American Naissance: Journey with a Friend (a Lamaze childbirth without pain)

Note: this film was digitally converted in 2015 from a deteriorated print. The sound and visual aspects are greatly improved after 2:30 minutes. Flora Hommel (first seen at 3:00) promoted Childbirth Without Pain (the Lamaze psycho-prophylactic method of painless childbirth) with this film, co-produced in 1970 by filmmaker Wil Berg.

Wil and his wife Edith are also the subjects of the film as they prepare for the birth and attend Lamaze classes in Cleveland. The film concludes with the birth of their child.

While Childbirth Without Pain Education Association (CWPEA), the organization, is no longer active, its history, the training materials, three decades of monthly newsletters, key correspondence of the movement that promoted the Lamaze method, along with thousands of mother-written birth reports, are housed at the archives of the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit.
http://reuther.wayne.edu/node/9274

Flora Suhd Hommel was one of the pioneers who brought the Lamaze psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth to the United States, establishing an important teaching organization in Detroit, the Childbirth Without Pain Education Association (CWPEA). She championed the rights of women to control childbirth, creating a grass-roots movement contemporaneous with the women’s movement of the 1960s-1970s. Hommel and the CWPEA were important catalysts in establishing similar childbirth and parenting organizations and teacher-monitrice accreditation programs across the United States.

Hommel's papers reflect her career working with the Lamaze method. Most of the collection is comprised of CWPEA documents and correspondence from its establishment through the 1990s-- records of events, classes and projects, including the making of an American version of the well-respected French childbirth film “Naissance.”

A celebration of Flora Hommel "labor of love" can be viewed at https://youtu.be/IplaVZ_RhWQ.

The Flora Hommel Collection of CWPEA documents and personal correspondence are described at http://reuther.wayne.edu. /node/9274)

More about Flora Hommel and the Lamaze Method in the US is posted at https://cwpea.workinginconcert.org/

Make your contribution to the ongoing legacy, research, and archives of Childbirth Without Pain Education Association (CWPEA) at http://www.workinginconcert.org/CWPEA/FloraForm.html.
You can also order there a DVD of the three films in this playlist for a modest donation.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/naissan.... Physical copies of the 16 mm film are on file at Bibliothèque de l’Université Laval
Québec, QC G1V 0A6 Canada; Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe in Cambridge, MA, and Wayne State University Archives, Detroit, MI.