What do I bring when I am called to a birth?

When I am called to a birth, what do I put in my bag?  I could bring a massage roller, some aromatherapy oils, a straw for mum, a flannel for wiping her face, some energy boosting drinks, etc.  The list goes on, and I have seen extensive lists of what other doulas bring with them.  But I don’t bring anything for mum.  I bring stuff for me.  I bring spare socks, a drink, some nuts, an energy boosting drink, a spare top, a 10 minute hypnosis energising MP3, some chewing gum.  Does this make me a selfish doula?  Does it make me lazy?  Well, I can be both of those, but actually, I’ve thought it through and I think it makes me a better doula.  Here’s why.

My job is to prepare the couple for their birth and empower them.  Great preparation means that THEY have the oils, the comfort measures, the right foods in the house.  It is their birth, their way, and getting them to prepare for their birth empowers them.  I might WANT to arrive with a flurry of fabulous comforters, but that just makes the couple more grateful or needy, and me feel better.  It doesn’t empower them.   Furthermore, by taking care of myself, I become a stronger support for them.  Who wants a doula who is tired?  A doula who is faint with hunger?  A doula who is stressing because her socks are wet , or who worries that she has bad breath?  If I can be at my very best, then I can be there for others in my very best capacity. I think this approach runs through all our caretaking. It is what mothering is all about – you have to take care of yourself to be able to be there for your baby.  It is what I teach in my Compassionate Midwifery workshops – you have to take care of yourself, if you are to be a compassionate and caring midwife.  And it is important advice for dad during the birth too.  Dads have to remember to eat and rest, or they will find themselves feeling faint on the day, or getting ill in the few days after the birth.  We are reminded on a plane to take our own oxygen before we oxygenate those we are caring for.  This applies to all areas of our lives.  So, for mums, dads, doulas and midwives, the message is the same.  Take care of yourself so you can be there for those that need you.   It doesn’t make you selfish, it makes you stronger.

Treat your baby’s birth like your wedding day

I was at a wedding recently. I love weddings. I love the happiness of the couple, the excitement as we contemplate their future, the love and affection from friends and family. As I sat at the table, watching people dance, my friend commented on how much money must have been spent, and how crazy it is that we blow so much on our wedding day. And I began to wonder how lovely it would be if we could approach our birthing day in the same way as our wedding.
There would be lots of time spent planning our birthing day. We would research what is available out there for us in terms of preparation – the best antenatal classes, antenatal yoga, aqua-natal classes, chiropractice, homeopathy, hypnobirthing, and more. We would indulge ourselves in preparing our body and baby with reflexology, massage, health spas, indian head massage, reiki, etc. As well as services and pampering, we, of course, need to buy things for the special day! There’s the “must haves” such as birth ball, birth pool, relaxation cds, aromatherapy oils, massage lotions, candles, cute baby clothes, digital camera, music which makes you weep and a birth doula. Why not extend that – to a fabulous new bed, beautiful “birthing outfit”, lovely new knickers (what are those ugly disposal things all about?), dressing gown, slippers. We could have our hair and nails done for the special day, darling! Then of course, there’s the food. Well, if ever you needed an excuse to buy lobster, strawberries, chocolates, champagne, from Marks and Spencer’s, surely, this is it! And of course – a very special cake. The most special birthday cake you will ever buy.

Finally, there’s the baby-moon. This is the best bit. We would plan how we would spend that precious two weeks following the birth while our beautiful baby adjusts to their new world. Those adorable announcement cards would have been carefully selected in anticipation (with a note of when visitors are welcome – and when they aren’t!). We need lots of herbal remedies for healing, calm and energy, including a great hypnosis cd for calm parenting.
And we need to really enjoy this special baby bonding time, so we need to think carefully about managing our time. How often will the cleaner come in? Which postnatal doula are we going to select – have we got the best lactation consultant?
As always, food ranks highly in our celebrations. Would Ocado or Sainsbury’s deliver our deluxe food order? Does our favourite restaurant deliver? Would we really allow ourselves truffles and caviar every day? In terms of entertainment, which cds would we get in? Have we got a phone that we can access from the bed? Wow – the only time when we can really stay in bed for two weeks with justification

Lots and lots of planning, excitement, love, and affection. Just like a wedding! Even if you add up the costs of everything I have listed, we still don’t come close to the cost of a wedding (for the pedantic among us, please note that I’m not including the cost of baby equipment, because that isn’t a one off spend. It gets used for months or years). And of course, just like a wedding, we can enjoy the preparation, but we can never control the outcome. We can never be 100% sure that bride or groom won’t bolt, or that the car doesn’t have an accident on the way to the church. We can’t know that the lovely dress won’t get stained or torn during the celebrations. We can’t know that we will enjoy being the centre of attention. And with the weather as unpredictable as it is – well, it might storm like crazy. The caterers might turn out to be awful! But that doesn’t stop us preparing and planning with excitement and the presumption that it will be a wonderful day! Here’s to doing the same with your very special birthing day. After all, we can all get married again, but we can never be born again.

Mia Scotland, www.yourbirthright.co.uk

“You are not allowed to do that”

“You are not allowed to do that”. We might say that to a child, but would we say that to a grown woman? Well, it is happening an awful lot amongst grown women who are pregnant or have just had a baby.  I was in the Yemen a good while ago, which is one of the poorest countries in the world, and they have very different attitudes towards women.  When  visiting a Yemeni colleague of my dad’s,  I was asked to sit with the women and children.  There were only two, one of whom had given birth the previous day.  The other woman was her sister.  She had walked for a whole day to be with her, because  this lady had laboured and birthed while suffering with Malaria, and she needed help to manage the house, husband and children.  So I walked in to her, lying with Malaria, on a cloth on a dusty floor, swarming with flies in the heat, and children running in and out.   Next door, the sister served the men their meat and honey in an enormous ventilated room next door. We women ate left over beans.

Many years later, I’m reflecting on how we treat our women in Britain.  Pregnancy and birth is one area where it is only women, not men, who are being “treated”.  As part of my job, I hear about how women are treated during their antenatal care.  And I wonder whether, if men had babies, they would be subjected to the same treatment.  I’m sad to say that I hear regular stories of scare-mongering, patronisation, belittling, and even bullying behaviour that some women are subjected to.  And that is before they have the baby.  I’ve heard a lot worse during and after they’ve had the baby.  Michel Odent, the natural birth obstetrician, says that “when you meet a pregnant women, your duty is to protect her emotional state”.  Ina May Gaskin, the natural birth guru, says “if you cannot be kind when you are with a woman in labour, then you gotta get the hell outa there”.  She knows the importance of compassion for labour to progress safely.  I say that a woman who has just begun her journey as a mother needs practical and emotional support, and if she is in hospital, a hospital needs to meet these basic needs.  

It makes me sad to see how our society is not giving women the support they need.  Mums need support, and the midwives need support, in order to properly support our women at this most precious time. Doctors need support to recognise when they are needed (in medical circumstances) and when they are not needed (all other circumstances).  The NHS needs to understand the detrimental effect that frequent “testing” and “just in case” psychology has on the wellbeing of our most important citizens – mothers to be.  And the mothers themselves need to get stronger.  In a lot of cases, they don’t even question how they are being treated.  For example, women often tell me that they are ” not allowed” or “have to”, without even batting an eyelid.  (I did it too – it happens to most of us when we are part of an institutional system). 

So, although I say it makes me sad, it actually makes me angry.  I go to midwives’ conferences, where we bemoan the state of the NHS, and lack of funding and support, and closures of wonderful birthing places, and medicalisation and patriarchal control of  birth.   But so far, no one has got angry.  We still tie women up in stirrups for goodness sake!  We still tell them they are better off drugged than noisy during labour.  We still tell them they can’t birth their own babies because they are too old, too fat, too short (yes, I’ve heard all of those).  We tell them they are making selfish decisions, and need to think about the baby, not just ourselves (yes, I was told that one myself). I could go on and on.  The whole system is crazy.  Many years hence, they will look back on the way we treated women in the perinatal period, and be shocked.  We do that now about how women were treated in medieval times, but we’re still doing it now!  I’m more and more shocked the more stories I hear. As soon as women get active and angry about the maltreatment, the patronisation, bullying, neglect and denigration that is going on, I’ll be at the front of the demonstration with my banner. Afterall, I missed out on the other feminist movements, so I’d quite like to get in on this one.  If, in the meantime, you are pregnant and want some support regarding your rights, go to http://www.aims.org.uk/, or ask to speak with your allocated supervisor of midwives.  Hopefully though, you are getting fabulous care from run down, over-worked midwives, who still keep their loving smile on their faces and battle on in the face of staff shortages, and lack of funding.  Once again, if midwives were mainly men, would they be struggling?  And if so, wouldn’t they complain?   I am not criticising individuals – there are lovely doctors, lovely midwives, lovely mums and lovely dads out there.  This is an institutional problem, a societal problem, not an individual one.  And on many many levels, childbirth is a wonderful, caring and cared for experience for almost all of the women I work with and for.  It just needs to keep going in the right direction – not the wrong one.

Mia Scotland, www.yourbirthright.co.uk.

Only a mother successfully births her baby. No-one else.

I was on the phone today talking to a women interested in hiring me as a doula. She said that one of the things that appealed to her was that I had done a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Caesarean). I quickly said that I hadn’t done a VBAC, the mother had. What I do is help with the preparation, and then on the day, nature takes over, and I do very little. It’s a strange phenomenon, because I come away feeling great about having witnessed something so amazing. But I don’t come away feeling that I did a great job. Doing nothing doesn’t always feel good. Doctors have been known to mock doulas who “just sit in the corner”. They don’t get it. If some-one was drifting off to sleep, would you talk to her? No. If some-one is in the labour zone, you don’t either. Knowing when to “do something”, and when not to, is a trickly part of doula-ing. Staying okay with yourself when you did nothing is also tricky. I think this doctor, Dr. Lorne Campbell says it very well indeed. “I have never birthed a child or performed a HypnoBirth or a successful Breech turn and I am proud of this. The Birth, the breech turn and the beauty are created by the mother. We create the atmosphere the attitude and witness success. Nothing more.” Here’s to many more birthings where I just witness success.

Leave dad holding the baby – it might just save your marriage

When I was getting used to being a new mum, I remember waiting each day for my husband to come home from work.  I would clock watch, counting down the hours, minutes and seconds.  He would come in from work, and have a baby thrust into his arms, and hear the woes of his beloved wife fall out of her mouth in a diatribe of emotion.

If he so much as went to a shop on the way home, I was full of envy.  “You did what?  You strolled through an aisle, with not a care in the world, browsing and thinking, while being uninterrupted, and slowly selecting what you wanted.  What I wouldn’t give to be able to do that….”.

Poor man.  I was thrust into a world that I’d never been in before.  While I was getting used to it, he was getting used to me. 

This “envy” thing is a big one, and it hits us when parenthood hits us.  It’s big because it threatens our relationships.  This is because up until now, a man and his partner have pretty much experienced the same things.  Both have had to go to school.  Both have had to forge a career.  Both have had to answer to a boss or company.  Both have had to work five days a week.  Both know what it’s like to come home from work, tired, needing some food, a drink and a sit down.  We are equal.  We come home, we share making the dinner, we share our stories, and we share a cuddle.  But, when a baby comes along, for the first time in our liberated, equality ridden lives, man and woman’s lives diverge.  Now, we have a woman at home, with a baby, all day.  We have a man having to maintain his previous levels of functioning at work, and come home to chaos.  He needs to suddenly take care of his wife and baby, while keeping his boss happy, and keeping his own sanity.  So, while she envies his trip to the shop (for the baby wipes that were needed), his point of view might go a little like this.  “You did what?  You went to a friend’s house for a cup of tea?  You chatted, and laughed, with not a care in the world.  And the house is a tip.  You could at least have tidied up a little”.

He doesn’t understand the strains of being at home with a baby.  He doesn’t understand that sometimes, if mum and baby are dressed and have not gone hungry all day, that is an achievement. She doesn’t understand how tired he really is.  How much in need he is of his pre-baby freedom and carefree life.  She doesn’t understand what it feels like to have a baby thrust at you when what you need is a smile from your loved one.  She doesn’t understand that he might be worried about her, feeling like a not- good-enough husband, and guilt ridden (research shows that on average, men do not express feelings of guilt, but keep it hidden).

When we don’t understand what is going on for the other person, and when our lives suddenly diverge, then envy breeds.  Envy is a big divider, as there is nothing good or helpful about it.  It leads to arguments, accusations, and diminishes compassion and empathy. 

There is one very simple way to avoid this happening when you have your baby.  This simple solution has the following advantages:

1. it gives dad bonding time with his baby
2. it increases dad’s confidence at parenting
3. it gives mum a much needed break
4. it gives dad a chance to develop his own parenting style, his way
5. it reduces the misunderstanding and envy that can arise
6. it increases mum’s loving feelings towards her partner

 Have you worked out what it is yet?  It’s simple: 

 Let daddy and baby be alone together on a regular basis. 

 Begin with just a few hours a week.  Mums, make sure you go out of the house, and leave him in the house, alone, with his baby.  Then, as baby becomes less dependent on your breast, you can stretch this to full days out, when you go shopping, or to the spa, or a haircut, or skydiving.  Whatever.  It will do you the power of good.  It will do his confidence the power of good.  And he will begin to understand that being with a baby is a full time job, and why the house is a tip.

As a mum, you might struggle with this (your mothering hormones are protective and you want to be around all the time).  As a dad, you might struggle (“what if baby needs a feed, or I can’t settle her”), but the outcome will be fantastic.  As a dad, you will begin to feel proud of your parenting ability (“hey, I can do this”), you will bond more strongly with your little one (“she smiled at me”), you will understand why the house is a tip when you come home from work.  But there’s an added bonus.  Your wife will appreciate you more, trust you more, and may even be more affectionate towards you.  Hey – you might even manage some action in the bedroom department (a strong aphrodisiac for women is admiration and thankfulness towards her beloved).  After all, “a happy wife is a happy life”, and giving your partner a break while you take the baby AND do some housework comes pretty high up on the ladder of glory. 

So, this fathers day, you have two choices.  If you are already a “hands on” dad, and do a lot of the childcare, including being alone with your baby on a regular basis, then take a break, and spoil yourself for the day.  If you want more time with your children, because work interferes with that, or if you have never been alone with your baby, make father’s day a place to start what you intend to continue.  Be a dad with your precious, fast changing, adoring child.  By next month, he or she will have changed forever.  Catch it now.

 For more psychological parenting tips, take the three hour Mindful Parenting workshop. http://www.yourbirthright.co.uk/index.asp?PageID=31.  The workshop is suitable before you have your baby, or after and is designed to increase your confidence while doing the most difficult and important job in the world.

Mia Scotland, Clinical Psychologist, Complete Childbirth Preparation

www.yourbirthright.co.uk

 

It’s Mother’s Day

It’s Mother’s Day.  Well – not quite.  It falls late this year, like Easter, and is on the 3rd April.  For all those of you who are mothers for the first time this year, congratulations.  As you know, you have entered an incredible and crazy world – which makes you incredible (hopefully, it doesn’t make you crazy.  If it is doing so, some counselling might help.  See http://www.birthtraumaassociation.org.uk/counsellors.htm or http://www.yourbirthright.co.uk/index.asp?PageID=36).  For those of you soon to become mums for the first time, congratulations also.  What a very special time.  Three quotes come to mind when I think of being a mother. 

1.  ”When a baby is born, a mother is born too”.  I never could see the appeal of being a mum, until I became one.  I thought babies were ugly until I became a mum.  I thought I was average until I became a mum.

2.  Number two comes from a friend of mine, who once said to her toddler “thank-you for helping me become a better person.”  I asked her what she meant.  She said, ”I have always been quite a selfish person.  When I had children, that changed”.  Of course it did.  It has to.  You’re not number one any more.  Your needs – no matter how small, like needing a cup of tea, or big, like needing to have a meltdown, have to come second.  That’s why mother’s day is so important.  Become number one again, just for a day.

3. The third quote was from another friend of mine.  “in all I have ever done in my life, the hardest by far has been bringing up children”.  Becoming a mother is huge.  Amazing.  Transformational.  Empowering.  Frustrating. Difficult. Intense.  Exhausting.  Wonderful.   I was taught, before I had children that becoming a mum is boring, enslaving, dull, belittling, takes away my identity and personality.  (I’m not sure feminism has done much for womankind with this kind of message).  Becoming a mum is none of those things if you don’t want it to be.  Yes – it is difficult, testing, tiring, scary, but so were exams and climbing the professional ladder.  I know which path is more rewarding, satisfying, challenging, lifechanging.  Okay, so I can’t wear a suit, and people don’t tell me how well I’m doing, but the satisfaction is all mine. And I look back on babyhood and toddlerhood with a swelled up heart, full of love and affection.  I certainly don’t look back on my career with that!  Yes, I look back on both with a lot of regret, but once again, one of the challenges of parenthood is forgiving yourself for every-thing you have done wrong.  We all do wrong as parents, and it doesn’t feel good, but humbleness and remorse are also needed in abundance for good-enough parenting.  So, on Mother’s day, please, do let people pamper you on this special day.  And if your family aren’t the type to pamper you, then do it yourself.  Book yourself into a spa for the day.  You deserve it!

Health Warning/disclaimer:  please note that this blog comes from a mum whose children are all over five.  She has therefore had a cup of tea, a full conversation, a shower, and some uninterrupted time on the computer.  She has forgotten the bad bits, and is left with a slightly rose tinted view of motherhood.  Don’t worry – you’ll be doing the same in a number of years!

With HypnoBirthing, nothing works!

With Hypnobirthing, Nothing Works!

This blog is Marie Mongan in her own words.  I haven’t written this, but I like it, so I thought I’d share.

 With HypnoBirthing NOTHING works!

 We see it often – HypnoBirthing mothers accept that they have the ability to relax through the first phase of labor. But when it comes to talking about the baby’s descent and birthing, the question is, “What do I do then?” My answer is always the same – “NOTHING!! That’s what I want you to get out of this course. The understanding of doing “Nothing!!”

 With HypnoBirthing NOTHING works. It’s Nature’s perfect design from the very onset.

 Let’s look at a newborn baby girl – as she emerges, who teaches her to breathe? She does absolutely nothing to make it happen – but it happens.

 If properly placed and encouraged, she crawls and bobbles her way to the breast for her first meal outside the womb. There is nothing that anyone gives her in the way of instruction.

 Within minutes of being born, she releases her anal sphincters, and out comes her first stool, or she pees. How does she do that without a chart of how to perform timely bodily functions?

 Over time, as she grows and develops, with nothing to tell her how or when or how many times, she learns that she can sneeze to clear her nasal passages; she can signal that she is hungry or wants attention if it’s not readily there; she startles and becomes alert if she is frightened; and, if she feels secure, she can relax and fall asleep in loving arms. What did she do to learn to fall asleep? Nothing! Who taught her to awaken? How did she know she was hungry?

 Fast forward to when she is a teenager. Her body changes with nothing but internal hormonal secretions to act as catalysts – she becomes a woman. The power of nothing is, and has been, alive in her human experience in so many ways, and she has mastered many functions with nothing but instinct to guide her.

 Nothing has to teach her that she is experiencing her first love. She instinctively knows it and feels it. And when the time is right, there is nothing she has to study to learn how to express that love physically.

 But enter the miracle of pregnancy, and all of a sudden, her previous trust, power, and confidence crumbles. She is now taught that her body is incapable of leading her through what should be a perfectly magical time. She must now be carefully taught how to nurture her pregnant body and her baby and ultimately how to give birth.

 She is further taught that her trust and dependence is best placed outside of her own abilities and externally placed into the hands of others – strangers, trained and practiced experts, who know better than she. She needs them now to efficiently and conveniently manage her birth. They will teach and guide her along each step of the way. Instinct be damned!

 She is now categorized onto charts – primagravida, and she’s put onto schedules, and regimens. She learns that she is inadequate and almost irrelevant to her own birthing experience.

 For the woman who senses this as a disconnect, there are two options. She can go along with the prevailing model, or she can trust birthing, register for a HypnoBirthing class and learn to do nothing!!

 We know that many of our moms hear a common question when they say they are preparing to birth their baby with HypnoBirthing. The question often is “Are you out of your mind.” In truth the response to that is “Yes.” To rely on her basic birthing instincts, a mother literally needs to be “out of her mind”. That’s where she turns her birthing over to her body and gets her mind and the regimens and techniques out of the way.

 That’s exactly where we want our moms to be. When we teach them otherwise – how to do, and when to do, and how often to do – we confuse the inner consciousness, which controls instinct. Instinct no longer can function – we have stifled the natural function with the clutter of confused, panicked mind talk.

 We strip it of the internal knowing, and then we turn to drugs as an external means of forcing the body to do what it used to know how to do. We know that drugs inhibit the bonding experience at birth, and mind talk also inhibits bodily function. Instead of achieving the objective, we confuse the body and it abdicates.

 My question to all is: How dare we? How dare we presume to think that we can manipulate and redesign and introduce confusion into the experience with our own special outlines, instructions and techniques? How dare we mess with what is already perfectly created?

 When we distribute charts and lists and lessons, filled with exercises and positions and advice,in effect,we are telling our parents that they need to do more and they need to do it this or that way at particular times. We need to bring about an awareness that what we teach in HypnoBirthing is not the cornerstone of HypnoBirthing, but rather suggestions to pass time.

 Parents panic. They are afraid they will forget what we carefully instilled. They question are they doing it “right’? The only important thing is that they learn to do nothing – to just “allow” – to be the mammals that they are and return to their basic instincts.

 Birthing has a rhythm and a flow, and every bit of “fixing” that we impose helps to disturb and shut down that very rhythm and flow. What they need to develop is a mastery to be “Out of their minds.” We need to stop humanizing birth. We have to put aside our own egos and our need to be a relevant factor in their birthing.

 The time has come when we need to stop labeling these births as “exceptional” and “fantastic” and “out of this world.” They need to be seen as the norm and not out of the ordinary. When we no longer feel that we have to talk about how shocked and surprised the caregivers are, we will have begun to make progress. These will be the births that all mothers will expect when they are “out of their minds” and doing Nothing.

 —Mickey Mongan, Director and Founder of the HypnoBirthing Institute

 

Making Friends with Your Fairy

Come on girls – it’s time to make friends with our labia!  This isn’t necessarily easy. In fact, even the thought of posting this blog leaves me uncomfortable.  How can it be that talking about something as basic to birthing as our vaginas leaves me feeling anxious about upsetting or offending people?

 During my sex education classes at school, we had diagrams of our ovaries and uterus, and the triangle between our legs, but no diagrams of our labia.  Our rather uninhibited teacher suggested that us girls take a look at our nether regions with a mirror.  We recoiled in horror!  Disgust! How gross could people get?!!!  Yuck!  I hadn’t read Germaine Greer at this point, but I do remember thinking there was something slightly wrong with my friends’ reactions.  Is it really that bad?  I had looked at it with a mirror, (though I wouldn’t dare admit it) and it seemed okay.

 Have you ever noticed that as a culture, we have easy, well known, friendly words for male genitalia (willy, dick) but female genitalia is either never really called anything (“front bottom”, “down there”) or it has a personal pet name which others don’t necessarily use (what is yours?).  This is a common problem for parents of little girls – as to what to call it.  For parents of boys, it’s easy.  It’s your willy.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have something as simple and straightforward for your girls’ special parts too?

Ironincally, there is one place where, in our culture, we can get a really good look at labia.  This is a place where vaginas are celebrated.  Revered.  Explicitly displayed and labelled.  This is in the realm of pornographic material.  In men’s worlds, not womens.

 So, my point is that either our vagina is gross, or it’s invisible, or it’s a sex toy.  I think, in terms of birth preparation, it is important to address all these three, because they all play a part in our fear of birth, and thereby can threaten the best of birth preparation courses. So when it comes to childbirth, this gross or invisible or sexy part of ourselves has to rise up to the challenge of turning us into mothers.  If we can get our heads around that, it will help our vagina get itself around our baby’s head.  We don’t want to view birth as gross (it’s amazing and beautiful), we don’t want to ignore the role of the vagina (it has quite an important role!), and we don’t want to fret about the sexy part (you’re amazing and feminine when you birth a baby).

So get cracking (excuse the pun) with your birth preparation, from a psychological as well as educational point of view.  Depending on what your issues are, you might want to practice the perineal massage which we cover in class (don’t worry, we don’t actually do it, or demonstrate it.  It’s all out of a book….). This will help you to make friends with this important and feminine part of your birthing outfit. If you’re worried about not staying sexy, ask your partner to stay up at the top end during the elaborate exit.  If you don’t want instruments or fingers in your special bits, you might choose to decline internal examinations.  Either way, don’t ignore your vagina.  Whatever you want to call it, it is a special and important part of birthing and it deserves some proper respect and admiration.

Top 10 tips for birth preparation

Happy New Year to all of you.

New Year is a time of reflection.  I’ve spent many years helping people prepare for birth, and I almost can’t see the wood for the trees at the moment.  So, I’m going to try and summarise all that I have learnt and all that I teach, by bringing it all together for the year ahead.  Here are my top 10 tips for pregnancy and birth.  Which would you add?  Leave your suggestions below.

1.  Explore the option of home birth, and take the possibility very seriously before deciding what is and isn’t right for you.

2.  Take a HypnoBirthing course.  I still think it is amazing, and really wish I had had the opportunity for my first birth.  It would have been so different!

3.  Hire a birth doula.  Money and words can’t justify the benefits, but  I just feel it when I am doulaing.

4. Take your birth preparation seriously.  You wouldn’t hold a wedding or run a marathon without preparing.  Don’t try to have a baby without preparing.

5.  If you attend a birth preparation course that makes you feel more nervous than when you started, stop going. 

6.  If you come away from an antenatal appointment nervous or upset, seek a second opinion.

7.  Believe – really believe it – when people tell you that their birth was the most amazing day of their life. 

8.  Do not go into your birth expecting to scream, or sweat, or be “active”.  Go into your birth expecting to surrender to the feelings your body creates.

9.  Focus on your baby.  During pregnancy, during birth, and, of course, after birth.

10.  And finally – (this comes from a fellow HypnoBirthing/birth doulaing mum) – get an Epi-no!

Familiarity, passion and the obvious

So, I’m thinking ahead, for another year.  Making plans, visualising my future, writing my affirmations.  But I have a problem.  I find that teaching HypnoBirthing and normal birth has got to the point where it is all so obvious to me, that I can’t remember that spark of amazement and fascination that I once had when realising that birth is an amazing, normal, empowering event, that has been spoiled and damaged by systems and society.  Birth is a loving, compassionate, feminine event, that has been masculinised, medicalised and become fearful and aggressive.  I want to be a part of changing that for people, and I feel like I have found my niche in life.  I love seeing people transform in front of me in my classes.  I love being at births, and standing back as the power of nature takes over.  But the “obviousness” of it all is threatening my passion.  So, my goals for 2011 are to reignite the fire and passion, and remember that it is not obvious just because I am very familiar with it.  My goal for 2011 is to do what I have been doing, teaching HypnoBirthing, teaching midwives, teaching the one day Mindful Mamma class and doing it better and better, and learning more and more from all of you.  Thank-you for being my inspiration.