The Director of BirthAction, Shannon Mitchell has a loving husband, Brian, and three daughters and one son who will one day bring home a girl she doesn't know!
Shannon likes to reflect on her births as a continuum. She first experienced birth as a teenager with a cesarean for breech, then followed with a medicated hospital birth, a second hospital VBAC that was unmedicated and an out of hospital birth. Her births shaped her life and in her progression from mother to advocate, she became a doula, childbirth educator and lactation counselor. Shannon served for over five years as the Information Services Director for the International Cesarean Awareness Network, for two years as Vice President for Florida Friends of Midwifery, and has volunteered for numerous birth and pregnancy information groups while continuing to teach outreach childbirth education classes at various local pregnancy centers. She also has a dedicated love of history and teaches at a homeschool co-op once a week for a bit of change of pace. When asked why she chooses to continue fighting to educate women about all of their choices in birth, she simply states, "I have three daughters, which one would you like for me to pick to have a cesarean?" In recent years, her decision to help create BirthAction was a reaction to the lack of women responding to the care they are receiving. Her strongest desire is to create a place where women can point other women in order to find tools to change the care they receive from the simplest desire to eat while in labor to a refusal for major surgery without threat of legal action.
Michelle, BirthAction's secretary, is a mom to two girls. Her journey to being a birth advocate began with the unnecessary cesarean of her first child. She realized then that there was something amiss with the maternity health care system and women's response to it. She has since had a VBAC with her second child and is dedicated to helping women to empower themselves thorough support and education.
Jessica Tiderman, the webmistress of BirthAction.org and BirthAfterCesarean.com, is a wife and mom of 4 girls and 1 boy. She has had 2 c-sections, one of which was an Inverted T and both of which were traumatic in different ways. She has since VBAC'd twice, once with and once without independent midwives. Her areas of interest are the special incisions (Classical, Inverted T, J, low vertical, etc.), VBAC after special incisions and breech birth. She is a student midwife and birth advocate because it matters! She created and maintains the Special Scars ~ Special Women Yahoo group.