Saturday Savoring…

Mar10

I was surprised to unearth a wonderful little reminder in the March issue of Parents magazine. Parents is usually pretty mainstream, party line, and conventional for my taste, though I do really enjoy some of the recipes and party ideas as well as the $1 subscription renewal price I got this year. Anyway, in an article titled “Savor the Moments” by Harley Rotbart, he explains:

Alaina and my dad---*blink*--this moment, this "Saturday" is months old now already! (he looks like he's paying attention though 🙂

There are only 940 Saturdays between a child’s birth and her leaving for college. That may sound like a lot, but how many have you already used up? If your child is 5 years old, 260 Saturdays are gone. Poof!

Oh. My Goodness. FREAKS me out! That is nothing. A blur. A zoom. A blink. An amazingly swift transition. Somehow putting it in terms of Saturdays makes it feel very stark and swift.

Also included in the article is an oft-repeated remark in some form or another in parenting circles: “Each day with young kids feels like a week, each week like a month. Yet as every birthday passes, the years seem to be streaking by at warp speed.”

I don’t actually quite agree with this one. Even with my first baby, I felt astounded at how fast the time flew by. Even with overwhelming early days, I was more amazed by how fast the day would pass without “getting anything done” and “without time” for a shower, rather than feel like the time was dragging or lasting a year. The speed of time as only increased with each baby and with each developmental milestone.

Talk Less, Learn More: Evolving as an Educator

Mar9

Since late 2006, I have written at the top of each of my teaching outlines: “Talk less, listen more.” This simple reminder has fundamental importance and has completely revolutionized how I structure and guide my childbirth classes. During each series that I teach, I realize how listening to the women and giving them a space in which to share, is one of the most important things I can offer. Though I studied principles of adult learning and designing effective curricula during my certification program, I started out my childbirth education journey with a lecture and information-heavy approach I’ve since heard called, “opening their heads and dumping information in.” As I continue to teach, I’m continually discovering ways to talk less, but hopefully, impart more, creating a guiding philosophy of “talk less, [they] learn more” for myself as I plan and implement my classes.

Real birth preparation

After my first year of teaching, I realized that couples that sign up for my classes are not really looking for pregnancy and prenatal care information, but for real birth preparation. They are there because the women want to learn, “Can I do this?” and “How will I do this?” and the men are asking, “How I can help her do this?” It feels almost insulting to meet this quest for inner knowing with a discussion about the benefits of prenatal vitamins. I had to confront the fact that some of the things I was teaching seemed irrelevant, redundant, or obvious.

It became clear to me that I had to tackle the slightly embarrassing reality that I was following a model of prenatal education that was not in line with the true needs of the women in my community. I teach independent, natural childbirth classes privately in people’s homes. Maybe with a different population, my original approach would be more successful or I would take a different approach altogether. Also, just as students have different learning styles educators naturally have preferred methods. I have an information-heavy personal style that spilled into my teaching. I continue to wrestle with this tendency and struggle to rein in the information overload approach I gravitate towards.

Action!

As I made my discoveries, I began to drastically cut my talk time (lecture) and focus on action instead. Though it felt nearly sacrilegious to do so, I trimmed many things out of my outlines that were about nutrition, prenatal testing and so forth, because many of the women I work with have already read a great deal and don’t need to hear it again from me. I’ve come to see I really need to skip a great deal of the “book learning” and get them actually moving and practicing and using skills. Then, the “book learning” naturally arises during the course of the class, either via questions or via me needing to explain why something is useful or helpful during pregnancy or in labor.

I totally restructured and rearranged my class outlines to include a whole class about the mind-body connection and psychological preparation for birth. This class took the place of a previous class about birth planning. I was finding that many people already had a birth plan written and/or the birth plan information naturally comes up during the course of the six weeks without my needing to spend an excessive amount of lecture time on it. I tell them that I have the information, ask if you want it! I also dedicated a whole class to labor support with plenty of time to practice hands-on support techniques. In addition, I created a brand new class called “Active Birth” that involves lots of moving and positioning as well as many helpful ways to use a hospital bed without lying down. Informed consent, consumerism, and birth planning naturally arise as topics during this class, rather than being separately scheduled topics.

Information overload

Many pregnant women have information overload. They are faced with more information than they know what to do with. They are bombarded by it. What they really need is “knowing.” They need to know: “What skills do I possess or can learn that will help me greet my birth with anticipation and confidence? What are my tools? My resources? Can I just let it happen?” As an educator I ask myself, “What will help them feel confident? Feel ready? Trust their bodies and their capacities?”

I want people in my classes to learn material that is dynamic, active, exploratory, self-illuminating, supportive, positive, enriching, and affirming. I created a vision statement and asked myself where my classes stood in relationship to my vision. The answer was, “not as close as I want them to!” My vision statement for my classes is: to focus on celebration, exploration, motivation, education, inspiration, validation, initiation, and dedication.

I know I’m hitting the mark when couples comment, “Oh, this makes so much sense! I see how this works!” Or, “This was a really good illustration of what you were just talking about.” In this way, class participants readily reinforce (or modify) my own presentation style and I learn from series to series what to change, continue using, discard, or alter.

“Talk less…” teaching tips

I have many ideas of ways to “talk less” in birth classes, here are a few:

Media portrayals of birth—show two contrasting clips, such as a birth from a popular TV show (I often show Rachel’s birth from the show Friends) paired with an empowering birth from a film like Birth as We Know It and then have students discuss the two.
Use “The Ice Cube Minute” exercise from Family-Centered Education: The Process of Teaching Birth. In this exercise, couples hold an ice-cube in one hand for one minute and see what coping measures spontaneously arise for them. I do this exercise fairly early in my class series, before we’ve done a lot of formal talking about coping measures. It is very empowering for couples to discover what tools and resources come from within as they try the ice-cube minute.
To illustrate the potency of the mind-body contraction, practice two pretend contractions while holding ice. One contraction has an accompanying “stressful” paragraph read with it (“your body fills with tension…it hurts! Oh no!”) and the second contraction has a soothing paragraph read with it (“you greet the wave….it is YOUR power….”). This illustrates the fear-tension-pain cycle viscerally.
Use a five minutes series of birthing room yoga poses to begin the class—birth happens in our bodies, not our heads. Practicing the poses opens space to simultaneously discuss and practice: squatting, pelvic rocks, optimal fetal positioning ideas, healthy sitting, pelvic floor exercises, leg cramp prevention, back pain alleviation, and more.
Role playing cards—talk through various scenarios. I’ve found that couples are more receptive to talking through the cards than actually getting into a role and playing it through.
Values clarification exercise–participants cut out values from a list and arrange them in a grid to help them figure out if they are in alignment with each other and with their caregivers.
Leg stretch exercise to explore the use of vocalizations and other coping mechanisms during labor.
Ask plenty of open-ended questions that stimulate discussion and ideas, “what have you heard about XYZ?” or “what is your experience with…?”

Evolutionary spiral of a childbirth educator

After I had already done all of this self-inquiry and curriculum modification, I discovered Trish Booth’s concept of “The Evolutionary Spiral of a Childbirth Educator.” I quickly recognized myself and my experiences along the loops of the spiral. In the Early Stage of the spiral, educators are focused on “content and presenting the information.” This perfectly matches where I was when I started out with my “open heads and dump information in” approach. The Intermediate Stage is focused on the “group as a whole” and also “emphasizes learning rather than teaching.” Though I tend to teach one-to-one private classes and not groups, this seems to clearly be the stage I was in when I looked at my vision and realized that I needed to talk less so people would learn more. In the Advanced Stage, the educator “understands the meaning of the childbearing experience” and the focus is on the “individual learners.” This feels like the stage to which my teaching has spiraled. Further along the spiral is the Master Stage in which the educator “integrates the first three stages and moves gracefully between them” with a focus on “cognitive, emotional, and spiritual needs of the group as well as the individual learners” (Booth, 1995).

Perhaps my insights are old news to experienced educators, but they have made a profound difference in the quality of my classes. I’m sure as I continue to teach, I will continue to deepen and refine my approach and will continue to blossom as an effective educator.

Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE, CCCE is a certified birth educator, writer, and activist who lives with her husband and children in central Missouri. She is the editor of the Friends of Missouri Midwives newsletter, a breastfeeding counselor, a professor of human services, and doctoral student in women’s spirituality. She blogs about birth, motherhood, and women’s issues at https://talkbirth.me/posts.

—

Modified from an article originally published in the International Journal of Childbirth Education, December 2008.

References:

Booth, Trish. Family-Centered Education: The Process of Teaching Birth, ICEA, 1995.

Mothering as a Spiritual Practice

Mar7

Why is it that to rise gladly at 4:00 am to meditate and meet one’s God is considered a religious experience, and yet to rise at 4:00 am to serve the needs of one’s helpless child is considered the ultimate in deprivation?

Mothering a child is the greatest act of service one can do. It is an act of surrender, and act of love…

One can learn sitting meditation by rocking and nursing a little one to sleep; one can learn reclining meditation by staying still to avoid disturbing a little one who has been awake for hours; and one can learn walking meditation by walking and swaying with a little one who would like to be asleep for hours. One must learn to breathe deeply in a relaxed and meditative manner in order to still the mind that doubts one’s strength to go on, that sees every speck of dust on the floor and wants to clean it, and that tempts one to be up and about the busyness of accomplishment…

–Peggy O’Mara in The Way Back Home

Zen and the art of baby curl and dimpled finger spotting...

I really enjoyed reading this collection of essays by Peggy O’Mara. I do find that I have a tendency to think about my spiritual practice as something that has to wait until I am alone, until I have “down time,” until I have space alone in my head in which to think and to be still. On the flip side, I’ve also thought and written before about how the act of breastfeeding, day in and day out, provides all manner of time for spiritual contemplation and meditative reflection, but I often find it difficult to stay centered and grounded in mindfulness of breath and spirit during the swirl of life with little ones. I’ve done a lot of reading about “zen parenting” type topics and it seems like it would be so simple to integrate mothering with mindfulness. Then, I find myself frazzled and scattered and self-berating, and wonder what the heck happened to my zen. Today, I read an interesting article about anger and Zen Buddhism that clarified that meditation and zen practices are not about being serene and unfrazzled, but about being present and able to sit with it all. And, it offered this helpful reminder:

I used to imagine that spiritual work was undertaken alone in a cave somewhere with prayer beads and a leather-bound religious tome. Nowadays, that sounds to me more like a vacation from spiritual work. Group monastic living has taught me that the people in your life don’t get in the way of your spiritual practice; these people are your spiritual practice.

via The Angry Monk: Zen Practice for Angry People.

And, then this small snippet from the 2011 We’Moon datebook also reminded me of my 2012 vow to be embodied prayer:

My prayers are

The food I cook

The children I hug

The art I create

The words I write

I need no religion.

–Eileen Rosensteel

I don’t need to wait to be alone in order to be “spiritual” in this life with my babies. This sometimes messy, sometimes chaotic, sometimes serene, sometimes frazzling, often joyful life, is it.

On a somewhat related side note, I’m in the middle of writing an article for a scholarly journal addressing breastfeeding as an ecofeminist AND spiritual issue. I’d love to hear any reader thoughts on the issue!

Previous related posts:

Breastfeeding Toward Enlightenment

The Rhythm of Our Lives

Motherhood as Meditation

How to Meditate with a Baby…

Surrender?

Ode to my nursling

Embodied Prayer

Telling About It…

An Act of Motherhood

Mar5

Some time ago I read a clever essay by Jeannie Babb Taylor called “May, 2052.” It is about birth in the future and is told from the perspective of a grandmother who gave birth in 2007, sharing with her granddaughter how birth was “back in the day” and the granddaughter being shocked by how horrible the birth climate was in the “old days” of 2007). Side note: in some ways this story reminds me of a piece that I reprinted with permission of LLL called A Fantasy, which is a satire about birth and breastfeeding that I’m still not convinced won’t actually come to pass.

Feeling fierce at 37 weeks last year.

However, I was struck afresh by the power of the closing lines in May, 2052 (when discussing how/why things finally changed):

We insisted on dignity. We did not let doctors push us into inductions or surgeries just to accommodate their schedules. Women who still used hospitals refused the wheelchair and the gown that were presented at check-in. Women refused to be starved, or to have their veins punctured with unnecessary IVs. Mothers refused to let doctors break their waters or insert electronic monitors in the baby’s scalp. When we pushed our babies into the world with our own fierce power, then we refused to let them out of our sight.

…Eventually even the medical community came to recognize that birth is an act of motherhood, not an act of medical science. Today a laboring woman is not regarded as a body on a table, as if she and the baby needed some doctor to ‘deliver’ them from each other. Today women are honored as life-bringers.

Don’t you just love that? Recognizing that birth is an an act of motherhood, not an act of medical science… So true.

I can’t write about it in-depth, but I began thinking about this today after speaking with a mother who had received very, very questionable (to the point of thoroughly bizarre) breastfeeding advice from her doctor. When I could not help but express my dismay at the suggestions she had received, I had the distinct feeling that she was not able to even consider that possibility that her doctor might have been wrong. I wish I could write about the actual circumstance because it just boggled my mind and made my heart cringe. Breastfeeding too is an act of motherhood, not an act of medical science, and not one that “belongs” to anyone except for the motherbaby unit.

However, returning to the act of motherhood, vs. medical act, I also have this quote saved from the older book, Who Made the Lamb:

“Tom [her husband] laughed at this idealism. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said, ‘Pregnancy is not regarded as a process of creation. It’s a disease of the uterus.'” [emphasis mine]

What a (culturally) still true and unfortunate sentiment: A disease of the uterus. This is absolutely how many within the medical system and the general population continue to view pregnancy (and birth is the excavation of the disease). This reminds me of our “friendly” neighborhood doctor testifying at the Capitol against the midwifery bill several years ago stating that pregnancy can be viewed as a foreign object in the body and therefore “babies are like tumors that need to be removed.”

I look forward to the day when our acts of motherhood are celebrated and valued, the motherbaby bond is accepted as inviolable, and pregnancy is a state of health and well-being.*

—-

Note: I am aware that pregnancy and birth take a physical toll on most women and that for some pregnant women, “disease of the uterus” might feel like an apt descriptor—I’m speaking in more general terms of the emotional and cultural climate surrounding pregnancy and birth.

Virtual Screening of More Business of Being Born!

Mar5

How exciting! Tonight birth activists and pregnant women across the country have the chance to virtually attend a free screening of one of the More Business of Being Born films: “Special Deliveries: Celebrity Mothers Talk Straight on Birth” on The Huffington Post.

From the press release:

LOS ANGELES, CA – Executive Producer Ricki Lake and Filmmaker Abby Epstein present an online screening of Special Deliveries: Celebrity Mothers Talk Straight Talk on Birth from their highly influential four-part DVD series More Business of Being Born on Monday, March 5^th at 6:00pm PST on The Huffington Post. Lake, Epstein and special guests from the film including Kellie Martin will host a live Q&A chat following the film beginning at 7:10pm PST. Viewers are encouraged to ask questions and engage in conversation with Lake, Epstein, and Martin by directing messages via twitter to @rickilake with #mbobb as the hash tag.

More Business of Being Born, a follow up to their landmark documentary, The Business of Being Born, offers a practical look at birthing options as well as poignant celebrity birth stories from stars. The virtual screening will air on HuffingtonPost.com and MyBestBirth.com. BabyCenter will host the virtual screening on their Facebook fan page.

I’m also excited that the Classroom Edition of the film premieres today. I would definitely like to add it to my birth class library.

More about the episode of MBOBB airing during the screening tonight:

Special Deliveries: Celebrity Mothers Talk Straight on Birth

Featuring celebrity moms Laila Ali, Gisele Bundchen, Cindy Crawford, Alyson Hannigan, Melissa Joan Hart, Kellie Martin, Alanis Morissette, Christy Turlington-Burns and Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Special Deliveries is a collection of intimate birth stories from a diverse group of mothers. Whether they chose to deliver at a hospital, home or birthing center, these heartfelt and humorous testimonies speak to the lasting power of the birth experience. True inspiration for any mother-to-be, this group of women trusted their bodies and intuitions, taking responsibility for their birth decisions even when things didn’t go according to plan. None of these courageous women has ever spoken on the record in such compelling detail, and, on this DVD, the filmmakers weave together their passionate narratives as a celebration of the journey to motherhood that will leave viewers with a renewed sense of amazement about the power of women.
(Running Time: 74 min)

Enjoy!

Bits of the month

Mar3

I’m trying something new—a weekly (or monthly) wrap-up sort of post where I share bits and pieces that don’t warrant full posts and that allow me to share personal type things about homeschooling and so forth as well as just random thoughts and ideas and material for my personal memory archives. I’m inspired to do this by Molly Westerman’s always interesting links for thoughts posts and by a blog I stumbled across recently called The Holistic Homeschooler(she does a weekly “homeschool mother’s journal” post).

So…here goes…

What I’ve been up to

Me = grading papers and final exams. The last day of the session is today

What boys have been up to

They both enjoy playing Minecraft to an almost obsessive degree. This week they’ve been working on plans for programming mods for the game and setting up sort of mock worlds with things they’d like their mods to have. Lann worked on a Batman themed mod and Zander’s is about “hunchback zombies” (many of whom are holding cakes).

New dog Dagger!

They’ve been making movies for the last several months in a very dedicated manner that I’ve really enjoyed observing. Over 300 video clips have been filmed since this new project began. And, then, this week, the perhaps inevitable happened—they dropped and broke my camera. It was around $300, but I quickly realized that I didn’t have any grounds to be mad at them (despite the fact that they’d been carefully instructed to always keep the strap around their wrist and to be careful). When you give 8 and 5 year old’s free reign with a camera, breakage is definitely a possible side effect. I also try very hard to remember the people before things mantra. So, now their extensively movie making projects are on hold until we figure out a replacement. I’m thinking a low cost kid-friendly, video-capable camera and an adult camera might be the most logical plan.

They buzz with ideas constantly. Lann’s big project idea this week was for a virtual reality helmet. Mark and I both struggle with the balance between expressing interest in his ideas and offering reality checks. It can be extraordinarily exhausting, truly. The other thing they came up with is a cartoon strip about “Poo Log Dog.” This is based on their intense dislike of our new little dog, Dagger, who showed up skinny and starving last month and is now part of the family. I like him, which is a real shocker, because dogs are not my favorite. The boys are less enraptured.

We’re back to our no artificial colors experiment which seems to have a drastic impact on Z’s rage fits, Lann’s teasing, and their cooperation with each other. We’ve had days and days of happy playing, bright energetic faces and ideas, and very little discord or meltdowns.

I love this baby's eye view picture taken by my friend at the playgroup Valentine party last month.

What baby has been up to

Walking more and more—I think we’ve almost seen the last of the crawling baby and the funny little one foot on ground, one leg down scoot-drag-crawl.

Climbs up on couch and onto stepstool in bathroom

Walks unsupported outside

Loves outside—loves so very much.

Likes to do mischievous stuff on purpose and stare at person til they notice and then squeal/yell while staring in their eyes.

Makes addle, addle, addle sound with tongue. Still uses adorable, “hmmm?” question-intonation sound to ask for or about things. Says Dagger, dog, Daddy, dragon, and quite a few other things. Refuses to perform any of them on command.

Loves to spin! In hammock swing outside, on Sit n Spin toy, dancing with brother. (A long time ago, pre-kids, I went to a workshop on play therapy. One of the speakers maintained that you should never bounce or rock or jiggle a baby, because it predisposes them to become addicts later in life—i.e. they start to like the feeling of having a “scrambled brain” and seek out that stimulation. It is amazing how certain, seemingly small experiences can leave a powerful legacy that cast a shadow on happy moments!)

What Mark has been up to

The man is quite focused on his plans for an aquaponics system. Is drawing plans for the greenhouse and figuring out supplies to buy. Planning to take a week off soon to focus on building it. We’ve also been doing our work party with a group of four friends. We take turns working on each other’s homesteads on alternate weekends. It has been a really good, community-building experience.

Homeschooling report

I finally did a Cartesian diver experiment (about buoyancy and air pressure) with the boys and it worked perfectly. While we did so, Alaina mashed her breakfast and a fruit leather into a cup of water.

I also signed them up for Studyladder. Jury is still out on whether this was a good plan. The graphics and style seem “primitive” in a way, like they were programmed in the late 90’s. However, I like it because they have math and science and counting in other languages, as well as reading. It seems much more comprehensive and full scale. Lann has also been wanting to work on his Click N Read Phonics lately and Zander has been doing Reading Eggs (still our favorite) and occasionally Starfall (we pay for the “more” version). Jumpstart we’ve let go, because even though it has really cool graphics and features, we can rarely get it to start up without crashing/freezing/or being generally frustrating.

I’ve been trying to find a good new book to read aloud to them. We keep reading the first chapter of various (free Kindle) books and then deciding we want something different.

This week (month) in blog news

I hit the 200,000 hit mark! That is pretty good for something that started out only intended for a local audience. I checked my annual stats too and noticed that in 2008 (my first full year of blogging), I had 8,000 hits during the entire year. Just this past week, my All that Matters is a Healthy Husband post had 8,000 hits by itself. ;-D Another new post that had a lot of shares and views was the Spontaneous Birth Reflex. I was happy to finally write it and also its related companion piece about the Rest and Be Thankful Stage of labor. My Honoring Miscarriage discussion and giveaway are still open too.

What’s on my mind

I am nearly speechless and also horrified about the current political obsession with contraception. This isn’t about birth control it is about woman control. I can’t stand it! And, I do not consider contraception to be a “women’s issue,” it is a human issue. Last time I checked, men participated in sex too. And, they too, desire a size of family that is compatible with their other needs (financial, personal, whatever). Likewise, many, many happily married, monogamous couples choose to use birth control and ; enjoy being able to have sex without procreating. It would be bizarre to characterize a man’s desire to be responsible for his own fertility as, “being paid to have sex all day.” It is equally bizarre to apply this claim to women.

In my work for my doctoral classes, I focus extensively on body politics, reproductive rights/politics, feminism, women’s rights, and personal autonomy as well as the historical and sociopolitical context of these issues. Since I live in a conservative area and have a “public” reputation to maintain, I shy away from addressing any of these subjects in depth here (I’m very googleable by students and prospective clients—heck, this blog was originally intended exclusively as a business tool for my local clients). However, in an ironic twist, that is exactly the kind of social control/inhibition/silencing/oppression of women that I am so passionate about addressing in my doctoral work. In fact, my dissertation is going to be about a thealogy of the body and how women’s bodies are the very terrain upon which patriarchal religious structures are built and maintained.

What I’m reading

I just finished reading The Hunger Games for book club—gobbled it up in a couple of hours—and I’m in the middle of the second one. I also finished reading Sisters Singing which is anthology of women’s prayers, blessings, songs, and readings. I read it over the course of several months in short segments during my daily meditation/altar time. I also finished reading Daughter of the Forest (also for book club) and Nobody Girl (don’t bother) and I am Woman by Rite: A Book of Women’s Rituals. I’m currently reading Peggy O’Mara’s Way Back Home collection of essays. The boys and I are listening to the sixth Harry Potter book on tape while in the car. I really love doing this! I less love realizing that by the time we finish we will have spent a minimum of 19 hours in the car. Whew. When I’m on my own I’m listening to Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce, one of my favorite childhood authors who wrote The Song of the Lioness Quartet, which is where I got Alaina’s name (I guess when I was approximately 12). I recently finished re-listening to Two for the Dough and Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich.

Articles I’ve enjoyed

Breastfeeding support: less is not more

What an awesome logo for the upcoming LLL of Illinois conference!

“I feel saddened by the alarming regularity at which women give up their desire to breastfeed because breastfeeding is not the ‘best’ way to feed babies. It’s the normal way. The idea that breastfeeding is somehow extraordinary persists because we live in a culture where very limited paternity leave is normal, where an expectation to continue cooking and cleaning and exercising and socialising in the post partum weeks and months is normal, and where a perception that unpaid work (especially if it is physical and monotonous) is pointless drudgery is normal.”

Breastfeeding – Does Science Mislead Parents & Professionals?

“A clear majority of public opinion in the United States supports the view that ‘breastfeeding is healthier for babies’, yet substantially more than half of the surveyed population disagree that ‘feeding a baby formula instead of breastmilk increases the chances the baby will get sick’.

If exclusive breastfeeding was the norm against which other methods are measured, breastfeeding would not be ‘protective’ and breastfed infants would not enjoy ‘lower risks of ill health’; they would instead be referred to as ‘normal’, while formula fed infants are in fact ‘exposed’ to increased risk of poor health and development.“

Also enjoyed this post from The Minimalists about turning off the internet at home. Since we live out of town and I work from home teaching online AND since it is super important to me to have a home based life, it wouldn’t make any sense for me to shut off the internet at home and drive into town to use it, but for a while after reading this article I fantasized about it.

And, this inspirational short post from Roots of She.

And, some pictures:

This heart-meltingly adorable sight met my eyes as I sneaked away from Alaina's napping self this week.

Tiny, independent nature girl!

Sweet sibling moment even though I lose crunchy points because they're watching a movie (it is Kipper though)

Yes, we have a michief-maker in the house!

I have about 14 others things I was going to include, but forgot about, such as the fact that we had our first local birth network meeting in February and I feel really good about it. But, now this post is terribly long and cumbersome anyway. I’m too wordy to do a bits and pieces type post, I guess! I thought it was going to be short and simple—instead it took several hours over the course of multiple days to get ready to post. Sheesh!

Birth Quotes of the Week

Mar2

Quotes that recently caught my eye…

“Your own wisdom is more powerful than anything you see around you. The price for living your dream is facing your deepest fear; ask yourself ‘What am I afraid of most?’ Facing your answer is the price of greatness.“–@Roots of She

“In acknowledging woman-to-woman help it is important to recognize that power, within the family and elsewhere, can be used vindictively, and that it is not only powerful men who abuse women; women with power may also abuse other women.” –Sheila Kitzinger

“A woman who is enjoying her labor swings into the rhythm of contractions as if birth-giving were a powerful dance, her uterus creating the beat. She watches for it, concentrates on it, like an orchestra following its conductor.” –Shelia Kitzinger

“If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman… have faith. There is yet time.” –Clarissa Pinkola Estes (via @Roots of She)

“Pregnancy is a uniquely intimate relationship between two people. All of us luxuriate in this relationship once, and half of us are lucky enough to be able to do it all over again a second time, from the other side as it were. Never again outside of pregnancy can we be so truly intwined with someone else, no matter how hard we try.” -David Bainbridge

“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.” –Marian Wright Edelman

—

Reading this last quote made me remember my Small Stone Birth Activism article and so I posted it yesterday!

Small Stone Birth Activism

Mar1

As someone who feels deeply, passionately, and intensely about the need to transform the birth culture in the US, I have often experienced an immobilizing feeling of not doing enough. Of not helping enough. Of not being enough to affect the kind of social change I want to see happen in the world. As a mother of small children, I often feel limited with regard to the kind of large-scale changes I’d like to make in the birth world. I have been a childbirth educator since 2005 and I’m also trained as a birth doula, a postpartum doula, a prenatal fitness education, a prenatal yoga teacher, a birth art facilitator, and a breastfeeding educator. I’ve accepted that birth doula work doesn’t fit into my life right now (and even without young children, I do not know that I actually possess the strength to lend witness to the hospital birth machine). I’ve happily taught independent birth classes, usually privately in homes one-on-one, for quite a few years which feels like smaller scale change than I envision. It is also becoming less easy to integrate into the rest of my life’s responsibilities. Rather than relying only on teaching independent classes as my primary outlet for change, I enjoy discovering alternate ways of educating others about birth.

While reading the book The Mother Trip by Ariel Gore, I came across this quote from civil rights activist Alice Walker: “It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes failing over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame. This is the tragedy of our world.” Ariel adds her own thoughts to this: “Remember: as women, as mothers, we cannot not work. Put aside your ideas that your work should be something different or grander than it is. In each area of your life—in work, art, child-rearing, gardening, friendships, politics, love, and spirituality—do what you can do. That’s enough. Your small stone is enough.”

These quotes caused me to reflect on the myriad methods of “small stone” birth activism that can be engaged in as a passionate birth activist mother embroiled in a season of her life in which the needs of her own young family take precedence over “changing the world.” We can offer the small stones of:

Speaking positively about normal, natural birth, to whomever we are speaking with whenever the topic arises.
Birth advocacy bumper stickers.
Sharing our birth stories.
Creating little informational cards (inspired by Carla Hartley’s Trust Birth Initiative cards) to seed around our communities in creative locations. I am fond of using Vistaprint and ordering their horizontal premium cards for just the cost of shipping.
Creating bookmarks with inspiring information about birth and giving them to pregnant women, handing them out at health fairs, etc.
Buying subscriptions to enlightening magazines for doctors’ offices.
Buying gift subscriptions to enlightening magazines for our public libraries.
Talking to pregnant women—my most recent approach is simply to say, “I wish you a wonderful birth!”
Responding to “action alerts” from the organizations in our states promoting healthy, normal birth and midwifery.
Supporting healthy birth related organizations with your membership. I am a member of 11 birth-related organizations. I also maintain subscriptions to a variety of magazines and journals.
Volunteering—either for advocacy organizations or directly with pregnant women.
Showing up at events, fundraisers, and rallies. Maybe we are not able to plan these events by ourselves at this point in our lives (or maybe we can!), but we can certainly show up and be counted!
Talking to non-pregnant women and girls about birth.
Giving empowering books to pregnant friends (or to not pregnant friends!).
Buying memberships to supportive organizations for friends and family members.
Give back issues of inspiring, positive magazines to people as part of your baby shower gifts.
Making donations as you are able to local chapters, statewide organizations, or national organizations promoting birth, breastfeeding, doulas, midwives, etc.
Making your birth stories available online.
Blogging about birth and about issues in the birth world (in addition to writing my Talk Birth blog since 2007, I’ve also blogged for ICEA and maintained the CfM blog).
Being an online childbirth educator—visit message boards (especially “mainstream” message boards) and give accurate, evidence based information. This has the potential to reach many people, but also can be very time-consuming (and addictive in a way) and can replace the face- to-face good you could do, so be careful with this one.
Participating in online research (such as the Birth Survey transparency in maternity care project).
Writing letters to the editor of your local newspaper educating the public about birth options and midwifery care.

Despite my persistent feelings of wishing to do more, when I examine each of my offerings, I begin to acknowledge that maybe my own small stones of effort are enough after all…

What stones do you add to the pile?

—-

The first version of this article was published in Citizens for Midwifery News, March 2008. Revised version published in the Fall 2009 edition of the International Journal of Childbirth Education (ICEA’s publication).

The Rest and Be Thankful Stage

Feb26

During my first labor, I experienced what Sheila Kitzinger calls the “rest and be thankful stage” after reaching full dilation and before I pushed out my baby. The “rest and be thankful stage” is the lull in labor that some women experience after full dilation and before feeling the physiological urge to push. While commonly described in Kitzinger’s writings and in some other sources, mention of this stage is absent from many birth resources and many women have not heard of it. After writing recently about the spontaneous birth reflex, I received a comment stating the following: “I was particularly interested in the idea of resting after full dilation before pushing. This makes sense if you are only following your body’s urges to push, but never something I had seen (or remember seeing?) spelled out before.”

I always make sure to tell my birth class clients about the possibility of experiencing a lull like this, because it is during this resting phase that labor is sometimes described as having “stalled” or as requiring Pitocin to “kick it off again” or as requiring directed or coached pushing. Also, think of the frequency of remarks from mothers such as, “I just never felt the urge to push.” When exploring further, it is often revealed that what the mother actually experienced was no immediate pushing urge instantly following assessment of full dilation. Depending on the baby’s position, this can be extremely normal. The way I explain it to my clients is that the lull represents the conclusion of the physiological shift happening in the uterus—the transition between contractions that open the cervix and the contractions that push the baby down and out.

As I wrote in a previous post from several years ago:

Your uterus is a powerful muscle and will actually push your baby out without conscious or forced effort from you–-at some point following complete dilation your body will begin involuntarily pushing the baby out. Many women experience the unmistakable urge to push as an “uncontrollable urge”–-but, in order to feel that uncontrollable urge, you often have to wait a little while! Though some care providers and nurses encourage you to begin pushing as soon as you are fully dilated there is often a natural lull in labor before your body’s own pushing urge begins. Some people refer to this lull as the “rest and be thankful” stage. It gives your body a chance to relax and prepare to do a different type of work (in labor the muscles of your uterus are working to draw your cervix up and open. During pushing, the muscles of your uterus change functions and begin to push down instead of pull up). If you wait to push until you really need to, you will often find that your pushing stage is shorter and progresses more smoothly that pushing before you feel the urge.

In the book, Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth they share the following important point:

“Research suggests that the length of time before the baby is born is the same if you allow one hour of ‘passive descent’ of the baby (when you relax and don’t consciously try to push) or you start pushing immediately after you are fully dilated.”

via Waiting before pushing… « Talk Birth.

That’s right, the length of time between full dilation and baby’s birth is the same, whether the mother waited one hour before pushing, or started pushing without the urge immediately following full dilation. I know which one sounds easier and more peaceful to me!

In my own experience with my first baby, I found that I felt like I should be pushing after full dilation and thus began to do so before feeling the full urge. I ended up pushing for about an hour and fifteen minutes. I suspect if I’d just continued hanging out for 45 minutes to an hour, he may have flown out in 15 minutes. Prior to pushing though, I did experience a rest and be thankful stage of about 30 minutes in which I sat in a rocking chair, joked about feeling “trippy,” and talked about being an A++ birthing woman. I describe it in my son’s birth story:

After finding out that I was fully dilated, I started to feel very odd and I really think I had to go through a sort of emotional/psychological transition to adjust myself to the fact that I had “missed” the physical transition point…I sat in the rocking chair for a while and kept saying things like, “am I dreaming? Is this real?” I also made a joke about feeling “trippy” like in Spiritual Midwifery. We also joked about what an A+ + + laboring woman I was (a family joke–I was a 4.0 student throughout college and grad school and so we always say that I like to get an A+ + + on everything I do). Those pressure feelings I had been having for a while, got a little more intense and I started pushing kind of experimentally. I was on my knees with my head on the bed on my pillow again and during one of the little pushes my water broke with a giant, startling POP and sprayed across the room including all over my friend. At this point, the midwife left saying, “I think I should call the doctor.” via My First Birth « Talk Birth.

The blog Birth and Baby Wise has some great thoughts to share on resting and being thankful (note the blog is from an educator in London, thus the use of the term Syntocinon, rather than the U.S. based brand Pitocin):

… it seems that there is little appreciation for this well documented pause amongst health professionals working in the consultant-led units of hospitals. Any stop in action once the magic ’10 cm dilatation’ is reached is met with almost instant medical intervention to get the contractions back up and running, ie a syntocinon drip. Women experiencing this are already on a consultant-led unit, where a higher level of medical intervention can be anticipated, but it is strange that there seems to be such a rush to use a syntocinon drip to get the contractions going again, providing mother and baby are both coping well.

One reason the contractions may ease temporarily is in order to allow the baby’s head to get into a better position. If this is the case, then artificially speeding contractions up is hardly likely to have the benefit of a faster birth for the woman – if anything, a slower and more complicated birth as she tries to push out a baby that is not quite in the right position. In addition, she has to cope with stronger contractions that she might find difficult to deal with, necessitating further medical help in the shape of an epidural – which in turn makes pushing the baby out even harder…

…At this stage, the woman and her partner are incredibly vulnerable to this well meant ‘help’ from midwives and obstetricians and are unlikely to question the requirement for additional medical help. It is also unlikely that the calm and relaxed environment so important for a peaceful birth can survive the worries of the health professionals, which will affect most women and their partners. via Rest and be thankful – or panic and have a drip shoved in? | Birth and Baby Wise.

I agree. In my own personal experience with my first birth, I was very vulnerable to just the perceived expectation of it being “time to push.” With later babies, it was intensely important to me that I have very few people present at the birth, knowing how sensitive I am to the expectations of those around me. It is truly only my husband and my mother than I trust to not disrupt my “birth brain” and the freedom of my birth space.

I’d love to hear more from readers about their experiences with the rest and be thankful stage.

Did you experience this lull between full dilation and pushing out your baby?

Was the lull recognized and respected by your birth attendants?

If you pushed without feeling the urge, was the pushing stage fairly long?

With subsequent babies, I had no internal checks during labor, so I never really knew if I experienced the rest and be thankful stage with them. I just pushed when my body started pushing—I have no idea how long after full dilation that was. So, I also am curious to know if women find they experience this stage with all babies, with only the first one, or with only some of their babies?

I suspect I did experience it with Alaina, because I remembering feeling concerned that contractions were suddenly “far apart.” I started talking more and analyzing myself and the labor and this was probably part of a lull in the intensity of the contraction action while my body prepared for a powerful spontaneous birth reflex.

Spontaneous Birth Reflex

Feb24

“Why do we, then, continue to treat women as if their emotions and comfort, and the postures they might want to assume while in labor, are against the rules?“

– Ina May Gaskin (via Birth Smart)

I’ve been intrigued for some time by Michel Odent’s description of what he calls the “fetal ejection reflex.” Personally, I would like to rename it the “spontaneous birth reflex.” Essentially, this reflex involves the spontaneous birth of the baby without coaching or conscious effort on the part of the mother. It is most likely to occur when the mother feels very safe and very private, which may be why we do not read descriptions of it occurring during many births. In an article about the fetal ejection reflex Odent writes: “During the powerful last contractions the mother-to-be seems to be suddenly full of energy, with the need to grasp something. The maternal body has a sudden tendency to be upright. For example, if the woman was previously on hands and knees, her chest tends to be vertical. Other women stand up to give birth, more often than not leaning on the edge of a piece of furniture. A fetus ejection reflex is usually associated with a bending forward posture.”

Flicked forward hips?

In the book Optimal Birth: What, Why & How, which was heavily influenced by the work of Odent, the author frequently describes spontaneous birth reflex occurring with a swift “flicked forward” motion of the mother’s hips. I found the description curious at the time that I read the book, not really conceptualizing how one would flick one’s hips forward when pushing out a baby. However, following the birth of my daughter last year, I was completely amazed to hear my husband describe the pushing stage in these words, “…you were down on your hands and knees, but then you pushed up and moved your hips forward and suddenly you were holding her.” I would describe her birth as involving an authentic spontaneous birth reflex much like Odent and Sylvie Donna (the author of Optimal Birth) describe. This is what I wrote three days after her birth:

Shortly following a spontaneous birth reflex!

I was down on hands and knees and then moved partially up on one hand in order to put my other hand down to feel what was happening…her head pushed and pushed itself down as I continued to support myself with my hand and I moved up onto my knees, with them spread apart so I was almost sitting on my heels and her whole body and a whole bunch of fluid blooshed out into my hands… I didn’t realize until some moments later than both Mark and Mom missed the actual moment of her birth. Mark because he was coming around from behind me to the front of me when I moved up to kneeling…I had felt like the pushing went on for a “long” time, but Mark said that from hands and knees to kneeling with baby in my hands was about 12 seconds.

via Alaina’s Complete Birth Story « Talk Birth.

Birth without pushing?

I’ve been meaning to write about the experience for some time and then I received a comment on an older post I wrote titled Pushing the issue of pushing in labor… which addresses physiological pushing vs. coached/directed pushing. The mother wrote: “I would so love to give birth without pushing..I hope I can do this without pushing but is it really possible?? If it’s possible, why isn’t it practiced more widely?”

While I did not experience such a dramatic spontaneous birth reflex with any of my other births, Yes! It IS possible. There are a variety of reasons why it is not practiced more widely, two common ones being that many mothers do not give birth in the atmosphere of privacy that facilitates the reflex and secondly because many birth attendants ascribe to the notion that 10 centimeters of dilation = time to push, regardless of what mother’s body is telling her to do. With my own first baby, I was checked at 10 centimeters and told I could push whenever I felt the urge. While no one coached or directed me to begin pushing, I felt like I “should” be doing so and so start to experiment with actively pushing a little with contractions. It took a little over an hour before my son was finally born. I never felt an intense or irresistible or spontaneous urge to push. With my second baby, I felt literally driven to my knees by the force of the birthing energy. I did not consciously push him out, but it definitely took several pushes and maybe about 15 minutes to push him out. There was a process of pushing involved with his birth. With my daughter, as I describe above, it was like an irresistible force gripped my body and she just came flying out with no directed physical or mental involvement from me.

Trusting the urge

I shared the mother’s question with the CfM Facebook page in order to get some other perspectives on births with “no pushing.” I received several comments to share with the questioning mother-to-be. Most mothers referenced the idea of pushing when their bodies told them to. It is difficult to communicate this with someone who has not yet experienced it—how to recognize the “urge” and what it really means to “push when your body tells you to.” I also suspect it is frustrating for women who are honestly and courageously seeking “answers” in order to best prepare their bodies, minds, and hearts for birth, to receive responses like, “just trust your body,” which can feel trite or dismissive to the pregnant woman who hungers to know. However, then once on the other side of the birthing bridge, we discover there are really few better answers to give. I believe the capacity to trust that her body will communicate the unmistakable urge to push comes with an environment where the mother is treated with dignity and respect. She has her need for privacy honored and that she is mentally able to surrender to the birthing process and let her body take over—no attempting to wrestle with or control the birth, but to dig deep and then to let go.

Personal experiences in birthing without pushing:

ARA shared: “I will say that with my last birth I started out with having coached pushing. Then I felt my body take over. The nurse told me to stop pushing and I told her I can’t my body is doing it on it’s own. It was the most awesome feeling in the world.”

And AK shared: “I pushed when my body said to do so. It was relieving!! lol”

EW wrote that she, “highly recommend physiological pushing over directed pushing. listen to your body. Consider hypnobirthing if you are wanting to birth without pushing, it encourages laboring down.”

DF had this experience to share: “I don’t know if this is the same thing but with my first child, the nurse didn’t listen to me when I said I thought it was time and when my midwife came to check I was crowning, I had ‘labored down’ as she called it by my body doing the work. So I only actually pushed once on her cue and my baby was here. The second child the same happened automatically I wasn’t even aware it was happening…..maybe subconsciously?”

NB shared that, “Because of my uterine prolapse issues, I do not push until the baby is essentially crowning on his own. I also don’t have anyone check to see how far dilated I am (since baby #1, that is) so when that burning feeling starts to get really strong I try a gentle little push to see what happens, and that usually initiates complete crowning… at which time, despite my best efforts, I CANNOT control the pushing urge any longer because I need to get that baby out!! 😉 I think it does make ‘transition’ longer in the sense that perhaps birth would have happened earlier if I’d begun pushing before the baby slid down that far on his/her own, but it makes the pushing stage much shorter and is certainly better for the baby – and me, too, since I’m not putting that strain on my uterine ligaments until the very last seconds.”

JD shared her different experiences: “With my first baby, I felt the need to push waaaay too early. (Baby turned posterior; I had back labor contractions less than a minute apart for several hours.) I spent over an hour pushing, but I can’t blame the wonderful midwives who attended my homebirth. They told me several times that it wasn’t time to push yet. But I was in so much pain, and had exhausted all my coping strategies, and just had to get that baby OUT! Then we had a dystocia, and everybody ended up yelling at me to push even though I wasn’t having a contraction, and my very calm, collected midwife sounded worried, so I pushed some more. Lots of pushing, lots of pain, lots of tearing. My second baby was smaller and lined herself up better. I didn’t push until the very end, and she came in a big hurry and surprised everybody. Nobody told me to push, and I barely needed to. So, yes, it can be done, but there are more factors at play than your doctor/midwife. I had two very different pushing experiences, both at home with the same midwife.”

G wrote: “Unmedicated, midwife-assisted home birth, pushed for 3 hours, never really got the hang of it. Baby was not quite lined up right and was stuck, crowned, for an hour. I was exhausted and basically checked out. Eventually it was gravity that got him out – they hauled me upright and he basically fell out of me. I look back and wonder if maybe I should have taken more of a break after dilation – I FELT like I was ready to push, but who knows if I actually was. Maybe he would have labored down on his own if I’d just zonked out.”

Why isn’t it encouraged?

I’ve already addressed several reasons why and then LDM shared these important points: “It’s not widely practiced because the obstetric timetable doesn’t allow for it. The physiological urge to push will be there, for some women sooner than others. Most care providers are taught to coach pushing (after all we all know women just can’t do the job they were designed to do) and to have that coached pushing happen under certain conditions (wait for the dr! Ok, doc is here!) Some women say they never felt any urge- they may have had normal physiological signals quelled from drugs or other common labor practices and/or they were not given time to rest and sleep after fully dilating. There is such urgency to force a baby out once she reaches 10, but if she is tired and cannot feel her body pushing, then mom probably needs a nap & maybe a snack. Letting a woman take that break is unheard of in hospitals.”

And additionally, Mommy Baby Spot offered this tip: “Stay away from “helping” drugs so that your body knows what to do and learn different positions so that your body puts itself in the prime position to get the baby out with the minimum of hassle (which is different for everyone).”

I thank the women who shared their experiences for their thoughts and I wish the mother who posed the question the very, very best with her upcoming birth. May you birth smoothly, peacefully, and spontaneously in harmony with your body’s wisdom, cues, and urging!

—

(Note: personal experiences are reprinted directly as shared on the CfM FB page, but have had some spelling corrected for readability.)

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