Wisdom and Births

What your pregnancy and birth care provider believes about birth WILL directly influence your birth experience. Whether it is not feeling supported because your doctor doesn't believe women can give birth without intervention; having your trust in yourself, your body and your baby undermined because the doctor is constantly searching for a sign of something wrong with the pregnancy or labor; or, the unhelpful pressure to just accept the epidural, or schedule the induction, you've waited too long for that baby (and they have a vacation coming up). An Obstetrician is trained as a surgeon. Trained to handle complications and emergencies during pregnancy and birth. ...but the majority of births will occur without complication. So what good does it do to have the majority of women attended and cared for by a surgeon? Especially a surgeon who doesn't believe birth works, without their interventions, most of the time!? It does us absolutely NO GOOD. In fact, it is the opposit...

It seems to make sense that "bed rest" during pregnancy, especially one that is threatening preterm labor or other complications, would be helpful. I mean, wouldn't staying in bed, rather than doing her normal activities, be a good thing for a mother and her baby? The answer is NO. Bed rest actually increases risks for the mother and baby and causes a great emotional and financial toll on many families. Understand that this is only referring to complete activity restriction and strict bed rest, not to say that pregnant women should not rest. You should listen to your body and rest when you need to, always. The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology published 3 articles in its recent June 2013 issue about bed rest and the unethical use of this practice. Let's take a look at the research and put this issue to rest ! THE ROOTS OF BED REST   (1) Historically, bed rest was intended for orthopedic ailments, but quickly spread to all areas of medicine, without question of it...

I was reading through all the comments on the Reddit post "what was marriage like in the first year?" and one of the most maddening (or saddening) recurrent themes was that of newly-wed couples who had had a baby together in their first year of marriage and felt the financial toll of having the baby was SO GREAT - it sometimes ended up causing major rifts in their relationships. Without fail, every post in which the Redditor described how children were the trigger of their financial downfall, they mentioned how expensive FORMULA AND DIAPERS were... *head smack* Babies aren't expensive... the crap we buy for them is! The choices we make about what we feed our baby, what we diaper and clothe them with, etc. Major corporations are making a huge profit off of American families, off of people like you and me, because their advertising works. We pass up the free, cheap, and often healthier options for the products we see advertised - in our face - everyday.   Babies do not ne...

  Happy One Year to Wisdom and Birth! WOW! I can't believe my birth blog is already One Year Old! I had wanted to start a birth blog for many years, but just never got around to learning how to conquer the IT nightmare that technology can be for me. Finally, with a little inspiration from a friend, I conquered the web and created Wisdom and Birth in July of 2012! My blog began simply, with a few posts of things I had created in the past, such as my DONA position paper and a book review, but I was lost with where to start and how to write to my new (and at the time non-existent) audience. Now, I have over 30 published posts and I am reaching out of the comfortable and safe topics (such as natural nipple creams ) and into the controversial ones like Ultrasounds and Pitocin ! When I began blogging as Wisdom and Birth I wasn't sure how much of my "voice" I wanted to put into my blog and how much of it I wanted to leave as "professional". You see, with my Bachel...