Suzanne Arms

Arms was born in Summit, New Jersey,[1] and grew up on the East Coast of the United States.[2] Her parents were both teachers.[1] She received a BA in literature from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. She moved to Marin County, California to work as a teacher in nursery schools and in the Head Start Program.[1]

Her first book, A Season to be Born, was published in 1973. It was a diary of the birth of her daughter, with photographs by the baby's father, John Arms.[1]

A second book, Immaculate Deception: A New Look at Women and Childbirth in America, appeared in 1975, which became a best-seller, was a New York Times Best Book of the Year;[3] By 1979, it had sold more than 150,000 copies.[2]

Arms has described the precautions against risk in obstetric wards in the West as "just-in-case obstetrics".[4]

In 1978, with six other women, Arms started a birth center, The Birth Place, in Palo Alto, California; it was organized much as she had proposed in her 1975 book. It became a state-licensed facility in the year 1979.[5]

Arms has made documentary films on pregnancy and birth: she shot, directed, and produced Five Women, Five Births in the 1970s;[2] Giving Birth (35') was made in 1998.[6] She also directed and co-produced the film "Birth" with Christopher Carson, which is critical of the medical-pharmaceutical-hospital approach to birth, proposing a different approach.

Arms has been awarded the Lamaze International Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to the field of childbirth.

• Suzanne Arms, John Arms. A Season to Be Born. New York: Harper & Row [1973]
• Suzanne Arms. Immaculate Deception: A New Look at Women and Childbirth in America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975 (reprinted 1977, 1985)
• To Love and Let Go (1983)
• Adoption: A Handful of Hope (1985)
• Seasons of Change: Growing Through Pregnancy & Birth (1993)
• Immaculate Deception II: Myth, Magic and Birth (1994 & 1997)
• Breastfeeding: How to Breastfeed Your Baby (2004)