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...

In March of 2010 I interviewed my maternal Grandmother Ann ( Nana) as a part of my birth Doula certification project. Now, many years later and a few years after her passing, I'd like to share her story.  This really isn't a positive or uplifting birth story and it isn't meant to be. Rather, my grandmother's story represents what many women and babies experienced as routine hospital birth in the 1950s and 60s. I wish this was a positive story, but my grandmother gave birth in a country and time that did not fully respect the importance of pregnancy, birth, bonding and the experience of motherhood. My grandmother was 26 years old in 1957 when she gave birth to her first born, my Aunt M. She re-lived this experience with me 53 years later at the age of 79. Let's hear my grandmother's story... Wedding Day! I was 26 years old, pregnant for the first time and still considered a newly-wed (I married my husband less than one year before at the age of 25... I...

The percent of births delivered via cesarean section at the hospital you are considering having your baby is SO important. Not only can it inform you of your chances in having a vaginal birth at that location, but also because it demonstrates the quality of care that particular hospital is providing to birthing women.  What is an ideal cesarean section rate? There isn't a precise percent, but the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended a rate of 5-10% with data indicating that rates above 15% do more harm than good ( childbirthconnection.org ). Cesarean sections are MAJOR surgeries and are not without risk; especially repeat c-sections. Risks of cesarean surgery include things such as infection, hemorrhage, reaction to anesthesia and more. Repeat cesareans further increase the risks to the mother and child, such as greater risk of hemorrhage in the mother and damage to internal organs due to scar tissue adhesion - looking into a provider that supports VBAC is an important...