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Tuesday Tidbits: Teeth and Teaching

Jan29

“Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people’s curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire.”
—Anatole France (in The Earth Speaks)

“A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared.” —Gloria Anzaldúa, “Speaking in Tongues” (via The Girl God via Guerrilla Feminism)

Bits of the birth net:

It is old news, but this week a 2009 post from The Unnecesarean caught my eye: An OB’s Birth Plan: Obstetrician’s Disclosure Sent One Mom Running. The article describes the “doctor’s birth plan” a mother received from her medical care provider, which includes gems like this one:

“…I do not accept birth plans. Many birth plans conflict with approved modern obstetrical techniques and guidelines. I follow the guidelines of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology which is the organization responsible for setting the standard of care in the United States. Certain organizations, under the guise of “Natural Birth” promote practices that are outdated and unsafe. You should notify me immediately, if you are enrolled in courses that encourage a specific birth plan. Conflicts should be resolved long before we approach your due date. Please note that I do not accept the Bradley Birth Plan. You may ask my office staff for our list of recommended childbirth classes…”

One of many reasons to run far away from this doctor! One of my Facebook friends made a great point though: “at least he’s honest! I think there are other doctors with similar views who might not make it clear until it’s ‘too late.'” This is true–he said it, but you know a LOT of people are thinking it/acting on it. So, that IS good that he was up front. Another mother then commented to add her own similar experience: “We went to an OB who had us sign something saying we would not have a birth plan or hire a doula. It felt so creepy to sign away all involvement in my own child’s birth – and doing so at 9 weeks felt like I was signing that I’d keep my mouth shut throughout the pregnancy, too. But gratefully, as you’re saying, it was clear early on that way this was not the OB for us. I’m sure many don’t get to find out before labor.”

Speaking of teaching and igniting sparks, it isn’t too late to register for our next Birth Skills Workshop—rapidly approaching on February 2nd! This workshop is specifically designed not to be a lecture, but is a hands-on, skills-building workshop.

Also via ScoopIt, I shared this article: Bearing the Burden of Choice: A Young Feminist’s Perspective

“Based on personal observation, choices concerning women’s reproductive health are heavily concentrated in preventative action – what are the best practices to avoid pregnancy? Consequently, prevention inspired language lends to a negative association with child bearing. It is something to prevent rather than embrace…”

She goes on to address something that I find to be a reason why sometimes birth activists have trouble connecting to the larger feminist community:

Abortion is one of those issues that seems to leak into every “women’s issue” whether initially intended or not. Needless to say, we talked about abortion to the point of exhaustion. Not to take away from the weight of abortion to the feminist cause, I began to recognize a gap in our reproductive justice discussions. I found myself asking the question:What about the women who choose the path of childbearing?…

Those women are basically why I’m here and why I do what I do. And, what has been on my mind recently is explored in my most recent post: What to tell a mother-to-be about the realities of mothering…

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” and, “why isn’t anyone talking about this?” is a common refrain echoing in the postpartum tales of many mothers. So, why don’t we tell them? Or, what can we actually tell them? Is there a way to really do so? I kind of think there’s not…

And, connecting the teaching and the sparks and the women’s issues and the women writing having power, I also made sure to sign this petition: Vigorously support women’s rights by fully engaging in efforts to ratify the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment. This is going to be one of the discussions towards the end of my current Social Policy class (I can’t really write much about it here, but suffice to say the class is extraordinarily challenging so far and we’re only to week three). I hope no one vigorously disagrees with it or I might FREAK OUT! When I shared it on Facebook, a friend commented: “I am enraged that women’s rights are an ‘issue.‘” To which I replied: “Isn’t that the truth?! I hate that. It boggles my mind that women’s rights are considered a political issue that anyone could have a ‘position’ on. The nerve!!! ARGH. FREAK OUT, I TELL YOU”

And now, the teeth…

This post is essentially all about what I shared on Facebook apparently (might as well get some mileage out of it!). This is what I wrote yesterday:

In case anyone cares, I’m totally sick of taking my kids to the dentist! All three had appointments in Sullivan today (1.25 hour drive one way). Alaina wasn’t cooperative and is clearly traumatized from prior dental experience and we will need to go back to a pediatric dentist for her (crowns on two molars). Zander’s were good and he got two seals. Lann had two extractions (previously filled teeth) and one filling. I’m exhausted!

I still haven’t written my planned blog post about the heartbreak of tooth decay. I came home yesterday all fired up to write it, but then I had to get caught up on grading instead. But, I did take these pictures of my little pearls-wearing, skirt-sporting, curly-haired, brave little girl:

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I told her I wanted to take a picture of her face and she ran away from me like this!

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Two other Facebook kid updates from this week that were funny:

Alaina put a bracelet on pushed high on her arm. When she took it off, it left a red mark. She looked at the mark solemnly and said, “scar.” Poor little sugar. She said it very acceptingly. Like, yep, I’m scarred now…

And

Yesterday, my little entrepreneurs cooked up a plan to raise some money to buy a pug. They decided they should raise Dobermans and sell them…”When people see the big cage of Dobermans in our yard, we’ll just tell them, don’t worry…it’s for pugs!” Hmm. I see a couple of flaws with this plan…

Hearing this, it suddenly became clear to me how puppy mills were invented—a couple of pre-ten-year-olds (or, adults with similar critical thinking skills) hung around talking about money-making schemes…

What to tell a mother-to-be about the realities of mothering…

Jan26

I see new friends starting out on the road to motherhood with mixed feelings. Immense joy at the ecstasy of love they are about to experience, great protectiveness, wishing to shield them from the scars it will make on their souls, the pain, the heart ache, the worry, the exhaustion, the touching of anger which they had been able to keep hidden all these years. But this is the journey. The one that makes us the mothers that we will be. The mothers that our children will live with every day, yet barely know… –Lucy Pearce, Moods of Motherhood

A few years ago, a life coach and women’s health expert I follow online got pregnant. During her pregnancy, she started a new Facebook fan page called Blissful Motherhood* (*not really. It was called something different, but I’m protecting her identity). I am going to confess that my first reaction was to kind of meanly laugh to myself as I thought, “oh honey! You poor thing. You have NO FREAKIN CLUE.” So, a couple of months after she had her baby, she showed back up on her real Facebook page with a familiar lament: oh my goodness, this is SO HARD, why didn’t anyone TELL ME?! And, again, my initial reaction was kind of a mean secret snicker (so, how’s that Blissful Motherhood page treating you now?!). Then, I swallowed that unbecoming reaction and I told her this:

When I had my first baby, I would see women who were pregnant and feel almost a sense of grief for them—like, just wait, you have NO idea what is coming. I also told my husband more than once: “this is both more wonderful and more HORRIBLE than I ever could have imagined.” The fear of being thought a “bad mom” is SO powerful that it keeps us quiet about many things. I’ve felt more than once that my kids were “torturing” or me or literally trying to crush my spirit/soul. It sounds horrible to type it out, but that is how I feel sometimes! I’ve also written about how it interesting to feel both captivated AND captive. Bonded and also bound. I discovered that there was a whole new section of women’s rights I hadn’t even been aware of prekids–mother’s rights. I do think many, many women have written about this, but when you start out you feel like you’re the only one whose “daring” to mention the ugly side [she’d also mentioned, “why doesn’t anyone write about this?” Um, they totally do. A lot]. Start reading “momoirs”—they’re a lifeline! So many good ones out there. I have a big collection of them. Oh, and start reading Brain, Child magazine. The best look at real mothering I’ve ever know.

This, “why didn’t anyone tell me?” and, “why isn’t anyone talking about this?” is a common refrain echoing in the postpartum tales of many mothers. So, why don’t we tell them? Or, what can we actually tell them? Is there a way to really do so? I kind of think there’s not.

Lucy Pearce explains it like this in her Moods of Motherhood book:

Nobody told me… You look at me bewildered, eyes grey with exhaustion. Milk-spattered, baggy clothes, hair awry. “Nobody told me…” you begin. You look at me, urging me to explain myself. How could I have kept this, all of this, secret from her? Surely it was my duty to prepare her. “Nobody told me how much it would hurt, how exhausted I would feel, how much love I have in my heart that I think I will burst, how overwhelming it all is…” her eyes begin to well with the enormity of her new knowing. All I can do is to smile. To hold her. “We tried.” I say softly. Stroking her tousled hair. And I think to myself. It is not so much that we did not tell you, as you could not hear. Until you have your own child, held in your heart, your ears are blocked, your eyes are blind to the reality of motherhood. Its pains and its glories. Once you have been there, stood in the body of motherhood, then you can hold hands with every woman who has ever mothered. You know her joys and pains. You are her.

Looking at my own pre-motherhood life, I think this is right. I could not hear. I didn’t want to hear. I saw frazzled mothers stumbling into LLL meetings and “complaining” about their precious darlings and thought things like, “I’ll never feel that way!” I remember thinking after my first son was born that everything I’d feared it would be like to have a baby was TRUE and everything I’d dreamed it would be like, was also true. My mother told me before he was born that the, “highs are higher and the lows are lower” after a baby, which is also very true, but I don’t think there’s any way to fully prepare for that. My future doula gave me a letter at my blessingway in which she tried to lovingly express what it is really like and I put it away thinking,”for you maybe!”

First baby tender triumph and dazed reality.

First baby: tender triumph and dazed reality.

In response to the Blissful Motherhood life coach, another woman responded: “I remember my mom trying to get real with me before I had my first baby and I was horrified with what she told me, almost angry that she would try to burst my bubble… then I had my little boy came along and I wondered why she hadn’t told me more…Sometimes the realities of motherhood do just seem too harsh to share…” Personally, I didn’t want to hear much about the realities of parenting from my own mother, because if her experience of mothering was terrible, HELLO, that would have been my fault. I didn’t want to know that I’d made her suffer and stress!

My own childbirth educator simply told a story: when her own first child was a newborn, sometimes the baby cried so much and so long, that the educator would put her down in the middle of the living room floor and go outside and run around the house multiple times. While initially only “hearing” this story in brief passing (i.e. I’ll never feel that way), I touched back in with that story multiple times during my first son’s first year. I never actually did the running, but what the story gave me was permission to feel badly about parenting and to want to get away from it. And, you know why? Because that childbirth educator was a rocking cool lady and if someone that rocking cool had to “lose it” and run around her house like a freak, then I must not be doing such a bad job myself.

However, I also don’t tell them, those sparkling, beautiful, bright, glorious, happy, and full of promise pregnant women, what it is really like, because I don’t want to ever be the one to steal their joy, their excitement, their sense of promise, and their happy anticipation of “the greatest days of their life” or the fulfillment of a lifetime dream of parenthood. And, guess what? I think I’ve also realized that that sense of promise and anticipation is reborn, at least in part, during every pregnancy. It isn’t only the territory of the blissfully unaware, it is a gift that accompanies each new baby—the dream that this baby will be wonderful and perfect and so, too, can you be the mother you’ve always imagined being. It is a new, bright, hopeful start, every time.

It wasn’t actually until I had Alaina that I felt like I finally really enjoyed having a baby and being a mother the way I’d always dreamed of. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the others, I certainly did, but not in that delicious, complete, whole, and vibrant way in which I reveled in her. She was the first baby for whom I felt fully capable of totally giving myself to and not feeling captive by that gift. Perhaps not coincidentally, she was also the first baby for which I did not quit doing other things I wanted to do in order to mother her. My first son’s birth necessitated essentially totally dismantling my previous life and identity. It was SO HARD. I felt so much grief and loss about abandoning so much that I’d cared about so deeply. With my second son, I was finding my legs as a mother-person and feeling my way into other roles and responsibilities that were compatible with motherhood. My feelings of depression and fatigue after him were lifted when I started to find my voice as a blogger, as the editor of the Friends of Missouri Midwives newsletter, as a breastfeeding counselor, and as a birth educator. I’d redefined myself to include motherhood as the core facet of my identity, but in a way that allowed me personal expression and the ability to “make a difference” to other women. With my last baby, my mother-voice outlets were firmly established, my tribe was healthy and strong, and my non-mother career was compatible in an integrated and fairly harmonious way with family life. It was then that I finally felt like being a “good mother” AND doing others things at the same time was actually possible and (pretty much) stopped trying to make excuses for never having given up on that desire.

So what do you think? What can we tell mothers-to-be about the realities of mothering? Do we tell them anything or do we just hug them later when they cry and tell us they had no idea, why didn’t anyone tell me? What stories, like that of my own childbirth educator, do you have that you share with clients? Stories are handy ways of imparting life wisdom without being directive or prescriptive, or implying that someone must be exactly like you. I tell my clients a story of reaching out my hand to my husband, our fingers not quite able to touch, and saying, I miss you. I tell them about my feelings of this parenting thing being both more horrible and more wonderful than I ever imagined. I tell them about my childbirth educator running around her house. I give them tips and tips and more tips about making a postpartum plan. And, I tell them they look gorgeous. And, that they’ll be wonderful parents; that their babies are so lucky to have them. I listen to their happy birth plans and celebrate their enthusiasm. I point out how I notice how well they work together and what a great team they are. I wish them beautiful births and happy babymoons and tell them to email me or call me if they need anything. I hope they’ll remember that I’m there and that I do have the capacity to hear “ugly” without rejecting them. I remind them as many times as I can that they’re strong and beautiful and capable…and then, I open my hands and heart and watch them fly away into their own unknown, mysterious, tender, fragile, and precious journey.

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Postpartum hands picture, taken by my mother in 2003.

Some relevant past blog posts:

Postpartum Survival Tips

Jan23

“In western society, the baby gets attention while the mother is given lectures. Pregnancy is considered an illness; once the ‘illness’ is over, interest in her wanes. Mothers in ‘civilized’ countries often have no or very little help with a new baby. Women tend to be home alone to fend for themselves and the children. They are typically isolated socially & expected to complete their usual chores…while being the sole person to care for the infant…” –Milk, Money, & Madness

324I recently shared this quote on my Facebook page and a reader responded expressing her fear at preparing to face this exact situation. I responded that it is an unfortunately realistic fear and suggested she check out some resources for postpartum planning that might help work through the fear as well as plan for a nurturing postpartum instead of a stressful one. She then responded that she has a very minimal local support system and that got me thinking about postpartum survival tips for when one’s local support system is limited…

My ideas:

  •  Suggest to your out-of-town friends and family that they contribute to a “babymoon” for you and all pitch in to hire a postpartum doula.
  • Tactfully remind people that even if they’re too far away to bring you a meal, they can certainly call up a local restaurant and order a delivery for you! I think a lot of us forget that is an option for a long distance family member (that we would bring food to if they were local). In my experience, getting enough food is a huge issue postpartum! I remember long distance friends having babies a variety of times and wishing I was close enough to bring them dinner. Duh. Many restaurants do, in fact, deliver food!
  • Be your own “best friend” by preparing and freezing meals and snacks now. I know I sound obsessed with food, but it is totally one the hardest things to take care of postpartum, but so important!
  • Put together a mama survival kit for yourself that you can then open up when you need it. Some ideas here and more ideas of variable quality here.
  • If you don’t have a sense of community work, actively work on building one—go to La Leche League meetings, Holistic Moms Network, Mothers of Preschoolers, Attachment Parenting International, or other mothers’ groups. Go BEFORE you have your baby if you can.

Other ideas for helpers:

  • In addition to my idea of ordering delivery for a postpartum family as a way of bringing them dinner long distance, is to order a dinner through the mail via the business Spoonful of Comfort. They will send fresh chicken soup, rolls, cookies, and a baby present via Priority Mail (packed with freezer packs). I send it with a note saying, “this is me, bringing you dinner!” Friendly tip from unfortunate personal experience: if you are doing this for a friend make SURE you enter THEIR address as the shipping address and not your OWN address, or you will then be forced to enjoy their postpartum meal and feel like a total idiot at the same time.
  • Don’t forget about other meals—breakfast = awesome. Muffins = awesome.
  • Pay it forward–I think sometimes people feel like they don’t know someone well enough to bring them food, or maybe they even do a mental “tally” and think, “well, she won’t be bringing me food ever, so why should I take time to bring it to her” or, “she didn’t make anything for me when I had my last baby, so I’m off the hook on this one.” When I had Alaina, a mother who had literally JUST moved to town and that I had not yet met, sent a hot breakfast casserole to me (that my lovely doula delivered to my lovely mother at the snowy end of my gravel road).  I think of that generosity when I bring a postpartum meal to a mama from whom I will never end up getting a reciprocal meal. Who cares. She needs it. You can do it!
  • Another doula commented on my post: “Do you know a mom that is about to have a baby? Or maybe a momma who just gave birth recently? Don’t even ‘offer’ just show up with a bucket of cleaning supplies, a bag of healthy food, and maybe something nice for her. Go tuck her in bed with baby, and get to work on her home.. When she wakes, she has nothing to do but nurse that baby. (If she has other kids, delegate chores with them, if to young, call mutual friends to sit for them! Our Mom’s need this, up through 6-9weeks pp, Mom’s need help, even longer for some. There is a reason the US has the highest postpartum depression issues in the developed world… Create your community! DO IT!” I would add that if you do not know mom well, do not plan to engage in a deep cleaning project and stay for a long time doing such project.

I also posted to the Citizens for Midwifery Facebook page asking for contributions for postpartum survival tips when your local support system is limited. What beautiful, helpful women we have on that page! While I didn’t get many suggestions specifically for minimal local support systems, I did get a nice collection of survival tip ideas:

  • Trust your own instincts. Many women have great advice but if your heart is telling you something else, go with it.
  • Craniosacral therapy… one session for you and one for the baby.
  • In addition to lots of suggestions to hire a postpartum doula, there were lots and lots and lots of shout-outs for placenta encapsulation. I echo it myself.
  • Get out of the house alone! For me, it’s been crucial to my sanity to leave my home, by myself, even if only for an hour or two between nursings. Just a Target run was therapeutic!
  • Kangaroo care for high needs babies.
  • Lots of mentions of it being okay to accept help and okay to ask for help.
  • A lot of new moms get really overwhelmed by family and friends coming by to see baby, and it’s important for them to remember that they can always put out a sign that says “mom and baby sleeping!” (even if they aren’t) anytime they need a break.
  • Watch only positive stuff without violence on TV (cooking shows, home improvement) as regular TV is really violent for new mamas and she may be watching more with all the nursing/healing.
  • Have homemade high protein frozen meals (and snacks) in the freezer before birth so anyone can warm them up for the household after birth. If breastfeeding, get much more rest than you think you need from day one to ensure an abundant milk supply (*note from Molly: it is true that prolactin receptors are “laid down” during the first days of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding “early and often” makes sure that there are an ample supply of receptors in your brain.)
  • Have a sign up sheet for family and friends to choose which chores to help with, gift certificates to a cleaning service, stocking up on disposable plates and dinnerware…
  • A new mommy group can be a life saver. Just knowing that other mommies are going through the same thing help
  • Food registries such as mealtrain and mealbaby. Not enough families know about these amazing and free services. (*note from Molly: we often use Care Calendar locally.)
  • Plan ahead and freeze several of your favorite freeze-able meals. Let the clothes be a little wrinkled. Use paper and plastic ware instead of worrying over dishes. Stay laying down first 3 days postpartum (preferably naked: it gives a certain message and is better for baby anyway) and the first week stay in pajamas. Enjoy frequent rest times, even if you can’t sleep.
  • Baby wearing….lots of time in bed, sleeping cuddling and feeding babe skin to skin…brest friend nursing pillow
  • Send a subliminal message to the limited visitors you’ll have (set limits early with partner) by wearing your robe for several weeks
  • Eat well, accept all offers of help and food, get out of the house alone!
  • I loved getting meals brought by friends, but I didn’t always want to socialize. So, someone to run interference, or maybe a drop-off location for leaving food. (*note from Molly: my doula was the perfect person for this job.)
  • Ask for help! No one will know what you need if you don’t speak up.
  • Don’t go without showering for more than four or five days. Brush your teeth once a day no matter what, even if it ends up being at a weird time. Take your vitamins/ herbal supplements/tea. HYDRATE! Nap with baby if you need to, arrange childcare for older siblings sometimes, but also listen to your instincts—one of my worst baby blues moments was with my third when my older two were gone and I wanted them home!
  • LOVE yourself, nap when you can , Yes you are doing it right, No it’s no ones business (breastfeeding/cosleeping/pumping etc.) allow opinions and advice to slide off, drink lots of water , eat small snacks/meals, love your baby look into their beautiful eyes and connect, skin to skin whenever even with dad or siblings (safely) cherish these moments they don’t last forever, the laundry will get done, the dishes will be get cleaned …
  • Take a “babymoon”. Put on a robe when someone comes to the door–even if you have real clothes underneath. Sleep when the baby sleeps. Don’t answer the phone. Remember, self-care is essential for you to be able to care for your baby.
  • I loved having herbal soaked pad (frozen) to wear afterwards, felt soooo good. Have easy one-handed snacks available and a BIG water bottle.
  • In those last few months of pregnancy I prepare meals to freeze (I start about month 5 or 6). I make up 6 weeks worth of dinners (they always last longer since we have a great church family and friends that bring us meals). After baby is born I can put 2-3 dinners in the refrigerator (to thaw) a few days before I need them. Then all I have to do is pop one in the oven and BAM….dinner’s ready. I love “Don’t Panic, Dinner’s In The Freezer” I & II. The recipes are amazing and all freeze well. Hope that helps!
  • Skin-to-skin in bed for as long as possible; 40 days of rest, recuperation, establishing breastfeeding, bonding, limited visitors, and limited activity; drink when the baby nurses; sleep when the baby sleeps; nurse on demand; learn to wear your baby; and use a peri bottle when peeing! A postpartum herb bath and massage are nice, too.
  • Hot water bottle for afterpains
  • Placenta encapsulation and WishGarden Herbs ReBalance tincture!
  • Chiropractic adjustments, ASAP
  • Call in your mom. My mom’s job after my second was born was to keep me fed and to spend some quality time with my older child.
  • Drag oneself outside and BREATHE! 🙂
  • Water…..hot tub, shower, steam, pool, raindrops, snow, sauna, bath, river, stream, ocean, lake! If you can, immerse yourself, if you cannot, imagine yourself floating 🙂
  • Lots of water, lots of protein and healthy fats, placenta encapsulation and low expectations of anything other than bonding time with baby.
  • Don’t try to impress others with how quickly you can get up and going, even if you can, just take it easy!!!!
  • It’s not in the asking for help; its in the accepting…
Surround her with support!

Surround her with support!

Check out these previous posts:

Mothers Matter–Creating a Postpartum Plan

Planning for Postpartum

Some reminders for postpartum mamas & those who love them

and a great one for helpers written by my own doula:

The Incredible Importance of Postpartum Support

And, remember…

“The first few months after a baby comes can be a lot like floating in a jar of honey—very sweet and golden, but very sticky too.”

–American College of Nurse-Midwives

This article is crossposted at Citizens for Midwifery.

Plucking out the heart of mystery

Jan12

“Birth is a great mystery. Yet, we live in a rational, scientific world that doesn’t allow for mystery. ‘In this day and age, there must be a better way to have a baby,’ implies that if you are informed enough, strong enough, you can control it. Any woman who has given birth, who can be honest, will tell you otherwise. There are no guarantees. It is an uncontrollable experience. Taking care of yourself and being informed and empowered are crucial, but so is surrender. Forget about trying to birth perfectly. Forget about trying to please anyone, least of all your doctor or midwife…” –Jennifer Louden (The Pregnant Woman’s Comfort Book)

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life Amazon affiliate link included in text/image.

I’m halfway through a year-long class based on the book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. We’re examining and practicing compassion to ourselves and in personal relationships, community relationships, and to non-humans. The subject of our current month is, “making a place for others.” What does this mean? The author explains…

I began to notice how seldom we “make place for the other” in social interaction. All too often people impose their own experience and beliefs on acquaintances and events, making hurtful, inaccurate, and dismissive snap judgments, not only about individuals but about whole cultures. It often becomes clear, when questioned more closely, that their actual knowledge of the topic under discussion could comfortably be contained on a small postcard. Western society is highly opinionated. Our airwaves are clogged with talk shows, phone-ins, and debates in which people are encouraged to express their views on a wide variety of subjects. This freedom of speech is precious, of course, but do we always know what we are talking about?

Armstrong, Karen (2010-12-28). Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (Kindle Locations 1476-1481). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

I wonder about this sometimes in my own compulsion to blog—am I just adding to the digital cacophony out there, etc. and then that reminded me of a previously shared quote:

“A person who believes too earnestly in [her] own convictions can be dangerous to others, for absence of humor signals a failure in basic humanity.” –Thomas Moore (Original Self)

 Armstrong also makes this important observation:

Hindus acknowledge this when they greet each other by bowing with joined hands to honor the sacred mystery they are encountering. Yet most of us fail to express this reverence for others in our daily lives. All too often we claim omniscience about other people, other nations, other cultures, and even those we claim to love, and our views about them are frequently colored by our own needs, fears, ambitions, and desires.

Armstrong, Karen (2010-12-28). Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (Kindle Locations 1596-1599). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

We all do this so often. I find myself very annoyed when other people play “armchair psychologist” and yet still catch myself doing it as well. I also think about “gossip” and its role in human society. I think curiosity about the lives of others is normal and talking about other people’s behavior and experiences with them is also normal. I am most disturbed when those around me claim seemingly infallible understandings of the motives, characters, and psychology of others (in my classes, I remind students to “separate person from problem” and to “describe behavior rather than character”). It is very common for us not to even understand ourselves, so I find it interesting, frustrating, and surprising that we then seem to think we can have direct understanding of the inner workings and thought-processes of another person. “Instead of discoursing confidently on other people’s motives, intentions, and desires, we should recall the essential ‘mystery’ and realize that there is a certain sacrilege in attempting to ‘pluck out’ its heart to serve an agenda of our own.”

What does this have to do with birth?

“Birth is life’s central mystery. No one can predict how a birth may manifest…Our dominant culture is anything but ‘natural’ so it is no surprise that childbirth, even with the most natural lifestyle lived by an individual family, sometimes needs intervention and medical assistance. This is not to say that any one mother’s efforts to have a natural childbirth are futile. Just that birth is bigger than one’s personal desires.” –Jeannine Parvati Baker (in The Goddess Celebrates: An Anthology of Women’s Rituals, p. 215)

When women’s choices are restricted in the birthroom or in access to compatible care providers, we’re plucking out the heart of mystery. When December 2012 073doctors or nurses “let” or “don’t let” a birthing woman do something, they’re plucking out the heart of mystery. When birth activists analyze a woman’s birth story for evidence of why things went “wrong,” we’re plucking out the heart of her rite of passage, of her story. When we fail to acknowledge the sociocultural context of breastfeeding OR when we cannot accept that a mother “couldn’t breastfeed,” we’ve plucked the heart of her mystery. When we need to have or know the “right answer,” chances are, we’re plucking the heart. And, we need to remember that…”Women’s surveillance of other women’s childbirth experiences–in this case, natural childbirth–can shape and constrain the individual choices women make in childbirth in much the same way medicalized assumptions about childbirth can.” (Christa Craven, Pushing for Midwives)

Armstrong goes on to explain…

Third, spend some time trying to define exactly what distinguishes you from everybody else. Delve beneath your everyday consciousness: Do you find your true self—what the Upanishads called the atman? Or does this self constantly elude you? Then ask yourself how you think you can possibly talk so knowingly about the self of other people. As part of your practice of mindfulness, notice how often you contradict yourself and act or speak in a manner that surprises you so that you say, “Now why did I do that?” Try to describe the essence of your personality to somebody else. Write down a list of your qualities, good and bad. And then ask yourself whether it really sums you up. Make a serious attempt to pin down precisely what it is that you love about your partner or a close friend. List that person’s qualities: Is that why you love him? Or is there something about her that you cannot describe? During your mindfulness practice, look around your immediate circle: your family, colleagues, and friends. What do you really know about each and every one of them? What are their deepest fears and hopes? What are their most intimate dreams and fantasies? And how well do you think they really know you?…How many people could say to you that you “pluck out the heart of my mystery”? In your mindfulness practice, notice how often, without thinking, you try to manipulate, control, or exploit others—sometimes in tiny and apparently unimportant ways. How often do you belittle other people in your mind to make them fit your worldview? Notice how upsetting it is when you become aware that somebody is trying to manipulate or control you, or when somebody officiously explains your thoughts and actions to you, plucking out the heart of your mystery…

Armstrong, Karen (2010-12-28). Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (Kindle Locations 1644-1658). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

The irony of the fact that I’ve just filled up a bunch of digital air space with my own opinions, instead of practicing this principle, isn’t lost on me. As I move through this month, in all contexts not just in birthwork, I would like to open more to this “heart of mystery” and to not knowing as well as to avoid the tendency to analyze and “understand” other people. I also wish to be mindful of plucking the heart out of anyone’s mystery—may I be a witness to their mystery and may they feel both seen and heard by me…

“Birth is always the same, yet it is always different. Like a sunset, the mystery is also the appeal to those who get up in the middle of the night to attend laboring women. While the sequence of birth is simple, the nature of the experience is complex and unique to each individual. No matter how much any of us may know about birth, we know nothing about a particular labor and birth until it occurs.” (emphasis mine) –Elizabeth Noble in Childbirth with Insight (previously shared here)

Blog Circle: New Beginnings and Most Significant Events

Jan9
The January Blog Circle at The Amethyst Network has the theme of New Beginnings. This is perfect for me, since my pregnancy-after-loss “rainbow baby” was born in January. The Amethyst Network was named for the infant sister of one of the founders. Her name was Amethyst. We use “Amethyst babies” as a way to identify and label loss stories on the TAN blog and we are using “Garnet babies” to refer to babies born following loss. Garnet is the January birthstone and several of the founders have January rainbow babies. Several of us also have February miscarriages (amethyst is the birthstone for February). While this obviously isn’t a universal experience, this is how we personally make the connection between our choice to use gemstone names and our own experiences. Here’s the info about this month’s blog circle:

The loss of a baby is the end of something but it is also the beginning of something new. It takes time to find that new, to navigate and find your way in this new world you have been thrust into and to navigate and find your way into this new normal.

The New Year is also an opportunity for New beginnings. Many people set Goals and New Years resolutions to focus on for the year. It may be a time of letting go of the old and focusing on the new.

We have chosen the theme “New Beginnings” for our January Blog circle. The decision was based both on the New Year as well as the new beginning for the Amethyst Network. We have been redoing our website, redefining our mission and creating a space of hope and healing and a place of information for those who in the miscarriage/babyloss community.

We would love to have you participate in our January Blog Circle. The theme is New Beginnings. Was your loss a new beginning for you? Your next baby? How do you feel about the New Year? Are you in a place of letting go? Or embracing?

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A lot of hopes and dreams rested on this little body!

My first loss was, in fact, a new beginning for me in many ways. That miscarriage-birth changed my life forever. It changed my worldview, it changed how I work with women, it changed my understanding of the world, it prompted a spiritual awakening, it changed the trajectory of my work and my focus, and it broadened and deepened the scope of what I’d like to offer in service to others. It was BIG. It was important. It was hard, it was scary, it was emotionally and physically painful, and it lasted a long, long time. It took the birth of my pregnancy-after-loss baby in January of 2011 to really feel “healed” from the scars of loss and so in this way, she was definitely a new beginning as well. I remember thinking during my pregnancy that there was so much riding on her—a lot for a little baby to shoulder—all of our hope, our fears, our very future of a family felt like it rested in her. And, I remember telling her, shortly before her first birthday—you, you healed me. In our conversations among The Amethyst Network board members, I’ve also shared that I didn’t feel completely healed until she reached her first birthday—until we taken one whole turn of the wheel together with her in my arms. And, in that way, I’m also not sure that we ever completely heal from loss—I know that one of the factors behind our decision not to have more children is a still, small, lurking fear of what if it started all over again? That would suggest that a scar on our lives remains (that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Our scars are part of the landscape of being–of loving, living, risking, losing, learning, and changing).

Considering this topic also brought me an old question, previously posed in response to a midwife’s blog post, in which I ask the following:  What is the most significant event that shaped your life as a woman? As a mother? Are your answers to the two questions different?

My own answers have in fact been different. And, they have changed. Pre-loss, I described my postpartum journey following my first birth as the most significant event shaping my life as a mother. After the miscarriage-birth of my tiny son, the texture of my response and my definition of my life experiences shifted:

When originally writing this post, I was pregnant with my third son. That pregnancy ended very unexpectedly in November, rather than May, when my baby was born after almost 15 weeks of pregnancy. Interestingly, my experience of miscarriage has supplanted the birth of my other two sons as essentially the most powerful/significant and transformative event of my life. (My sense that his birth has “replaced” the birth of my other children as most significant makes sense to me, because though it is classed as miscarriage, it is still my most recent birth experience—all of their births stand out as special, important, and meaningful days and I will remember each with clarity for the rest of my life, but his birth is the freshest and most recent and came with the additional transformative journey of grief. And thus, when I think of giving birth or when I think back to birth memories or birth feelings, his birth is the first one that comes to mind.) Though I still “vote” for postpartum as the most significant event in my life as a mother, I now “vote” for my birth-miscarriage experience as the most significant event in my life as a woman.

Interestingly, my answer has evolved again since writing the post above and I would now include the entire pregnancy-after-loss journey as the most significant event in my life as a mother. It was hard, people. It was day in and day out and never-ending and so, so delicate. So tinged with hope and fear and so laden with meaning. As a woman, though, I’m not sure that my answer has changed. I need to think about it more deeply, but I think that miscarriage-birth is still it. Just as life divides cleaning between before kids and after kids, there is a dramatic, pivotal before miscarriage and after miscarriage that has shaped my female identity and understanding of myself.

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2012 blog year in review

Jan1

I got an automatically generated report from WordPress this week with my 2012 year in review!

Here’s an excerpt:

About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 180,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 3 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!

Apparently, I wrote 187 new posts and uploaded 746 pictures!

Click here to see the complete report.

(My family year-in-review update was already published in my Happy Holidays post.)

Here’s my own expanded version of my blog year-in-review…

In 2012, I finished my miscarriage memoir: Footprints on My Heart: A Memoir of Miscarriage & Pregnancy After Loss. I was thankful for My Tribe! I had some thoughts on epidurals, risk, and decision making

and, I changed visions which in part led to offering new birth workshops instead of traditional classes.

My most popular new post was All That Matters is a Healthy Husband (or: why giving birth matters), with my old stand bys, How do I know I’m really in labor? and In-Utero Practice Breathing, still coming in ahead hits-wise, closely followed by the ever-popular Good Foods to Eat in Labor.

A couple of other new posts were also popular:

What If…She’s Stronger than She Knows…

Breastfeeding as an Ecofeminist Issue

Miscarriage and Birth

Some reminders for postpartum mamas & those who love them

Can I really expect to have a great birth? (updated edition)

Becoming an Informed Birth Consumer (updated edition)

Case Study: Low Carb Diets and Breastfeeding Mothers

The Great Birth (of the Universe)

A Bias Toward Breastfeeding?

I wrote a series of posts that I really liked a lot:

The Rest and Be Thankful Stage

Spontaneous Birth Reflex

Birth Pause…

And some other posts I also like:

Blessingways and the role of ritual

Celebrating Pregnancy & Birth Through Art

Talk to Your Baby

Where are the women who know?

Ode to my nursling

I also had an awesome time discovering 300 Things.

And, I wrote a whole series of CAPPA re-cap posts. I also semi-accidentally started a series of posts on a taking it to the body theme, for which I see a lot of ways of continuing.

I reprinted several articles that were published earlier in various magazines:

Talk Less, Learn More: Evolving as an Educator

A Tale of Two Births

Incorporating Prenatal Yoga into Childbirth Education Classes

Breastfeeding as a Spiritual Practice

Breastfeeding as an Ecofeminist Issue

Domestic Violence During Pregnancy

The lifelong impact of breastfeeding support

Small Stone Birth Activism

I hit 300,000 hits (up an additional 46,000 now already) and had a celebration giveaway (for which I still need to draw the winner!) because I also started selling birth jewelry. And, I had my first Blog Break Festival!

What a good year it was 🙂

Happy New Year!

MollyNov 111

To kick off 2013, I drew a new Full Moon Calamandala!

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Birth Activism Opportunities!

Dec20

Recently I got an email letting me know that I’ve been nominated for the Health Activist Hero Award in this year’s WEGO Health Activist Awards! Nominations are open through December 31st, 2012, after which judging will begin. You can “endorse” my nomination by clicking on the badge. You can also follow the happenings on WEGO’s Pinterest board. You can also nominate someone!  There are 16 award categories and there’s no limit to the number of people you can nominate with this quick form.

Second, Freedom for Birth just released a free 15 minute version of their documentary online. Check it out!

Celebrating Pregnancy & Birth Through Art

Dec18

This article is adapted from my notes for past birth art workshop presentations. It is part of a story for the Winter 2013 edition of the Friends of Missouri Midwives newsletter.

Celebrating Pregnancy & Birth Through Art

by Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE, CCCE

http://talkbirth.me

See other posts and pictures about birth art here.

Birth art is one of my favorite birthy subtopics and I used art during my pregnancies, postpartum, and continuing in life today. I love exploring birth art with women and I’ve presented on the subject at multiple conferences, as well as hosted a “birth art booth” at our local MamaFest event this past fall. Art can play an important role in self-discovery and preparation for birth and parenting. Art used during pregnancy and following birth can be powerful tool of validation, celebration, exploration, and insight.

Why is art during pregnancy is useful?

Art during pregnancy is primarily as a tool to tap into “right brain” consciousness and express unexplored gifts, primal wisdom, or release hidden fears. Creating birth art can help both women and men explore your feelings, memories, beliefs, and perceptions surrounding birth outside of the confines of the spoken or written word. The purpose of birth art is to explore what you find within as you create your art and not the final product—as Pam England describes, birth art is as raw, honest, spontaneous, and personal as birth itself.

Art during pregnancy can be used for:

    • Birth preparation.
    • Exploration of fears.
    • Celebration of feelings & experiences.
    • Fun!
    • Visualization.
    • Focal point.
    • Exploration of the unknown.
    • Self-discovery & insight.
    • Healing.
    • Revealing unconscious patterns/ideas.
    • Celebration of the power of the female form.
    • Celebration of new life.
    • Representing hopes/dreams.
    • Communicating hard to verbalize ideas/feelings.
    • Exploring “right brain” methods of understanding the birth journey.
    • Explaining concepts in new ways.
    • Symbolic/spiritual insights.
    • Revealing hidden birth wisdom.
    • Expressing creative gifts.
    • Mementos

Types of art exploration in pregnancy:

    • Sculpture—variety of mediums (fiber, clay, pottery…)
    • Painting
    • Drawing
    • Photos
    • Jewelry
    • Belly casting
    • Body art (such as henna)
    • Collage
    • Mandalas
    • Decorating objects—prayer box, wreath
    • Quilting

Birth Art Examples:


Two Suggested Exercises for Birth Professionals or Parents:

Based on Pam England’s LabOrinth article, I enjoy showing parents how to draw a birth labyrinth (several examples can be seen in the gallery above). Drawing a labyrinth with an explanation of how this type of image can be used to explain/explore the progress of labor as opposed to medical models such as cervical dilation charts or labor progress “bell curves,” can be a very eye-opening exercise for parents. The resulting image is a powerful visual of “normal birth,” instead of “clock watching” birth. I’ve made two posters than I use when I teach birth classes. The first shows a rough Friedman’s curve and a cervical dilation chart—these images are part of a deeply ingrained cultural view of birth and it is hard to shake these associations. This linear birth structure may be how we view labor from the outside, but it is not how we experience it from the inside, the labyrinth is a more appropriate birthing image as it feels from within and this is why…

      • No shortcuts—have to keep going til the end.
      • Speed varies.
      • Can’t get off the path (no falling off the curve).
      • Can get through blindfolded.
      • One step at a time will get you through—one foot in front of the other (one contraction at a time).
      • Can’t get lost. If you get out of the lines, you get lost—try to take shortcuts, get lost. Have to continue on your path.
      • Can crawl if you need to (or run!).
      • Circular (nonlinear)
      • No right way to finish.
      • Contemplative
      • Meditative
      • Journey
      • Everyone gets to the same place eventually—can go own speed, some fast, some slow
      • Do not need instruction to complete (no birth plan)
      • No timeline
      • No need to study.
      • Can rest if you need to.


My other favorite group birth art project is to painting small pregnant goddess figurines (I make big batches of these in a mold using plaster). My most recent experience in doing so was at Rolla Birth Network’s MamaFest event:

This experience reaffirmed for me that birth art is about process not product. And, also that I don’t have to personally do anything to have the process be a meaningful one to participants. As an example of what I mean: at MamaFest, a very young mother came into the birth art sanctuary. I gave her my one minute spiel about the purpose of birth art and she painted her figures alone in the room for about 20 minutes. When she emerged, she showed her figures to me and explained what all the symbols and colors meant. Then, with tears in her eyes, she hugged me and said thank you and left. This was a mother I’d never met before and I’ve never seen again. And yet, we shared a special moment through birth art.

Molly Remer is the Friends of Missouri Midwives newsletter editor. She enjoys blogging about birth, motherhood, and women’s issues at http://talkbirth.me.

Talk to Your Baby

Dec15

I already know that you can learn a lot from chickens about giving birth. This summer, I had another profound birth-mothering experience with one of our chickens after she hatched her first baby. During the last several days of incubation, mothers hens “talk” to their babies a lot through the eggshells and the babies respond. It is part of how they get to know each other and imprint before hatching. Then, after baby hatches, the mother hen continues to talk and cluck to the baby in a reassuring manner—she calls to the babies when separated and she calls a special call when there is something good to eat and she clucks softly and reassuringly at bedtime as she snuggles them all beneath her. There is a specific type of “soothing” noise they make to stressed or lost babies and a specific sort of excited sound they make to let the babies know something good is happening. There are also distressed sound that means, “run to me now, there might be danger!”

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The baby chick who tried desperately to get to a mama who would talk to it (this mama, interestingly, is the same one I wrote about in the Birth Lessons from a Chicken essay several years prior).

We had three broody chickens at the time, each in their own little separate nest box in the broody coop. One of the hens had hatched a baby already and was in the neighboring box. The inexperienced mama hen hatched her baby and she would not talk to it. The baby freaked out. It flailed, it freaked, it stumbled all around. It dragged its tiny little wet, not-even-able-to-walk body to the very corner of the nest box as far away from the mother as possible. It flung itself into the wall where it could hear the neighboring mother clucking to her baby. The baby peeped more frantically and loudly than I’ve ever heard a chick cry out before, it sounded like it was in grave distress and danger. We moved it back to its mother and she fluffed out her wings around it just like she was supposed to do and I thought all would be all right, but…silence. The mother did not talk. Her baby desperately struggled out from under her, still not able to walk, still wet, and flung itself back into the corner, sinking down under the straw, crying piteously. Silence from the mother.

Talk to your baby, we pleaded. Your baby needs to hear you. Please talk to your baby. Silence. The baby squished down on the wire slats, pressed into the corner of the box, screaming at the top of its chick-lungs. The mother in the next box became distressed as well, calling back to the baby more and more loudly. The chick became more frenzied and flopping. The baby in the next box picked up on the fear and began peeping loudly as well. Still, the new mother sat silently and unresponsive. Talk to your baby. We left her alone, thinking her instincts would kick in, but as time passed and we could hear the chick screaming from all the way across the yard, we went back to interfere. We tried twice more to put it back under her and again the same routine repeated. We became concerned the baby would die if its level of distress continued, particularly with forcing itself down and under the straw and into the wire, so we made the decision to remove it and put it in “foster care” with the other, responsive mother. We thought she might attack it, since it wasn’t her own hatchling and because it was several days behind her own baby, but she snuggled it right up, clucking in reassurance, and it went to sleep, the next morning it was fluffy and quiet and perfectly happy with its new mother. The red hen continued to sit, silent, and unresponsive, and of course I felt horrible for stealing her baby and giving it to someone else after she’d worked so hard to hatch it. Luckily for the mental health of all involved, she successfully hatched one more baby and did take care of it, albeit still quite silently compared to all other mama hens we’ve experienced.

What does this have to do with birth?

Babies are primed to hear their mothers’ voices after birth. They expect to be snuggled into the maternal nest. Mammal babies expect to receive a warm breast and to hear comforting words in their own language. I feel fortunate that my own birth pause was respected after all my children’s births and that each baby felt only my hands and heard my voice for their first minutes of life. I talked to all my babies, soothingly and lovingly, and then brought them to my breast. My midwife and the other people around me did not interfere with these sacred, timeless moments of introduction.

It has been several years now, but I’ve worked with a couple of mothers for breastfeeding help postpartum who were unwilling or unable to talk to their babies, even with direct encouragement to do so. Baby was expecting mother’s voice and mother was unable to give it. Not surprisingly to me, these mothers experienced significant difficulty in getting baby to breast. I believe baby is expecting mother’s voice as a guide to the breast as much as it is expecting the smell of her and the sound of her heartbeat. Baby is not expecting multiple, strange voices from nurses (or even helpful breastfeeding helpers like me!). Baby is not expecting gloved hands. Baby is not expecting bright lights or loud noises. Baby is most definitely not expecting to be “helped” to the breast and “shoved” on as many mothers describe experiencing after their births. In Breastfeeding Answers Made Simple, the author emphasizes that what motherbaby pairs need most to successfully breastfeed is time alone to get to know each other. Mother and baby need to explore each other’s bodies and to listen to each other. She points out that with many people in the room, even well-meaning people, mothers have trouble getting to know their babies and getting babies to breastfeed. She says the most helpful strategy to supporting early breastfeeding is to get out of the way and let mother talk to her baby, smell her baby, touch her baby, meet her baby, and learn about her baby.

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The non-communicative mother and her second baby, who was okay without much talking.

What are we really imprinting upon many newborns at birth in our culture?

As Sister MorningStar writes in her article The Newborn Imprint in Midwifery Today issue 104, Winter 2012…

If you have had the misfortune, as nearly all of us who can read and write have had, to see a baby born, perhaps pulled out, under bright lights with glaring eyes and loud noises of all sorts, in a setting that smells like nothing human, with a mother shocked and teary and scared; if you have witnessed or performed touch that can only be described as brutal and cruel in any other setting…

Every baby born deserves uninterrupted, undisturbed contact with her mother in the environment the mother has nested by her own instinctual nature to create. Any movement we make to enter that inner and external womb must be acknowledged as disturbing and violating to what nature is protecting. We do not know the long-term effects of such disturbance. We cannot consider too seriously a decision to disturb a newborn by touch, sound, light, smell and taste that is different and beyond what the mother is naturally and instinctually providing. Even facilitating is often unnecessary if the motherbaby are given space and time to explore and relate to one another and the life-altering experience they just survived. They both have been turned inside out, one from the other, and the moment to face that seemingly impossible feat cannot be rushed without compromise. We have no right to compromise either a mother or a baby.

I am deliberately leaving out the issue of life-saving because it has become the license for full-scale abuse to every baby born… [emphasis mine]

If mother has been taken to an operating room to give birth, or if mother is for any reason overwhelmed, exhausted, scared, vulnerable, hurt, and traumatized, she may have great difficulty in talking to her baby. If the room is full of people, baby may have difficult hearing her mother’s voice and feeling her welcoming touch. If baby is greeted by a bright light and masked face instead of her mother’s voice, baby may cry loudly in distress and eventually “shut down” into sleep rather than immediately to breastfeeding.

What can we do?

Beyond the obvious answers in carefully choosing place of birth and birth attendant, we can talk to the babies. If birth has been long, scary, or otherwise difficult, talk to the baby. If baby needs immediate care after birth, try as hard as humanly possible to have that care take place on mother’s chest and in reach of mother’s voice. If baby has to be separated from mother, talk to the baby. Call out to him. If mother can’t call out to the baby, father can talk to the baby. If father is unable, doula or midwife or nurse can talk to the baby. Welcome her to the world, reassure her that she is safe and all will be well. Speak gently and soothingly and kindly, never forgetting that this is a new person’s introduction to the world and to life. Our first and deepest impulse is connection. Before Descartes could articulate his thoughts on philosophy, he reached out his hand for his mother. I have learned a lot about the fundamental truth of relatedness through my own experiences as a mother. Relationship is our first and deepest urge and is vital to survival. The infant’s first instinct is to connect with others. Before an infant can verbalize or mobilize, she reaches out to her mother. Mothering is a profoundly physical experience. The mother’s body is the baby’s “habitat” in pregnancy and for many months following birth. Through the mother’s body, the baby learns to interpret and to relate to the rest of the world and it is to the mother’s body that she returns for safety, nurturance, and peace. Birth and breastfeeding exist on a continuum, with mother’s chest becoming baby’s new “home” after having lived in her body for nine months. These thoroughly embodied experiences of the act of giving life and in creating someone else’s life and relationship to the world are profoundly meaningful experiences and the transition from internal connection to external connection, must be vigorously protected and deeply respected.

“Birth should not be a celebration of separation, but rather a reuniting of mother and baby, who joins her for an external connection.” –Barbara Latterner, in New Lives

“No mammal on this planet separates the newborn from its mother at birth except the human animal. No mammal on this planet denies the breast of the newborn except the human.” –James Prescott (neuropsychologist quoted in The Art of Conscious Parenting)

 “A woman’s confidence and ability to give birth and to care for her baby are enhanced or diminished by every person who gives her care, and by the environment in which she gives birth…Every women should have the opportunity to give birth as she wishes in an environment in which she feels nurtured and secure, and her emotional well-being, privacy, and personal preferences are respected.” –Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS)”

 

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Guest Post: Mothers Matter–Creating a Postpartum Plan

Dec12

I connected with today’s guest post author, Rachel Van Buren, via Facebook. Rachel has a passion for postpartum support and so do I. When she mentioned that she was teaching a postpartum planning workshop, I asked if she’d consider writing up her notes into a post to share and she did!

IMG_5598“Mothers matter” – Creating a postpartum birth plan
by Rachel Van Buren

The Neighborhood Doula

I feel compelled to state the obvious: Society fails to meet the needs of the laboring, birthing, postpartum woman. Because these women lack the support that seems obvious for those around them to give, they assume their feelings are not normal. I am here after having birthed 4 children over the last 13 years to reassure you that your needs are normal. So normal, that I can read ten thousand threads in one afternoon of women who are crying out for support during the postpartum months. Why is it that we dismiss our feelings, and label ourselves as “ungrateful, needy, or weak” because we read one perfect looking blog, or Facebook post? Don’t misunderstand…the 4th trimester is beautiful. It really truly is. But it’s also life changing. Have you ever experienced a life change without experiencing anxiety? Of course not.

My message here is this: Women need to plan for the postpartum time period. It is essential. We get so wrapped up with birth, we forget about what happens when we bring baby home.

There are 3 areas of importance to explore before you bring baby home: Dealing with friends and relatives, how to delegate without guilt, and the importance of self-care.

Let’s explore these topics together.

How to deal with relatives and visitors during those first few weeks:

  • Have a clear vision of what your postpartum time will look like. If you aren’t sure, have that discussion with your partner now. Do not wait.
  • Set clear boundaries: Everyone does better when they know what to expect.
  • Set phones to go directly to voicemail.
  • Change your outgoing voicemail greeting. For example: “You have reached the _______ family, we are sorry we can’t take your call right now, as we are busy enjoying some quiet time together as a family. We are all doing well, and really appreciate your thoughtfulness in calling. We will return your call when we have the opportunity to talk, or are ready to expect company. So good to hear from you, and have a great day!”
  • Stay in bed.
  • Stay in pajamas.
  • Do not offer beverages. Visitors will be less likely to overstay if you are not in the entertaining mode.
  • Have partner or Postpartum doula mediate and advocate to well-intentioned but pushy friends or family. A BFF, parent, or close relative shouldn’t serve in this capacity. Prepare with them an “elevator speech” regarding visitors “Their Doctor/Midwife has encouraged the family to take a postpartum “Baby Moon” and they are really taking that advice to heart.”
  • If mom is breastfeeding: A gentle reminders to others, that she is nursing the baby about every hour(maybe even more) and are spending lots of time skin to skin, so visitors are just not practical right now.
  • Use social media to the fullest…
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Update your Facebook status as a way of giving a “heads up“.

Delegating without the guilt: I find it interesting to meet a lot of women that perceive themselves as feminists; they have no problem advocating for a natural/intervention free birth, defending their right to an elective Ceserean, or advocating for their future right to nurse in public. However many of these women come home after birth, and suddenly find themselves struggling to find their inner voice. Suddenly things become sticky because we’re now dealing with people that we have relationships with on a personal level. Boundaries can be tough to establish and maintain because our desire is really to our loved ones. Here’s when guilt creeps in. Perhaps guilt over losing exclusive relationships (first child, partner, or even self). Guilt of not living up to our mother’s example, our friend’s example, or the “perfect” mother on Pinterest who is sewing her own postpartum maxi pads and cloth diapers.

I’m a believer in learning to delegate. It decreases levels of guilt from not being able to be Mrs Cleaver. It lightens our load. Whether it’s with our partner, or our children, we need to do it. The days are gone where we can “do it all”.

Here are some simple steps to practice in order to delegate without feeling guilty:

  • Set your ego aside: There is more than one right way of doing things. Yours is not the only way. Invite the possibility that they might even do the task better or faster than you.
  • Stop waiting for people to volunteer: It is your job to communicate your needs. Partners are not mind readers. Just because they don’t offer, does not mean your needs aren’t normal.
  • Ask and you shall receive: Get to the root as to why you struggle with asking for help (shame? guilt?). Learn a different way. Learn to ask for help.
  • Delegate the objective – NOT the procedure: Dignify the person helping you by allowing them to do it as they choose, but make clear what your desired end result is. This will stop you from being the ever annoying micro-manager. After all, you are not training a robot, but a human being who can adapt and improve.
  • Be patient: The person you delegate will make mistakes, it is part of the learning process. Work consciously to keep a positive and realistic attitude.
  • Recognize your helper: Make sure they hear you brag about them to your friends or family. Everyone loves praise, and when they are appreciated they will be more apt to tune into your needs and want to help. Say THANK YOU! Let partner know that it makes you feel so special that they are working so hard to meet your needs.
  • Avoid controlling partner’s feelings. It doesn’t build up the relationship, and only adds resentment. (“I won’t ask partner to load the dishwasher because I don’t want to hear complaints. I’ll just do it myself to avoid the argument”) Partner has feelings, and is entitled to them, whether you perceive them as “good or bad”. Feelings are not facts. They are interpretations of the facts.
  • It’s OK to feel guilty. NO ONE has ever died from guilt!! (excellent mantra during particular moments of delegating)
  • Avoid saying “yes” when you really mean “no”.
  • Change your “normal”. Embrace the fact that the next 3 months are truly a time to expect the unexpected.

Self care:

Postpartum self-care is an absolute necessity. Get in the habit now of taking care of yourself. I firmly believe that how we take care of ourselves is learned behavior. Surround yourself with women who value their physical and mental health. Watch them, and copy them.

Here is a list of self-care ideas for your physical postpartum recovery: Alaina064

  • Ice packs for perineum
  • Postpartum massage
  • Belly binding
  • C-scar massage
  • Herbal bath (with baby too!)
  • Lots of sleep
  • Ask for help
  • Eat nutritious living food
  • Stay hydrated
  • Listen to your favorite music.
  • Avoid any negative television.
  • If you are already caring for a child with special needs, make sure that support is already in place to continue caring for them during those first few months until you are back into somewhat of a routine.
  • Create a network. Women want intimacy. Do not isolate. Isolation breeds anxiety.
  • Stick to your spiritual routine (whatever that looks like) Feed your soul daily.
  • Avoid stress triggers (if overbearing mother in law is coming by, let partner and baby spend time with her. Go take a shower, or get some rest)
  • Hug your partner. A lot
  • Avoid alcohol and caffeine. These both will be very tempting, and can be OK depending on your circumstances. If you are feeling blue, or have a history of depression, I recommend avoiding during the 4th trimester.

And most of all, listen to your instincts. Don’t compare yourself to others. Believe in yourself. Postpartum is a special time in which we evolve, allow yourself to be transformed.

Be empowered: create a postpartum plan today!

Rachel Van Buren is a birth and postpartum doula living in Charlotte, NC with her husband and four children. Visit her online at The Neighborhood Doula.

Originally posted at The Neighborhood Doula,
Dec 6, 2012

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You can read past Talk Birth posts about postpartum here:

Planning for Postpartum