Wisdom and Births

Today I reached a tipping point. In recent news we have seen that the rights of women, especially pregnant women, are hardly considered important to the American government and legal system. Not only do women (especially pregnant ones) continue to lose their decision-making rights and autonomy, but corporations continue to receive more and more "rights of personhood"... WTF!?  - With decisions such as Hobby Lobby (a company) getting to claim religious beliefs and deny birth control coverage to female employees.  link - Drug-testing of pregnant women, and if they test positive for drugs, then reporting them to Child Protective Services.  link - Forcing surgery on birthing women for the "safety and rights" of their unborn child.  link - Anti-choice legislation closing down health clinics that provide abortions to women who have decided not carry or give birth to a baby.  link - The shackling of laboring women in prisons. link - Denying women who test positive f...

SOMEONE JUST HAD A NEW BABY, HOW EXCITING!!!!  Now you probably want to go bother the severely exhausted parents and rub your germy nose all over the baby's delicious smelling head... I totally understand! I'm a doula, so I do the same thing ;) Since your desires to meet this new little human MUST be quenched, let me at least give you some tips for making your visit as seamless as possible and increasing your chances of seeing the little bundle of poop again... do you babysit? 10 Tips for Visiting A New Baby: 1. SCHEDULE YOUR VISIT . Ask the parents for a convenient day and time for them and once you agree on a time, stick to it. If you have your own children, then plan a time when you can go without them. Unless you are a very close family member, the midwife, or the doula, plan your visit after the first week, preferably after the second week - the baby will still be adorable, I promise. 2. BE HEALTHY . Do not go visit a new baby when you are sick. PERIOD. Snot running down ...

Being a doula entails the self-less act of supporting a woman throughout the entirety of her labor... and contrary to what you see in movies, labor IS NOT a quick event, sometimes lasting 24, 36, even 48 hours and doulas are there for most of it! As doulas we often join the mother in early labor and we don't leave until a few hours after the baby is born. So, as you can imagine, after countless hours of massaging, hip squeezing, kneeling, standing, walking... doulas are exhausted (to say the least) after providing labor support.  Not to mention trying to remember to eat and stay hydrated is often overlooked or minimally attended to as we often put the mother's needs before our own.  So not only is your body working hard for a full day (or more!), but it is doing so with less water and calories than typical.  Somehow, though, the energy of the birth keeps you going for as long as you are needed... but once the birth is over and you are headed home, the extreme fatigue sets...

Unassisted childbirth is just what it sounds like - giving birth without any 'professional' assistance. Very few women decide to give birth unassisted, it's like the 1% of the 1% of women who give birth at home... but the experiences of those who do are important - their reasons, are valid. So why would some women decide to give birth unassisted? To find out, a large group of women who have given birth unassisted, many of which have had other birth experiences with doctors, and/or midwives, shared their primary reasons for choosing a freebirth. Here are some of their reasons for choosing to stay home and give birth alone. Some women expressed anger, frustration, even resentment towards the medical model of birth as the driving factor in their decision to give birth alone. "Anger at medical professionals and trusting myself to provide better care." " I hoped I would be able to bond with my baby this time (never did before). I also hoped for less emot...

There isn't enough information on statistics and experiences of planned unassisted childbirth... so I've set out to remedy that.  Even though about 1% of women give birth at home, and therefore far less women actually choose to give birth 'unassisted', it is important to hear from these women. We should know about their birth experiences, their reasons for choosing to birth without 'professional' assistance, and the statistics that come from their births. For one, because freebirth may actually be our evolutionary 'norm' - the conditions in which our bodies evolved to give birth.   "Ideally the newborn needs to interact with a mother who has given birth by herself and is therefore in a specific physiological state... to give birth a woman needs to feel secure, without feeling observed, and be in a warm enough place... the birth process needs to be protected against all stimulants of the neocortex."   ~Dr. Michel Odent, Childbirth a...