The David B. Cheek Memorial Lecturer 2001
Leo Sorger, M.D.

APPPAH created the David B. Cheek Memorial Lecture on Psychosomatic Obstetrics in 1997 to honor an esteemed colleague and to assure that his work will be long remembered. David Cheek, who died in June 1996 at the age of 84, was a pioneering obstetrician who illuminated the realities of infant consciousness at birth and invented new approaches to birth trauma, premature birth, and infertility. David was a beloved and loyal member of APPPAH, served on the board of directors for five years, and was a popular speaker at congresses.

David spent fifty years caring for pregnant women, taught clinical hypnosis to physicians, psychologists, and dentists in the United States and abroad, served as the 6th president of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, and published fifty papers and books that remain milestones in pre- and perinatal psychology and health.

The inaugural lecture in this series was given at the 1997 congress in San Francisco by renowned pediatrician Marshall Klaus, M.D. In 1999 the lecturer was physician, psychologist and researcher Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D, Ph.D. This year we honor obstetrician Leo Sorger.

Trained in both Germany and the United States, Leo is an exemplary holistic obstetrician-gynecologist who has served women and babies for 42 years. Since 1971 he has been a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology practicing in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and, most recently in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. For over twenty years he served as a clinical instructor at Boston University Medical School.

During his career Leo has been a dedicated proponent of natural, upright birth, attending hundreds of home births and providing backup for home birth midwives in both the United States and the Virgin Islands. A journalist once described him as "a midwife with a beard." In Massachusetts he was one of the first physicians to employ a midwife in his practice. Dedicated to reforms in obstetrics, he has served on many advisory boards including Doctors Opposed to Circumcision (D.O.C.) and the International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN).

In his introduction of Dr Sorger, David Chamberlain reminded the audience of several notable statistics. Leo was a pioneer in alternative birth in New England where he did hundreds of home births. As a strong proponent of Cesarean prevention, he helped over a thousand women to have VBAC's with a success rate of over 80%. Leo has done over 500 vaginal breech births and several hundred external versions, yet his episiotomy rate is less than 3%. Under his care, over 3,500 women have delivered in the squatting position. This was a case of practicing what he preached because he was co-author of an article, "The Squatting Position for the Second Stage of Labor: Effects on Labor and Maternal and Fetal Well Being" published in Birth, 20 (2), in June 1993.

You may have seen him on the cover of Birth Gazette magazine, in the films Hello Baby and Once a Cesarean... or in the videos Channel for a New Life, and Baby Joy featuring the birth of his son by Elizabeth Noble in a hot tub in the garden of their home in Cape Cod. Leo wrote the Foreword to Silent Knife by Nancy Cohen and was medical consultant to Elizabeth Noble's books Having Twins and The Joy of Being a Boy.

David B. Cheek would surely applaud the selection of Leo Sorger to speak to us about psychosomatic obstetrics.