title: From psychoprophylactic to orgasmic birth.
abstract: The assumptions on which educators based childbirth education principles were valid when psychoprophylactic birth became available. Yet, educators and health-care providers have changed their assumptions about birth as they have learned more from the midwifery model of care, how women want to give birth, and how capable the body is to give birth. Educators' teaching must now emphasize the synchrony of hormones that facilitates birth, the Sphincter Law, and the sharing of woman-to-woman stories throughout the generations if birth is to be set in its rightful place-in the hands of the mothers.
authors.affiliation: BARBARA A. HOTELLING is a perinatal nurse and nurse practitioner at the Family Medicine Center of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill. She has served as President of Lamaze International, President of DONA International, and Chair of the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services.
authors.forename: Barbara A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Hotelling