Wisdom and Births

There were plenty of leaking breasts, milk-drunk babies, and personal testimonies, but unfortunately there wasn't enough information. Click to watch the trailer! Like many birth and breastfeeding professionals, I've waited months for the newest documentary by Rikki Lake and Abby Epstein (and Dana Ben-Ari), the directors of the excellent birth documentary The Business of Being Born , and was hoping it would be just as insightful, empowering, and informative... in some ways it was, but overall I was disappointed with the lack of information. Beginning with the early breastfeeding experiences of various mothers, we continue through the first months and onto the first year with a diverse group of parents, couples, and babies. We are witness to the first latch, numerous breastfeeding and pumping sessions, tandem nursings, and preemie supplementation. We hear about a mother's experience with induced lactation, the changing sexuality of the breasts for one father, and from many g...

Breastfeeding truly is the best feeding! And if you needed any more reason to think so, here are some wonderful research-based and perhaps less well-known reasons to breastfeed!! If you have other ideas please share them in the comments below!!   1. Breastfeeding can decrease your risk of breast cancer.   This is a BIG one that I think we need to talk about more!  Preventing breast cancer is better than having to treat it!! A large meta-analysis of 47 epidemiological studies from 30 countries found a 4.3% (95% CI 2.9-5.8) decreased risk of breast cancer for every 12 months of breastfeeding.  Breastfeeding two children for two years each could conceivably reduce your risk of breast cancer by over 17%. [ PubMed ] (1) 2. And Ovarian Cancer.   A meta-analysis found that the risk of epithelial ovarian cancer decreased 8% for every 5-month increase in the duration of breastfeeding (RR: 0.92; 95% CI: 0.90, 0.95). [ PubMed ] (2) 3. Breastfeeding will save you ov...

Warning: This is most definitely an opinion piece! Surprisingly, FOUR out of FIVE babies in the U.S. are born on drugs . WHAT!?!?! 80% of our tiny fragile human babies are born on drugs!?!? Yep! Even though we live in a country that spends countless trillions of dollars on the "drug-war"... if the government says it's illegal, we'll judge you for using it and lock you up in prison, but if a pharmaceutical company manufactured that dangerous drug, well, then we'll stand in line to take it and even give it to our babies. ...hypocrites much??? So where are these babies getting their first high? From their doctors and mothers, of course! Opiods, such as Fentanyl and Meperidine (Demerol), are pretty hard-core drugs which are frequently used in the management of labor pain. In fact, the  Listening to Mothers Survey III  (2013) reported that over 67% of mothers received an epidural and another 16% received another opiod medication (often as an injection), such as Demerol...

I recently responded to a post on a Facebook parenting page, the mother wanted to know what she could do to help her 3 month old daughter heal from her birth. I encouraged her to look into the field of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology (PPN) and even mentioned a few names of leading practitioners in the field. After recommending this, I began my own search to actually see what materials were available to parents who want to help their baby heal from a stressful or traumatic birth. This is when I truly realized that there is almost nothing currently available to guide parents in supporting their baby through a healing process. Most of what I found encouraged parents to seek clinical counseling from someone who specializes in PPN and I would encourage you to do this as well, for babies with severe trauma or residual issues from their prenatal, birth or postpartum experience. But here's the thing, PPN is hardly recognized and professionals that specialize in it are still few and far b...