Jimmy Justice and Philip Cosen or Cohen. I'm not, unfortunately I’m not exactly sure. I'm pretty

sure it's Cohen, C-O-H-E-N. DEHRI: Yes. Okay.

NASH: But I started out really in Arlington, Texas becoming involved

in the antiwar movement and the great and let us boycott right out of high school. I had met some

people who were involved in that, and it really sparked my interest. I was becoming more aware as

most people were who graduated from high school at that time. The Chicago

debacle with the 1968 Democratic Convention was something that was really visible and brought a

lot of people into questioning what was going on, and of course the war was just dragging on and on

and people were becoming very upset with that so. So I became involved through the anti war movement

and the great and let us boycotts with a group of people in in the Fort Worth, Texas area.

We were very active on the UT Arlington campus and in 1971, participated in the Mayday

demonstration in Washington DC. And in order to participate in that

we coordinated with the Armadillo Mayday Tribe in the Austin, Texas area and became.

I became particularly involved, because I was kind of coordinating the Fort Worth Mayday

participation which was pretty small, Fort Worth being what it was at the time,

and towards the end of April, which was when people were starting to leave for Mayday,

the group I was with kind of, uh, disintegrated and people went but they went independently,

they no longer sort of went as a caravan which was what the initial plan was and. Some people

were buying land in West Virginia, becoming involved in the Back-to-the-land movement, and

so they went up early to, to buy land and to scope out the scene there and then from there went on

to Washington, DC which was very close to West Virginia, and so I ended up without my caravan,

without my little village, so I contacted the Armadillo Mayday tribe, and they they had this big

school bus that was going, and so they stopped in Arlington on their way to DC and picked me up and

they were so, so, um, together, it was really amazing. They had lawyers,

they had housing arranged in the Washington DC area. There was food arranged. It was,

it was really impressive to see the amount of energy and work that went into preparing

for the Mayday organization in Washington DC from the Mayday tribe, from the Armadillo Mayday tribe

so. By the time we got back to Texas, I was like okay I’m out of here I’m not doing I’m

not moving to West Virginia for Back-to-land, I’m moving to Austin to finish school and be with the

Mayday people. And so, you know, once in Austin I again I was involved in the anti-war movement and

one of the things that I had always been a bit interested in was healthcare and People's Free

Clinic was in Austin at the time, and so I. DEHRI: The People's Free Clinic. Okay.

NASH: It’s now called the People's Community Clinic, but it, and it's still going but

initially it was called the People’s Free Clinic. It was on in a church basement on Guadalupe.

And so I started working with them in, I think, in ‘72 or ‘73 as the back room volunteer.

And during my - the backroom volunteers would call people who are waiting in the waiting room

back into the room back to see the doctors. We would weigh them, get their blood pressure,

take their temperature, their pulse, and then just assist the doctor in the back

room and whatever he might need and some of the people who came into the clinic at that time

were young pregnant women and, most of them were going to deliver it Brackenridge Hospital,

which was the county hospital and where people without financial means went to Brackenridge.

But one woman I talked to was planning to have her baby at home, and it really intrigued me

because it was something that I just hadn't even considered or heard of or thought of and

so. We talked a lot about that, I talked a lot about that, with her, and then I got the names

and phone numbers of the people she was having her baby with which was Niki and David Richardson.

So at that time I was taking an American Studies class at UT. This was in the fall

of ‘73. No, it was the spring semester of 73 so it was like February, December, whatever and

one of my classmates who I was friends with was pregnant and I said so Margaret,

“Where are you having your baby?” and she said, “Well, I guess I’ll go to

Brackenridge.” And I said, “Well, you know, that there are people having babies at home.”

And she was like “Really?” and I said “Yeah” and I said “I’ve got their phone numbers”, so

I gave her the phone number, and then the semester was over, and I didn't really hear from her. And

then one day in June I get a call from her and she says, “Allison I’m having my baby at home and I’d

really like it if you would be there and you're the person who helps me with this decision.”

And I was thrilled so I said, “Oh wow, I’ll be there” and I was and

the whole process was just, you know, very moving. It was moving, for me, because I had

been part of my mother's last pregnancy and and was really appalled by what I had seen one time.

DEHRI: Would you like to describe that? NASH: Yes, so at the time we were living in South

Korea. My dad was in the military, um, and we were stationed in Busan, which is in the southern part

of Korea, and it was a very small army base. So there weren't a lot of facilities available.

There was no high school, both of us were in high school, which was my brother and I, at the time

had to travel up every Friday on a train for seven hours from Busan to the main army base,

which was Yongsan in Seoul. And we would live in dormitories Sunday night through Friday

and then Friday afternoon we'd leave school about an hour early and get back on the train

and take a seven hour trip down to Busan where we'd spend the weekends at home.

And also, there was no, there was a dispensary at the small army base in Busan, but there was

no hospital so pregnant women at the time would be given prenatal care at the dispensary and

then about two weeks before their due dates, they would be flown up to Seoul and they would

basically reside at the hospital in the army hospital in Seoul until their babies were born.

This was back before they, you know, did a lot of inducing and, um, medically

doing, you know, encouraging babies to be born, so you would just sit and wait.

And unfortunately for my mother she tended to have for babies

very late and so she ended up sitting and waiting for about six weeks before her baby was born.

Which was, I think, the all-time record for military wives in Busan for going the full.

But after she had a baby she - she'd let me know when she was in labor

and the next morning, I called and they told me the baby had been born.

And so I contacted my brother and said “Let's go see the baby”, and so my brother and I went to the

hospital and we got to peer through the nursery window and see this, you know squalling little or,

absolutely not so little, but squalling nine pound baby boy, and who looked remarkably

battered and bruised and then we went home – back to school - and then after school was over, I said

to my brother “I'm going to go back and see Mom” because we hadn't been able to see our mother and

he said, “Okay well I’m not going to go this time”, so I went by myself to the hospital

and looked at my brother again, the newborn. He looked much better, but still not too impressive

and I went into the hospital room and visited with my mother and the first thing she asked

me when I sat down was “Have you seen him?” and I said “Well yeah we saw him this morning then

just now” and she said, “Well, what does he look like? I haven't seen him yet.”

And I was just filled with this feeling of how wrong this was, that

this woman who'd given birth almost 12 hours before hadn't even seen her own baby and that.

You know that I had my brother who, you know, were have siblings but have not really much

consequence to him had been able to see him twice freely with no problem whatsoever, and yet his own

mother hadn't even laid eyes on him and. It was something that really profoundly impacted me,

I mean, I can still remember to this day how just incredibly wrong it felt. So I think that part of

my interest in home births arose from, from that experience of you know of feeling how wrong the

system was that brought my brother into the world. DEHRI: Mm-hm.

NASH: And at the time, I mean my brother was born in 1967 so in 1973

and 4, when I was first becoming aware of home birth, it had only been six years, I mean he was

still a pretty young child so and things haven't really changed a lot in in the hospital situation.

There were still, you know, routine separation of mothers and newborns.

Very few fathers were allowed into the delivery room. Lamaze was just becoming

something that was even considered credible. So it was it's hard, I think, for people now

to imagine what childbirth was like at that time, but it was very barbaric, in my opinion.

DEHRI: And to many others, I imagine. NASH: Yeah, you know with the sort of

back to earth and alternative lifestyle movement,

it was one of the areas where people were looking at making alternatives within

healthcare. And, um, you know, and the patriarchal system that sort of ruled it.

And and women looking to take back some control over their bodies and their birth

their birth process. And that was sort of how I looked at it. It was interesting because

after Margaret had her baby I, you know, I got in touch with Niki and David who were primarily

involved in, in, in the midwifery in Austin said “Look, I really would like to work with you”,

and they were a little skeptical at first, because I hadn't had a child,

but I told them about my mother's experience, and I think that that made sense to them that I

would be interested and. At the time, they only had one other woman who was working with them.

Her name was Jane Goehring and so they were, they were open to having more people

working with them. David, really, he was a carpenter and, and midwifery was not his

main field but, um. So I think he was happy to have more people involved too, so he could

sort of look at moving back someday into his own field and and leaving midwifery to the rest of us.

But Niki and David had had their baby at home in January of 1974.

At that time the midwife that they were planning to use lived in Houston.

And when they went into labor they called her and she was already at another birth and said

“I don't know that I can make it, but you know call me, and I can help you through the process.”

And so that's pretty much what happened, David delivered Lily, and their daughter, and Mary,

their midwife, arrived an hour or so later and apparently Nikki had had hemorrhaging

and she was able to help them with that, but then approached them and said, “You know,

look, I’ve got several other births in Austin and if this should happen again,

it would be nice to know that there were people who had some experience, who could help out.” So

she brought them along to a few births and then after a few months, not too many, said,

“You know what, I’m moving to Hawaii. So if you want my birth kit, you can have it,

and you know, good luck to you.” So off she went to Hawaii and there were Niki and David

with the birth kit and several women, pregnant women, looking to them for help. So at one of

the births they attended, they met Jane and so Jane joined the pack of midwives at that point,

and then I did, and then over time, there were several other women who became involved.

And so I’m going to give you the names of the women who were involved

early in the early days of A.L.M.A. because, as it progressed many, many more came and then went,

you know, disappeared from site or branched off into their private practice, so the main.

DEHRI: Oh no I just said okay. NASH: Okay, the main midwives

involved in A.LM.A. were Niki and David Richardson, Jane Goehring, MaryMikel Horne,

myself, Kristen Underwood, Cathy Walker and Sara Perkins.

Those are the women who came and ultimately MaryMikel Horne split off and formed her own

group, but that was around 1980, so that was after A.L.M.A. had been together for many years already.

So, that's kind of, I don't know if there's, that's kind of the beginnings of it.

Like I said we have, there were books that we read quite - we got together and had

educational meetings, we taught each other things we knew. MaryMikel was the

nursing student at the time, so she was very helpful with teaching some hands-on stuff and.

We wrote things down and we became very organized, we were really a very

organized group of people. We had meetings every Thursday night at the friends meeting house. Um,

the old friend’s meeting house, which was not far from campus. Taught expectant parents

issues that they would need regarding midwifery. Meetings were mandatory for people who were

planning a home birth and I, we had a booklet that we would distribute that we had put together that

included all of the instructions and people were very compliant. People went to the meetings,

they asked questions. People really understood that they were taking the responsibility to

have their babies at home. Of course, there are a few oddballs that you run into but,

for the most part, people, it was, looked at very seriously, it was not looked at as sort of a lark.

DEHRI: And so it would - oh sorry. NASH: No, I’m waiting for you.

DEHRI: Okay, and so in this time it seems there's, like, a bigger push for home births. Do you think

this was sort of a response to the issues in hospitals, such as, I assume that home births

will also provide emotional care, as well as medical. Would you say that's true?

NASH: Yeah I think it was, you know, women were really in in the hospitals at that time.

You would go into the hospital and you would be laboring in a ward. You wouldn't have privacy,

there was a long room with curtain dividers between you and the person in the next bed.

And some of the rooms with didn't even have curtain dividers. They just had two beds in a

room, you know, in a in a room would be curtain divided, but instead of having a single bed,

there would be two beds, but you could be in a room, laboring with a woman in the bed next to

that you've never met before and. They would allow partners into the laboring rooms at that time,

but they weren't allowed into delivery rooms, for the most part, so the woman would be laboring, you

know, in bed with a partner and perhaps a stranger next to her and that person's partner and,

you know, some people were heavily medicated and other people weren't. It was

rather a nightmarish scene and then, then you would be whisked away into the delivery room where

forceps were pretty common and also medications were very common. It was considered weird not to

have medication. People who wanted a natural birth were ridiculed, you know, within the hospital

system itself, and then, after the baby was born, they were immediately whisked away to the newborn

nursery where they would be for the next four hours, at a minimum, and 12 hours, sometimes,

to stabilize their temperature which, you know, was really not necessary. Then mothers would be

put into a postpartum room which was also not private with other people, and it was not a

comforting environment. Or it was not a supportive environment and it was not an environment that

allowed women to feel, you know, to feel the strength of themselves in the process. It made you

feel very, it made you feel very weak and it made you feel, you know, very beholden to other people.

And so it was not as an environment that most people wanted to find themselves and

so I think that, you know, the idea of having your baby at home was very appealing, at that time,

especially to people in the countercultural movement but as time went on, you know,

more and more people from the Austin area became also interested in having their babies at home.

We did birth for a lot of different groups of people, we did, you know the counterculture

births, we did for it for people in the Radical Left movement. We did births for,

you know, doctors, lawyers and, you know, born again Christians. All different

types of groups of people were interested in having their babies at home as time went on.

And we were quite, there were times when we would have four women in labor all at the same time.

It could get very hectic and very, very busy. DEHRI: And so you had to visit each home

or did you all have a certain location? NASH: Well, most babies were born in their homes.

We had, we would go as a group of two or three midwives to each home.

One of the things people would pick out,

most of the women got their prenatal care through the People's Community Clinic initially

and several of the midwives, myself included, were working at the clinic at the time, so we

would have access to their records. And also, people would fill out cards, where they would

give us, you know, keep their medical information for us to see where we can see how many

pregnancies they had, how long their deliveries took, their blood types, their Rh factors, if

there are any complications like protein or sugar in the urine and we would follow up on that and we

only did low risk deliveries. We didn't do women that were high risk and for those women who were

screened out during the prenatal process. And one of the things that happened at the meetings,

at the meeting house was that different midwives would teach different classes, so the women got

everybody got to meet all the midwives, and then ultimately when they were about between

32 and 36 weeks, we would ask them to choose the midwives that they wanted at their birth, so that

they could get to know each other in a more intimate way.

We would have people, people would invite us to dinners at their home,

so that we can see where they live, drive out to where they live, feel it, you know,

and experience their home and give them tips on, well you'll need to move this or you need to move

that or, you know, make sure you have a childcare person here to take care of your siblings,

but it was. So it was very intimate people knew each other well and sometimes those

friendships endured. I'm still really close friends with a lot of people that I’ve

met because they decided to have their babies at home and we went on to continue a friendship that

was beyond, you know, the midwife client sort of relationship.

And, um, we had, we did a lot of, you know, we offered many different things, I mean in terms

of companionship we would be there as soon as people called in the site and when they felt like

they needed us and, at times, it was a little tough, because when we were first starting out

we were so anxious to be there and to learn that the minute a woman would call and say, “Well I’m

having a little bit of discharge” and 20 minutes later we'd be at her door with all of our bags.

And then we discovered that that really wasn't just a great idea, because it would slow labor

down because people would be entertaining their midwives and not really getting into labor so.

That was one thing we learned that, you know, you can be there too soon, and you can be,

your presence can be too much of a distraction for the women in labor.

Another thing we learned with siblings, initially, we felt like the only way

to avoid sibling rivalry is to make sure that those siblings were there when the baby was born.

So we would haul two-year-old, three-year-old kids out of bed at three o'clock in the morning to make

sure they were there when the baby was being born and sometimes they'd be out howling in a corner,

because they were so exhausted and so freaked out and wanted their moms and moms were busy.

So we learned that, too, maybe not all siblings needed to be there for the birth of the baby,

that it really sometimes was not in the best interest of the sibling or the mother.

And also, one point that was clear to me is that this poor little newborn baby, it has to compete

with the sibling who's there and the poor baby would get no one-on-one attention ever. So that

was another one of those myths that kind of went by the wayside, as we became more experienced

and so. Sorry I’m sort of running out of- DEHRI: Oh, no it’s okay.

NASH: But it was, it was very rewarding for all of us. I think that everybody felt

that they were benefiting in some way or another. Most of the midwives

became involved in midwifery because of their own really terrible birth experiences at the hospital.

Niki, Jane, Sarah, Cathy, and MaryMikel had all had, and Kristin, had all had hospital births

prior to having their second or third babies at home, and so, for them,

it was very personal and very important that they have a different kind of birth experience

and that they shared that with the with the women that they worked with.

And for a lot of people, people came into it for different reasons, so

some of the women who were came into midwifery were coming at it from a spiritual sense,

some of it were coming at it from a political sense, you know, some of it from a personal sense,

but one thing that we really all agreed on was the importance of making sure that the experience

was safe and happy for everybody who encountered it and that we didn't sacrifice either one of

those and that people understood that. And that people understood that, if we said it was time

to go to the hospital that they really, it was really time to go to the hospital.

And that, if we told them, it was okay, they were doing fine and they didn't need to go to

the hospital that that was okay, too. So and we have remarkable,

you know, events occurring, we had a few surprise breaches. There was even the surprise set of

twins at one point in time, I was not involved in that, so I don't really remember much about that.

We had some premature babies that either had to be, the woman had to be transferred

to the hospital or the baby had to be transferred to the hospital after birth.

Because back, you know, at that time, ultrasound was not even a technology, when we started

working so sometimes women would be off on their dates. We had some women who would be

surprisingly premature because they thought they were further along

and other people who would seem to be way overdue because they were also off on their dates.

So there was no, there wasn't a lot of technology in terms of ultrasounds.

Also one of the dilemmas we had was that there was no answering machines, or beepers or

cell phones at the time. Answering machines came down, were available to us fairly early on,

but not beepers and not cell phones so when you were at a birth, you were you were gone.

DEHRI: Yeah. NASH: And if you went to the grocery store you

were gone. So and surprisingly enough, we hardly missed any births and all despite all of that we

still managed to get there, and be there. It was really shocking to me now when I think about it.

We would sometimes, when we would go to a birth if we had other women who were close

to their due dates who were near, we would call and say well we're at so-and-so's birth and here's

her number, if you need us. DEHRI: Whatever works.

So I mean this is great I think that's fantastic that so many people were opting for home births,

but I’m curious, since this was such a, you know, I guess it's strange time, if there were any,

you know, big social issues that you guys ran into or just in general. Considering this was

a pretty counter cultural revolution. NASH: Um, what do you mean by social?

DEHRI: Nothing comes to mind but did you have any big issues that

you -- that were notable or like experiences? NASH: Well, in Texas home birth was totally legal.

DEHRI: Okay. NASH: We would go

to the health department and say “I’m a midwife” and they'd say “Okay”, and then hand you a stack

of birth certificates and you'd walk out the door with a stack of birth certificates

and it was really crazy, I mean that would never happen now, but, at the time it was totally,

“Okay here you go” and so after the baby was born, we would fill out the birth certificate and then

leave it for the parents and the parents would be responsible to go down to town hall and turn them

in. And we did sometimes run into problems where we, you know, get a phone call from someone saying

“Oh, you know. So-and-so is five years old and I’m trying to enroll her in school,

but I forgot to register the birth. And I lost the birth certificate, so can you,

you know, can you help me out?” But, fortunately, we also kept really good records,

and so we were able to work through that but that's happened at awful lot, you know involved in

the newborn aspect of their child's life and just forget about the mundane sort of technical,

you know, aspects of that needed to happen, such as registering the birth.

And some people intentionally didn't register the births, because

they didn't want, you know, the government to know that that child existed.

DEHRI: Oh wow. NASH: So yeah

I’ve had people contact me in their adult life saying “My parents never registered my birth,

and I want to get a driver's license” or “I want to get a passport” and we've had to, you know,

give sworn statements and notarized statements that yes, we attended the birth of this child on

this date at this time and sometimes that got a little tricky because we didn't always have

records going twenty years back so that has happened to me on more than one occasion.

DEHRI: So it was relatively smooth sailing other than those hiccups.

NASH: Right, of course, the medical community was horrified by what we were doing

and they were a little powerless to stop us, but there was always a little bit of fear that

something could happen that you know could be detrimental to you know to home births.

But fortunately, that didn't happen in Texas. But they were pretty horrified by the whole situation

and thought we were all crazy, pretty crazy and sometimes we were concerned that maybe they were

less kind to our women that we had to bring into the hospital because they had planned to

have their babies at home. DEHRI: [inaudible]

NASH: So that was a little bit of a concern at times but usually what we found was quite the

opposite, that the hospital would knock themselves out trying to prove what a great place they were

so that the women would have good stories to share about their hospital experience and,

you know, and spread that around the community. So, but they would, you know, sometimes women

would go in there and have their babies and then want to leave four hours later, and they would

really try to resist that, you know, telling women that they would hemorrhage to death and

their babies could die if they left too early, but on the other hand we did have a few women who

had stillbirths and we would bring them into the hospital and

the hospital, within a few hours after the baby was born, the hospital would have them in a

wheelchair, with a bag of kotex sending them out the door, without any concerns about hemorrhage

whatsoever, so that was pretty, to me, that said a lot that if you had a live baby they wanted you

to stay in, would threaten and warn and scare you, but if your baby your baby was stillborn they were

happy to say goodbye and wave you out the door. DEHRI: It seems

and pregnancy is just one thing out of a million in women's health that seems to go

ignored, like the problems go ignored, but it's good that this was a movement.

NASH: Mm-hmm. DEHRI:

I guess, if you have any other finishing remarks concerning the work that you and A.L.M.A. did or

anything else. NASH:

Well I think that we worked in a really broad community,

working with women from all different walks of life as I’ve mentioned before, from conservative

Evangelical Christians, whose husbands didn't want male doctors touching their women

to, you know, to people who are chiropractors and lawyers and, you know, who were just interested

in an alternative to the current birthing practices that were taking place in the area. And,

and also to our own community of alternative lifestyle and leftist political

women who wanted to maintain the control of their bodies and take back, you know, the power from the

male medical system. Immaculate Deception by Suzanne Arms was a very popular book at that time

talking about the difference, you know, how the sort of medical, industrial complex

worked in to the advantage of others and then The Farm in Tennessee,

The Farm came out with spiritual midwifery during that time as well. One of the early books that we

worked with that we used a lot was called the Birth Book by Raven Lang, who was a midwife

in northern California, who was doing home births in the late 60s and very early 70s

and which was probably the very beginning of the home birth movement out there on the west coast

and it just spread, I mean initially. There was one time when Kristen and I took a trip and we

left from Austin and we went to West Virginia, because there was a woman there who was having

a baby at home, who wanted a home birth, but didn't have anything available in West Virginia,

and that was a friend of mine and a friend of Kristen who lived in Princeton, New Jersey

was having a baby and wanted to have her baby at home, but there were no,

there was no alternative for her so Kristen and I packed up and we went to West Virginia and

that baby was born at the end of May, and then we went to New Jersey and that baby was born in June.

DEHRI: It was a good trip. NASH:

And then we went back to Austin. It was a good trip, it was a very happy trip.

That was the second birth that I had done that was in West Virginia. I had also gone up there myself

a year before that and done a birth, for a good friend of mine.

So if it, but now there's midwives everywhere. Now you can find a midwife and have your baby at home

in West Virginia and in Princeton, New Jersey and Boston, Massachusetts so it was,

it was interesting in those early days when that wasn't something that was very common

or available and they didn't think you were a little bit mental to be having your baby at home.

DEHRI: Well- NASH: But I think I sent you

a lot of papers that showed you how detailed and we were in terms of record keeping and making sure

that women understood that they were undertaking the responsibility to have their baby at home and

that we did not hold ourselves out to be medical experts, but more to be, you know, people who had

worked together and learned and were able to help them, but that ultimately does

the decision to have their baby at home did rest with them. And that they,

they were also responsible to educate themselves to what needed, what they needed to do in order

to have their babies at home. DEHRI: Could you describe

those booklets just a little? NASH: Well, it was it was. Right, it was um,

it, uh, the first few pages detailed our history and our commitment, and I think I

sent you those pages. DEHRI: Yes I’d just

like a description for the interview. NASH: Okay. Oops are you still there?

DEHRI: I am. Don’t worry. NASH: Okay. Okay so after those first few pages,

there was one of, you know well, let me go back, so the purpose of the book was to help people to

in the educational process of the decision to have babies at home, then the then there was a brief

synopsis of our history and our philosophy. And I think in rereading the philosophy

I'm impressed at what we put together at the time and what we put in, there was: “As always,

philosophy is not an easy subject to discuss. We are eight individuals with many different reasons

and thoughts of why we believe in childbirth at home. Many reasons we all share, some are

individual of individual importance. We all firmly believe that each birth is a unique private and

treasured experience for everyone involved. The institutionalized birth process does not allow

for this individuality, nor take into account the right of parental choice. Our bodies are our own

and the freedom of philosophy a birthright.” And then we would, from that point, we would go into

the difference between home and hospital birth. And the importance of attending the prenatal

classes, of getting to know their midwives, and what was required to have baby at home. For

example, there had to be a phone in the home. The birth had to take place within 25 miles or less

from a hospital. If complications arose we needed their commitment to follow our advice on that

and that they wouldn't resist that. And then we would have a series of about eight classes.

And so, each class was detailed in the booklet the first class. The first class would be about

us our history, our philosophy, et cetra. The second class would involve

prenatal nutrition and health. The third was exercise. And from then, every class,

I don't actually have the class outline with me. DEHRI: That’s fine.

NASH: Right, there would be breathing - we would teach lamaze.

And then we would teach emergency childbirth. We taught the actual birth

part of what was needed in the home, what should not be there. For example, you know,

negative family members should not be at the birth, we should only have positive energy,

that kind of thing. The postpartum period we talked about the mother's care

after the birth and the babies care after the birth. And what to be we taught complications,

what type of complications could arise during pregnancy or during the birth process that would

make home birth not a viable alternative for women. And so we, you know, we taught,

a very detailed class and the booklet was theirs to keep and then at the end of the booklet there

were charts that that would be filled out that for birth notes. We’d keep all the birth notes

and in the booklet and also a postpartum chart where people would record temperatures,

the amount of blood loss for the mother, that whether the baby was

voiding or stooling, the baby's temperature. One lesson that we learned was that in Texas, in the

summertime, babies who were breastfeeding should also be offered water. We did have a few baby wind

up in the hospital because of dehydration. So we did learn, you know, that was something we learned

and passed on to people that it was important to make sure they offered their babies water

either through a bottle or an eyedropper during, especially during the summer months.

And then, you know, we would with off and keep in contact, it really is pretty amazing because,

you know, two or three or four years later, you could be walking down the street, and

someone would rush over and with their child and say, you know, “Oh look, this is the midwife who

delivered you!” and, you know, we have this little child looking up at us like oh my God

you’ve got to be kidding and, you know, so, and the mother who we would sometimes

barely recognize because of the changes after pregnancy would be so dramatic.

But it was always, I remember one, one birth I attended. It was a mother who had a little

girl already she's about three years old and the little girl was just a real charming little girl.

She was asleep during the birth, but after the baby was born I came to do the prenatal check.

We would do a check 24 hours after the birth and then three days after the birth. And the reason we

did that, of course, the first check 24 hours was to make sure that the baby had peed, had pooed,

the temperatures were consistent, that the mother's blood loss was within the limit and that

everything was working fine on that front. The three days is that was primarily to make sure the

baby's jaundice was not - that the baby's – if the babies were jaundiced, that it was not seriously

jaundiced and that the milk was coming in and that the mother was not having problems breastfeeding,

and of that nature. So we would do those two home visits. But so on this particular birth, I was

doing the third day visit and I remember knocking on the door and hearings little girls voice going,

“Mommy there's someone at the door” and the mom said “Okay, you can open the door” and so the

little girl opens the door and she sees me and her eyes got as big as silver dollars and she yelled

out to her mother, “Mommy it’s Allison!” And, of course, at this point, I'm trying not to get

you know inflated, but I feel myself my ego sort of inflating a little bit.

And then she looks at me and she kind of whispers and says, “Are you can bring us another baby?”

So it's like a little pin going into the balloon, you know.

DEHRI: Wow. NASH: “No, just one baby.”

Her mom had old her that, you know, in the night Allison came in and brought the baby.

DEHRI: Like a gift. NASH: Right.

Yeah we have some great - I remember another birth with another little three year old girl

who might have - this has been a little girl that whose birth I had attended. And her mom

was having her third baby, her second home birth, and the little girl was not quite three, almost

three and the mom is on the bed, and I was on the bed, and then the little girl is on the bed,

and then she's edging closer and closer to me, and I can suddenly her hip is right up against my

hip and she's trying to shove me away. And it was so cute this little girl, she wanted to be there,

she wanted to have her hands on and she wanted to catch that baby herself. That was really funny.

DEHRI: Oh, wow. NASH: And yeah so some very memorable experiences,

I mean, you know, most of them just truly wonderful and beautiful and I’m forever grateful

to the women who allowed me to be there with them when they had their babies and to share

in that experience, because these experiences are once in a lifetime for everybody involved,

and you know it's it was a gift for all of us and. I, you know, I can never forget that and

treasure that and especially in those early days when we would come with our textbooks and

our notebooks and call around when something happened that we weren't quite sure of, and,

you know, that those women, their trust in us was just really monumental and it's something that we

all appreciated with in great detail. I remember sometimes the women would have their mothers there

and we’d walk through the door with our stack of textbooks and our hair and braids and

most of us were in our 20s, and some of us were in our very early 20s,

and those women would look at us and you can see them just freaking out, you know,

they didn’t say a word. They probably went outside and let out a few screams.

Just terrified that, you know, that their daughters were in a position, and in the women

helping them were barely old enough to drive. DEHRI: What years were you involved in A.L.M.A.?

NASH: From 1974 to 1983. DEHRI: And what does A.L.M.A. stand for? Because

I noticed the booklet had, it was an acronym. NASH: Right. Austin Lay Midwives Association.

DEHRI: That’s good to know. NASH: Yeah.

And during that time, I still maintained my, you know, my political

views and antiwar, anti-nuclear. I remember I left one birth in 1975 to find out that the Vietnam War

was finally over, and, you know, jumping up and down through the streets of Austin celebrating

the end of the war, along with Jacob’s birth. DEHRI: Yeah, must have been a great feeling. Two,

two wins in one day. NASH: Right. Yeah

and in the early days, the very early days, the women who were

having babies would allow all the women who were still pregnant to come to their birth,

to be part of it, and so, in the very early days, I mean you could have 20 or 30 people in

your home. It was a real celebration, and, you know, an anticipation and sort of a community

feeling that you shared with everybody that, you know, an educational experience.

With everybody, and it was a lot of fun, I mean it was, it could be pretty hectic but

we learned quickly that over time, that the party atmosphere wasn't always the best thing

and try to delay it not have people there until towards the end of the experience.

Yeah and it was, it was quite remarkable and like I said, we were lucky to have

some physicians who helped us. I can tell you the story of the very first birth I attended.

DEHRI: I would love to hear it. NASH:

Yeah I don't - I'm going to be a little cautious on names, because I haven't talked to the woman,

and so I don't really have her permission to share that so I’ll just say that it was in July, it was

the former classmate of mine and she had, it was her first baby, so it was a long birth and it was

toward the last week of July, which in Austin has always been known as being the hottest

and most unbearable week of the year. And at that time, central air was not really all that common,

especially among, you know, UT students, we just, you know, sweated it out during the summer.

And Margaret lived in a brick house across the street from the old St David’s hospital, which was

near the UT campus. I can't remember exactly the streets, but so there we all were. She

was in labor. It was fairly early and the labor dwindled through the afternoon

and it progressed, but it progressed slowly and then towards, as the evening started

the labor picked up and her waters broke. And there was bits of meconium in the water,

and at that time that the idea was that if there was any meconium in the fluid at all,

it was a bad sign and the woman should be brought straight to the hospital immediately.

So as soon as the waters broken they saw meconium in it David and Niki said okay that's it,

we have to go to the hospital and since St David’s was just across the street, Margaret

got right up from the bed, you know, put on a pad and she and her husband and David and a few

others of the entourage walked across the street and went over to St David’s and in the meanwhile,

Niki had placed a call to Dr. Railey so she said to me, you know, “You just stay here and let me

talk to Dr. Railey and then, you know, in case you need to go over there and talk to them.” So

I stayed and Niki talk to Dr. Railey and Dr. Railey said,

“Listen if the water is basically clear with just a few flicks of meconium

and the heartbeats okay, then that's not a problem for your home, have the baby at home.”

So Niki looked at me and said, “Okay, you can tell her it's okay to come home,”

so I went flying across the street ran across the yard for St. David’s and when I got there,

there had been this huge number of steps going up to the hospital door

and the lady was sitting in a wheelchair, a nun was behind her holding on to the wheelchair.

They were just about to go through the doors and I go running up the steps and I go,

“It’s okay” out of breath, “Niki talked to Dr. Railey, he said you can come home.”

And there was this brief moment when everything just froze.

The woman's looking at me from the wheelchair. The nun behind her has her mouth open in horror.

Everybody standing still is a statue and then she turns around and looks at the nun says,

“Thank you very much, I think I’m going to go home now.” And she gets out of the wheelchair,

walks down the steps and right next to the steps is this giant pine tree of some sort,

and she just sinks under the pine tree having this huge contraction. Then we walk home and she had a

baby within about a half hour. DEHRI: Oh, wow. Good timing.

NASH: Yeah, so when I left the home, when the birth was over, and I was on my way home,

I stopped by the hospital and told them that the baby had been safely born and everything

was fine. But I’ll never forget the look on that nun’s face as she told her, “Thank you very much,

but I think I’m going to go home now.” DEHRI: All right. This was fantastic.

I appreciate everything you have told me today. I’m going to stop the recording now.

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