Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: placenta, tree of life, sibling, baby's organ
 |
| The placenta is a beautiful organ. It is the only organ that develops and grows within another organ. It is responsible for growing a healthy baby. It is the bridge between a mother and her baby in the womb. In some cultures, it is called the called bucha-co-satthi, meaning baby’s friend.(1) Others see the placenta as the baby’s protective older sibling.(2) For these reasons alone, it is unique, amazing and beautiful.
The baby and the placenta are made from the same cells, which are formed through combination of the egg and the sperm. Once implantation occurs on about day six after fertilization, the gestation period begins and the fertilized egg and the placenta begin to develop separately, still connected. The placenta stays attached to the uterine wall while the fetus has the ability to move around the uterus. The placenta is the fetus’s only source of food, blood, oxygen, vitamins and nutrients. All of these vital resources are carried from placenta to fetus via the cord. These resources come from the mother’s bloodstream, which is why a healthy nutritious balance of whole foods is so important during pregnancy. Iron is especially important because iron increases the hemoglobin level in the blood; hemoglobin carries oxygen in the body. Once the baby is born and the cord stops pulsing, that baby is no longer getting its oxygen from the placenta. When baby takes a first breath, the lungs begin to work and baby begins breathing on his or her own. In order for the baby to receive all the blood and oxygen required, the cord must stop pulsing before being cut. The placenta is an incredibly important and spiritual piece of life. It has many uses, both spiritual and medicinal. It can provide whatever is needed and should not be wasted. We are responsible for treating the placenta with respect for everything that it has done.
Photo by Mayouska |
Kelly Graff is a student at Birthwise Midwifery School.Filed under: birth, birth poem | Tags: love, womb, birthing, birth poem, birthing poem, birth dance, dreams, sanctuary, mother's power, birthing dance
Come to me, My Child
Secret longing of my inner heart
Breath of spirit
Wandering the cosmos
Choosing your next lifepath
Seeking sanctuary in my wonb
Visions of you stir my dreams
Your gentle essence drifting inward
Merging into matter
Coming into consciousness
Birthing into being
Your tender wisdom speaks
The ancient knowledge of a mother’s power
Our bodies grow together
Two as one
Turning round, in birthing dance
You lead me
Opening the circle corridor
Descending into unhindered ecstasy
Into my arms
Judie C. Rall
Picture by Carnaval King
Filed under: waterbirth | Tags: catching baby, midwife, peaceful birth, waterbirth
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: baby in the womb, conscious parenting, fetus, mothering, parenting, prenatal
How to provide a prenatal environment that nurtures your growing baby.
By Thomas R. Verny with Pamela Weintraub
Where do we first experience the nascent emotions of love, rejection, anxiety, and joy? In the first school we ever attend—in our mother’s womb. Naturally, the student brings into this situation certain genetic endowments: intelligence, talents, and preferences. However, the teacher’s personality exerts a powerful influence on the result. Is she interested, patient, and knowledgeable? Does she spend time with the student? Does she like him, love him? Does she enjoy teaching? Is she happy, sad, or distracted? Is the classroom quiet or noisy, too hot or too cold, a place of calm and tranquility or a cauldron of stress?
Numerous lines of evidence and hundreds of research studies have convinced me that it makes a difference whether we are conceived in love or in hate, anxiety or violence. It makes a difference whether the mother desires to be pregnant and wants to have a child or whether that child is unwanted. It makes a difference whether or not the mother feels supported by family and friends, is free of addictions, lives in a stable, stress-free environment, and receives good prenatal care.
All these things matter enormously, not so much by themselves but as part of the ongoing education of the unborn child.
Nurturers and Managers
Having a baby is, for most people, an act of faith. It represents a belief in a better tomorrow, not just for themselves but for the world. But unless we actively improve our understanding and treatment of the unborn baby and the young child, that faith will go unrewarded because we may blindly pass on to our children the neurotic parenting we ourselves may have received. One key to parenting is flexibility. Those who can adapt to their baby’s wants and needs will be nurturing and responsive. Those who cannot change their lives to accommodate the child—who expect the baby to adapt to them instead of the other way around—may be too rigid and uninvolved to parent well.
These days that task is harder than ever, given the frequent necessity for both parents in a family to work. As parents who work, we delegate responsibilities—including the care of our children and our homes. To keep our lives afloat, to juggle all the elements, we tend to become as managerial in our private lives as we are in our jobs.
It is during pregnancy that parents—those who work as well as those who don’t—must create a balance for living. I urge both partners to examine their commitments and to create a plan for increasing their time away from work so they can spend more time at home with the baby.P
Filed under: baby care | Tags: natural childbirth, bonding, mothering, baby massage, oil massage, baby care
Massaging a newborn is one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling activities you can participate in. As parents, we long to touch our newborns from the moment of their births. We want to go over every finger, every limb, marveling at the wonder “we’ve” created. Massage gives us the opportunity to do this, while being very nice for the baby, as well.
A wonderful massage you can do from the very first day your baby is born is a castor oil massage. A time-honored East Indian tradition reputed to reduce the heat in the baby’s system caused by the friction of birth, it also makes the baby’s skin lovely and soft, even on wrinkly feet. Buy castor oil from a local health food store and try to get ‘cold-pressed’ if you can.
In preparation for the massage, make sure your room is nice and warm. Lay a towel on the bed or the floor and lay a receiving blanket over it to make a nice, soft place for the baby to lie. You may also want to place a sheet of plastic beneath the towel in case the baby pees while you are in the middle of the massage. Have another blanket or two close by to cover the parts of the baby you are not massaging to keep the baby warm. If it is the middle of summer, or you are in a very hot room, this may not be necessary.
Warm your hand by rubbing them together, or running them under hot water. Undress your baby and lay her face up on the towel. Pour about a tablespoon of oil into your palms and rub them them together to warm the oil.
Beginning with the chest area, slowly ang gently rub the oil onto the baby, starting from the center and moving down to the sides. You will notice the oil is very sticky. Rub the oil onto the baby very slowly so you don’t pull the skin, adding more oil to keep your hands well lubricated.
After the chest, move to the abdomen and rub in small circles, clockwise in the direction th large intestines move. If your baby has not had a first bowel movement, expelling the sticky, brownish black meconium that filled the intestines in utero, don’t be surprised if the castor oil massage stimulates this expulsion.
After the abdomen, move to the legs. GEntly massage from the feet toward the hips, which helps to return the blood from the legs to the heart, and then massage the feet themkselves.
Rubbing in little circles in the center of the feet and on the heel for the accupressure points for the colon can also help to stimulate the expulsion of the meconium. From the feet move to the arms and massage from the wrists to the shoulders, and then the hands, gently rubbing the palm to stimulate the colon.
Next carefully roll the baby over and massage the back, stroking from the center out to the sides. Rub up in around the neck and down all over the buttocks. Last, roll the baby back over and massage the face and head. It is fine to get the oil in the baby’s hair and ears, just remember to be careful with the soft spot on the top of the baby,s head where the bones have not yet closed.
After you are done, wrap the baby in a receiving blanket, and another warm blanket and, if it is at all cold, put a hat on the baby’s head. The baby will seem very sticky for about twelve hours until all the castor oil has been absorbed. Then you will noticethat any dry skin is gone, and that everything, including the hair, is soft and silky.
You can give your baby a castor oil bath as often as you like, even every day is not too frequently, as they never seem to outgrow their love of massage.
[From ‘Choosing Waterbirth, reclaiming the sacred power of birth’ - by Lakshmi Bertram; Photo by Valentina Powers]
Filed under: midwifery, video | Tags: natural childbirth, homebirth, Ina May Gaskin, sphincter law, the farm, hospital birth
Midwife Ina May Gaskin talks about natural childbirth — and “sphincter law.” Filmed at The Farm, Summertown, Tennessee USA, September 7, 2007.
Filed under: homebirth | Tags: natural childbirth, natural childbirth vs medical childbirth, sheila kitzinger, homebirth, pregnancy, conception, birth, medicated vs natural childbirth
Whether birth is difficult or easy, painful or pain-free, long-drawn-out or brief, it need not be a medical event. It should never be conducted as if it were no more than a tooth extraction.
For childbirth has much deeper significance than the removal of a baby like a decaying molar from a woman’s body. The dawning of consciousness in a human being who is opening eyes for the first time on our world is packed with meaning for the mother and father, and can be also for everyone who shares in this greatest adventure of all.
There are many women who hope for childbirth in which they, not the doctors, are in control. They want to have the information that will enable them to make their own decisions, to prepare themselves for an experience in which they participate fully, and do not wish labour and birth to be taken over by managers.
They know that it is easier to do this on their own ground, in a place to which the doctors and midwives who are their care givers come as guests. They would like to give birth outside a hospital. This may be either in their own home, or in a birth centre in which the rhythms of a labouring woman’s body are honoured and waited on, and where birth is non- interventionist and centered on people instead of on mechanical processes.
Hospitals exist where all members of staff share this attitude, but they are few and far between. You need only one person who is out of tune with such ideas, who believes in the aggressive management of labour, who, instead of being client- oriented, sees a woman as a patient who must obey hospital protocols, one person who is anxious and afraid, and who cannot trust women’s bodies, for the environment in which birth takes place to be poisoned, and completely unsuitable for the focused concentration and inner confidence that is needed for a good birth.
Extract from “Homebirth” by Sheila Kitzinger
A fully revised and updated version of this book became available under the title Birth Your Way in Feb 2002
Filed under: pregnancy, video | Tags: natural childbirth, medicated birth, natural childbirth vs medicated childbirth, natural vs medicated childbirth, pregnancy, business of being borm, the business of being born
“Birth: it’s a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life. But more than anything, birth is a business. Compelled to find answers after a disappointing birth experience with her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to examine and question the way American women have babies.
The film interlaces intimate birth stories with surprising historical, political and scientific insights and shocking statistics about the current maternity care system. When director Epstein discovers she is pregnant during the making of the film, the journey becomes even more personal.
Should most births be viewed as a natural life process, or should every delivery be treated as a potentially catastrophic medical emergency?”
From ‘Youtube’
Filed under: breech (posterior baby), traditional midwifery | Tags: natural childbirth, midwifery, traditional midwifery, breech, breech birth, posterior, turning baby in utero, comrado
A Zapotec partera will massage the woman’s legs to diagnose tension. By becoming aware of tension in her legs she discovers where the baby is pressing against the woman’s spine and causing backache, and this shows how the baby should be repositioned. She starts doing this at thirty-two weeks and massage sessions are arranged every fifteen days. As well as massage of the legs, she palpates the abdomen, kneads it, lightly massages it with the sides of her hands, and ‘lifts’ the baby if the mother has uncomfortable pressure against her bladder and pelvic floor…If the baby does need repositioning she asks the woman to lie on her back on the ground, with her knees drawn up and heels flat. Then she places a long shawl, the rebozo, under her back and pulls it up at either side so that it cradles her hips. She pulls alternately with her hands to rock the woman’s pelvis from side to side in the sling formed by the rebozo. She may also do this in the second stage of labour with the woman in a standing position, leaning back against her, to help her to push the baby out. These complex techniques of massage and rocking are now being reassessed and incorporated into modern midwifery skills in Mexico.
An aboriginal tribe in Japan, the Ainu, also used massage to turn the baby from posterior to anterior. Indeed, evidence from many cultures suggest that this is a midwifery practice that has been largely forgotten today.
In the past in Europe and North America, obstetricians often used to turn a baby from breech to vertex in order to avoid Caesarean sections and difficult vaginal deliveries. But over the last twenty years or so, few have learned how to do it and many now consider it not worth the bother. Yet randomized controlled trials have revealed that two out of three birth can be turned, and will stay head down for birth, if rotation is performed after thirty-seven weeks or early in labour. This halves the Caesarean rate for breech births.
Modern midwives are not taught how to do this. Nor do they know how to rock and massage babies from posterior to anterior so that the head is in a more favorable position to pass through the cervix and birth canal. Only in countries where professional and traditional midwives have an opportunity to share their skills is this still possible.
Sheila Kitzinger “Rediscovering birth”
Consider asking the following questions before you choose how you will give birth to your new baby. See the full list of questions for each service provider in Gentle Birth Choices (Gentle Birth Choice, Barbara Harper, excerpts).
Questions to Ask a Doctor
Do you have any children and how were they born?
How long have you been practicing?
What are your guidelines for “normal” and “high-risk” pregnancies?
What routine tests do you require?
How often will I see you?
Where do you have hospital privileges? Can I choose which hospital if you have privileges at more than one?
Do you return calls personally or ask your nurses to call?
If there is more than one doctor in the practice, what is your rotation policy? Will the other doctors respect the agreements you make with me?
Questions to Ask a Hospital
Do you routinely require an IV?
What mechanism is in place so that I can refuse routine interventions like vaginal exams?
Can my partner stay with me the entire time?
Can I birth the baby in the position of my choice?
How long will you allow me to labor before starting interventions?
Can I breastfeed immediately after birth?
Can I delay weighing and measuring the baby for at least an hour?
Do you routinely recommend circumcision?
Questions to Ask a Midwife
How many years have you been practicing?
Do you work alone or with a partner or assistant? What is his or her experience?
Do you require that I see a physician during my pregnancy even if everything is all right?
How often will I see you?
If I am planning a home birth, do you visit my home before I go into labor?
In what situations would I need to go to the hospital?
Have you ever had to resuscitate a baby?
How often do you come to see me after I give birth?
Filed under: labour, midwifery | Tags: bonding, natural childbirth, natural childbirth benefits, natural childbirth books, natural childbirth techniques, natural childbirth vs medical childbirth, natural methods of childbirth, newborn, pros natural childbirth, separate newborns from their parents, sheila kitzinger, supporting natural childbirth, tips for natural childbirth
“As we prepared her for the delivery we continued to coach her through the pushing. Tanya became totally involved in the process. Pushing required all of her energy and she became absorbed with effort. Although I had to prepare the sterile table, I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she worked. I was fascinated by the birth. It demanded my total consciousness.
Tanya was purposeful. She listened to all our instructions. I saw her mature into a woman in a few moments. She put all of her strength into delivering her baby. As the head was born, I hold her to pant so that it would be born gently. Even though this is difficult to do, she performed beautifully. The baby was born slow and gracefully. Tanya’s hand instinctively went out to bring her child to her breast.
When everything was over, we brought Tanya’s mother back to the recovery room. She held the baby and all of her earlier fears melted into pride. She was proud of her daughter who had given birth in a way she thought was impossible. And she was proud of her first grandchild. Her eyes glowed with joy as she held him, and Tanya looked on with maternal pride. I left all three of them together to bond.”
From “Diary of a Midwife- the power of positive childbearing”
by Juliana van Olpen-Fehr
Beautiful book, I recommend to read it. Reality, facts and feeling. Thank you, Juliana.In her book “Diary of a midwife- the power of positive childbearing”, Juliana van Olpen-Fehr shows the realities of childbirth in the US by telling us about her life and experience as a mother and midwife.
