Tag Archive | childbirth education

You Can’t Be Everything to Everyone…

I got the following article in an e-newsletter and though it isn’t birth business specific, I think it has a lot of valuable food for thought in it for childbirth educators/birth professionals. I am going to answer the questions in it and post again with my thoughts!

You Can’t Serve Everyone: Clarifying Your Niche for Better Marketing Results

Before you even start implementing any marketing strategies, it’s important to be crystal clear about whom it is you are trying to reach. Some of the questions you should be able to answer around this include: What is your niche? Who is your target market and what is it that they want? What is your message to them?

Often, small business owners are afraid to narrow down their target market for fear that this will limit them. Countless times I have heard people say “my target market is small business owners” or “my niche is really anyone who needs what I offer.”

The truth is, you can’t be everything to everyone, and it is actually easier to market and attract prospects when you focus on a particular group of people. It is also easier for others to refer people to you when they see you as someone who works with a specific group. To further illustrate, here is a simple example: Instead of “I’m a financial planner,” you could clarify it to say “I’m a financial planner who specializes in families with special needs children.”

Or, instead of “I’m a marketing consultant,” a more descriptive way to say it would be “I’m an online marketing consultant who specializes in social media strategies for coaches.”

Online, a good way to create the type of presence that draws people to you is to clearly communicate who you are, what you are about, and why people should take notice. In order to figure this out, some of the questions you could ask yourself might be:

*How would you describe the essence of who you are in a single word?
*What are your top three passions related to your work or three unrelated to your work?
*What would be three adjectives used to describe your business?
*Who your best clients or the people who are most likely to benefit from your work?

Those are just some of the questions you can ask to really get clear on who you are professionally, as well as who you are personally.

Clarifying your niche is a point of “stuckness” for many business owners and it does take a bit work to discover if you aren’t clear on it yet. But once you have that specific niche narrowed down, reaching them with your marketing becomes a whole lot easier.

Want to use this article on your website or your own e-zine? You can, as long as you include the following:

Christine Gallagher, The Online Marketing and Social Media Success Coach, is founder of Communicate Value, where she is dedicated to teaching small business owners and professionals how to conquer the overwhelming aspects of online and social media marketing to increase business and maximize profits. To get your F.R.E.E. 5-Part E-Course and receive her weekly marketing & success articles on leveraging technology, building relationships and boosting your profits, visit http://communicatevalue.com.

Birth & Culture & Pregnant Feelings

Feb6

“Giving birth is not an isolated event in a person’s life. A woman births with both her mind and her body and participates in the attitudes toward childbearing of her culture and her family.”

This quote from the book Pregnant Feelings by Rahima Baldwin reminds me of two other relevant quotes about culture, birth, and women’s choices:

“Although pregnancy and birth is a richly intuitive and instinctive process, a woman will prepare her ‘nest’ and birth according to the style of her culture, in the same way that a particular species of bird will build its nest with whatever is available.” –Pam England

“One does not give birth in a void, but rather in a cultural and political context. Laws, professional codes, religious sanctions, and ethnic traditions all affect women’s choices concerning childbirth.” –Adrienne Rich

I think we get onto slippery ground when we start talking about how women just need to “educate themselves” and then they will make different (i.e. “enlightened like ours”) choices. If education was all that was needed, we would see much different things in our present birth culture (more on this later!). As Pam England would also say (paraphrased), thousands of factors seen and unseen go into the resulting birth experience, it is hard to point to one, two, or three factors and say “that was it! I have it all figured out.” (Reminds me of another quote that women birth as they live.) With regard to the second quote, I have to ask myself whether couples truly have a free choice of where to give birth? Ultimately speaking, yes they do, but according to my clients’ perspectives insurance companies and the political climate surrounding midwifery in our state dictate their birth location, as well as opinions of family, friends, books, and so forth. I do a “pain pie” exercise during my classes and after I do it, I always talk about how sometimes choices are actively stripped away from women and we need to keep that in mind when we hear “bad” birth stories—not, “she ‘failed’ or made the ‘wrong’ choices” but that her pieces of the pie were taken away from her (sometimes forcibly!).

The reason I initially marked Rahima Baldwin’s quote is because I am fascinated by how my birth experiences continue to inform the rest of my life–while not the defining moment of motherhood for me, I continue to draw upon the lessons of birth throughout the rest of my life, as well as retaining a total fascination with the subject. I wonder why I’m so “stuck” on birth? Why fixate on this one element of a lifespan? Does it mean I’m not “moving on” somehow—like a high school football player still reliving the glory of that touchdown from 10 years ago? I think it is because birth touches something else. Something deep and raw and true and we glimpse something that we rarely glimpse in everyday life. A touch of the sacred perhaps. Magic. Mystery. Or is it a sense of personal power and satisfaction in being a woman? I know that the “birth power” experience is a rare one for me—I have never felt so powerful and capable and amazing as I did giving birth. I like to think about how this “birth power” sense could be drawn into the rest of my life—how can I live a powerful and affirming and amazing life, not just as a birth giver, but as a woman? Lately, I am finding some answers in feminine spirituality, but it is a question I love to consider and hope to write more about in the future.

Okay, moving back to Rahima and the quotes from Pregnant Feelings:

Anthropologists’ reports of women working the fields, going to a sheltered spot to drop their babies without any ‘preparation’ and then returning to work describe a kind of mythical natural childbirth that is nearly impossible for Western women. We are far too cerebral, and our twentieth-century consciousness intrudes between us and our instinctual selves. The fact that we question both how to birth and how to parent shows how awake our consciousness is. We must of necessity involve our minds in understanding what we do and create, for it is impossible to turn them off. Nor can we simply erase, or afford to ignore, our culture’s view that giving birth is a dangerous and painful event requiring intervention and technology. Rather, we must consciously replace that view with new knowledge and new images if we are going to be able to reclaim our ability to birth with harmony of mind and body.

Loved this. The mythical woman giving birth by the side of the road and popping back into the field to work is strongly ingrained amongst “natural birth” advocates. Some women draw strength from the image—“if she could just squat in the field, so can I!” Others make a joke of it—“are you one of those nuts who encourages women to just squat in the field?!” And others are doubtful that it has any basis in reality. I also suspect that if said women did ever exist they did not return quickly to the fields because they wanted to do so, but because of the framework of their culture and those seen and unseen factors that shape our lives—perhaps their other children would starve if they didn’t run back to the field, perhaps the overseer would beat them, etc., etc. It doesn’t mean those women were stronger or more capable, but perhaps less valued and less cared for than they should have been.

Okay, back to Rahima again:

Our task is to integrate our minds and bodies, so we can give birth in a way that feels whole and nurturing—to ourselves as parents and to our babies…We cannot go back to ‘natural childbirth’ in which we just let it happen. There must be knowledge of birth and an assumption of responsibility for our own health care and for decisions affecting ourselves and our children. There exists for us the exciting possibility of giving birth with full awareness, participating in the joy and exhilaration of working in harmony with the tremendous energy of creation. But it does not occur automatically or unconsciously…

The potential for conscious birthing can exist independently of the place of birth, although some places require more watchfulness than others….Let us just say that it is actively giving birth in an environment which is woman-centered and child-centered, in which the cues are taken from the birthing woman while she experiences fully the sensations and emotions of new life coming into the world through her. She is not medically managed or manipulated, but is supported with the knowledge, love and experience of her attendants (doctors, midwives, husband, other support people) to birth in a way which is safe, yet does not deny the intense physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of giving birth.

Birthing in this way is rare in today’s culture…less than 5 percent of women in this country today experience ‘purebirth’ [positive birthing/conscious birthing]…

Given the wealth of images of birth that surround us, our task is to recognize that none of them adequately denies or exhausts the potential of birth. Perhaps their infinite variety can help to free us from any one fixed idea of giving birth and help us to realize our freedom to birth in the way that is right for us. We cannot control the energy of birth, but we can control our response to it by deciding to be open, relaxed positive, noisy, grouchy, whatever. We don’t need to behave in a certain way and we can accept ourselves and our births without self-judgment.

What caught me about this section was the mention of not being able to go back to a time when we could just “let it happen.” Though I feel like getting out of my own way and “letting it happen,” was a personal key to my own births—that the surrender is what gets the job done—I agree with her point that there is no letting it happen in today’s culture. A long time ago someone mentioned in an online forum that they were not planning to take birth classes or read any birth books because they felt like they should just let it happen and not have any preconceived notions; that cluttering up their heads with this other information would cloud their ability to do so. While I hear the motive and feeling behind this sentiment and believe there is some (perhaps idealized) truth to it, I simultaneously feel like it is impossible to do this, because women do not give birth in a void or outside of their culture. Women give birth in a context, usually involving other people (even with unassisted births, there is usually someone else there). If you enter the birth room (the aforementioned woman was planning to give birth in a hospital, not unassisted) without any ideas or pre-knowledge about what to expect or what you want, the stories and dramas and ideas and myths and preconceived notions and reading and media-exposure of all the other people present DO enter the room and impact your birth. You cannot just “let it happen,” because they will not just let it happen. Right or wrong, this is the environment in which many of us our building our birth nests.

I’d like to close my thoughts with another quote. This one is from one of my favorite birth books, Transformation Through Birth by Claudia Panuthos. In giving birth, regardless of our nest and our choices and all the seen and unseen elements shaping our lives, perhaps we can simply, “…celebrate ourselves for our courage to birth. The real question becomes not, ‘Have you done your breathing exercises?’ but rather, ‘Can you love yourself no matter how your birth, where you birth, or what the outcome?'”

Tips for Emotional Well-Being During Pregnancy

Jan22

I got a lot of wonderful responses to my question about emotional well-being during pregnancy (associated with my giveaway of the book Birth Space, Safe Place). So, courtesy of a lot of wise women, here are some top tips for supporting your emotional well-being during pregnancy and birth:

Peaceful Beginnings doula services shared “I think my best tip for emotional well-being during pregnancy (and life in general) is to let go of guilt. We can only do the best we can with the information we have at the time, no more, no less.”
Yasmel shared that her most helpful tip, “would be to find whatever gives you positive thoughts and use it, a lot. I loved the book Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and whenever I started second guessing my homebirth decision, I would open it up and just read the birth stories in it.”
Heather appreciated a helpful tip from her sister: “I was having alot of people question my birthing choices and telling me that my baby and I were going to die. None of which happened. She told me that ‘you can’t expect people to agree with your choices or behave respectfully about them. All you can do is know that you are doing what’s right for you and your child and that is all the matters. Don’t let them change your mind with fear. It has no place in childbirth.’”
And I especially enjoyed Ahmie’s advice: “remember that cats purr while giving birth. Figure out what makes you ‘purr’ while you’re pregnant and find ways to do more of that as well as to bring those tools to the birth-space with you.”
One of the most simple and yet important tips was shared by bubbledumpster, “Trust yourself,” and echoed in several other comments, such as earthmothergypsy who said, “I think one of the best helps emotionally is to encourage mamas to trust in themselves, their bodies and their babies. By giving them support in a way that they don’t feel undermined they can build the above trust in themselves.” And inoakpark who said, ” learning to trust your body (and trusting the people who will be with you at your birth to hold that space), is vital for an emotionally secure pregnancy and birth.”
bee in the balm offered another elegantly simple tip “to breathe, just take the time to come back to center and be and breathe.”

Nicole d shared that her best tip is “meditation on good/safe birth… the normalcy and miraculous nature of it. So much of pregnancy stress is uncertainty and fear of the birth process. The more you can trust in the process of pregnancy and birth, the more joyful and peaceful pregnancy can be.”
For Lee-Ann, “emotional wellbeing came with knowledge, the more I read and the more I normalized the birth process in my mind, the more research I did, the more confident and at peace I became.”
Rebekah made an excellent point about honest during pregnancy: “I think being open and honest with yourself and talking to your baby openly helps. It benefits no one to ‘pretend’ like everything is perfect and is okay to have trials, doubts, and fears.”
Jessica benefited from midwifery care: “One of the things that helped me a lot was having a midwife that I knew and trusted implicitly. I knew that my body and my baby would know what to do, and that I had a wonderful woman who would let it all unfold!”
And whoz_your_doula pointed out the benefit of taking time for yourself: “For me that took the form of meditation and prayer. The early morning is my time for deep reflection before the house begins to stir.”
A similar tip was shared by Gentle Beginnings: “I feel it is very important for a woman’s emotional well being to take a few minutes each day to spend time alone. To sit quietly and think about the precious child growing inside them, to disconnect from the world, to envision how peaceful they want their birth to be, to take a stroll in nature and to connect with their inner self. I think we can all benefit from these simple suggestions, but feel it is especially important during pregnancy and childbirth.”

Helpful for birth educators as well as couples, Janet shared that her favorite tip is “teaching the mom and her partner to work together towards open and honest communication before hand. I find a lot of the mothers I teach think, ‘Oh, well we talked about it once and I think we are on the same page,’ only to be completely blind-sided afterwards. Keeping these lines of communication open before, during and after pregnancy makes for a much better emotional state for all.”
Jamie moved us back to the trust theme: “Trust yourself. Trust that your body knows how to be pregnant and how to give birth. Be positive in the changes your body is going through and how you are being prepared for motherhood in all facets of your being. Know that you can do this—you are doing it!”
And another excellent and simple tip was shared by Heather Richins: “My tip is to make sure you stay well fed and hydrated. It is hard to feel good emotionally if you don’t feel good physically.”
Deborah had more than one to share: “1) Eat well: increase protein and raw fruits & veggies, and drink lots of water. Decrease refined foods, white flour products and sugars. 2) Exercise: walk, swim, yoga, etc. 3) Talk: find someone you trust and be honest about how you are feeling.”
And finally, Kathy offered a comprehensive collection of tips: “to be conscious of their needs each day. This includes physical,emotional, and spiritual. For the physical; Eat well. Whole foods, including whole grains, fruits, vegetables. Protein intakes needs to be adequate for a pregnant woman on a daily basis. Eating often to keep your blood sugars level is especially important for warding off mood swings. For the emotional; Trust yourself and others who care about you. Surround yourself with positive people who support you in what your doing. Communicate your needs and wants. Be willing to be honest and vulnerable. Pregnancy can often ‘stir the pot.’ Being willing to work out your feeling and talk to someone you trust and bring about personal growth and sometimes, bring about healing the past. For the spiritual; It is just as important for the spirit to be fed, as it for the body. Fellowshipping with others of the same faith is uplifting to the spirit. Take time for reflections and meditations each day. Keep a journal.”

I appreciated all the responses and think that emotional well-being is such an important subject. I feel like, especially with a first baby, it is an often overlooked element of birth preparation—a lot of time and energy is spent on the physical health of the pregnant woman, but the emotions are assumed to kind of take care of themselves, to perhaps be no one’s business, or to be dismissed summarily as “crazy pregnancy hormones” and “mood swings of pregnancy!”

Birth Symbol

Dec22

At the very end of August, I went to see Birth, the play in St. Louis. I was about 5 weeks pregnant at the time. Following the play and “talkback” event, there was a BOLD Red Tent (birth stories sharing circle). Right before the birth stories portion of the Red Tent, we did a birth art project. The Birthing from Within Mentor who was facilitating the Red Tent asked each of us to draw a symbol on a card that communicated what we would want to share with other women about birth—not in words, but a visual representation of the message we’d like to share. We then painted our symbols onto prayer flags to be strung together as a whole “language of birth” in symbols. We left the flags with her to be taken to births to share the symbols with other birthing mamas. I drew a spiral and explained that the message I was sharing was, “You can do it. You’re okay. Let it happen.” I also added a little birth goddess with wild hair that to me represents the intuitive birth wisdom women carry with them (when I was pregnant with my first baby I was worried about being too “in my head” to give birth powerfully–I created a series of needled felted sculptures of birth goddesses with wild hair and worried that the hair showed that I was too in my head. After he was born, I realized that my sculptures were telling me about the wild, natural, birth wisdom I had in my head, not the “book learning” that was also there and was what I had worried about interfering with the flow of birth).

A few days following my miscarriage in November, I received a Facebook message from the BfW mentor (and friend) who had facilitated the Red Tent session. She attached a photo of the flag I had painted during the Birth Art session and asked me to “allow the gift to come and sit with you” (as well as gifting me with “no response necessary”).

It was amazing to have my own birth symbol come back to “speak” to me in this way during such a painful (and also transformative) time.

“You can do it. You’re okay. Let it happen.”

Adding More Birth Quotes…

Dec22

To my ongoing collection (previously posted to my Facebook fan page, but sharing here as well. There are some grief/miscarriage quotes mixed in as well):

“Birth is valuable. It gives rise to our entire future. There is power in our ability to give birth to the future of our planet. We need to reclaim that power.” –Ginger Garner

“Birth is the epicenter of women’s power.” – Ani DiFranco

“To parent well, you have to have the gentleness and courage of a warrior.” –Carol (in the book Joyful Birth)

“There is no foot so small that it cannot leave an imprint on this world”

“You’re braver than you believe. Stronger than you seem. And smarter than you think.”– Christopher Robin

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” Pooh’s Little Instruction Book (added by a Facebook fan in response to the above)

“Nature, time, and patience are the three great physicians.” –Greek Proverb

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” –author unknown

Addition to the above from Teri Shilling’s blog. Her adaptation is: “Birth is not about waiting for it to be over. It’s about learning to dance through it.” — Teri Shilling

“We receive fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief moments of insight…Let us gather them up for the precious gifts that they are and, renewed by their grace, move boldy into the unknown.” –Sara York

“A Survival Meditation” by Nathan Walker. It begins: “breathing in…i am aware of my pain….breathing out…i am aware that i am not my pain…breathing in…i am aware of my past….breathing out…i am aware that i am not my past.”

“Birth goes best if not intruded upon by strange people and strange events. It goes best when a woman feels safe enough and free enough to abandon herself to the process.” –Penny Armstrong & Sheryl Feldman

“Your body is the life force power of some fifty trillion molecular geniuses…Own your power and show up for your life [birth]. Beam bright!” –Jill Bolte Taylor

“What makes a good birth experience [depends on] how we discover that energy and enthusiasm that carry us through any challenging situation in life.” –Suzanne Arms

“I will welcome happiness for it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul.” –Og Mandino

“Whereas loss changes us, grieving loss transforms us. Through the process of mourning, we are rehsaped into more highly evolved souls than we previously were.” –Marie Allen & Shelly Marks

“Growth is measured by…the openness with which we continue and take the next unknown step, beyond our edge…into the remarkable mystery of being.” –Stephen Levine

“Motherhood isn’t just a series of contractions, it’s a state of mind. From the moment we know life is inside us, we feel a responsibility to protect and defend that human being.” –Erma Bombeck

“Over the passage of time, we do more than survive the journey. We go through a labor of self-discovery and give birth to the being deep within…we emerge more enriched, empowered, and evolved women, connect with the instinctual wisdom that lies deep within us, and experience the more whole life we deserve…grieving …opens a door into our souls that might otherwise not have been opened.” –Marie Allen & Shelly Marks

“You are strong! Your body was made to give birth!! You aren’t broken, you aren’t incapable, and you aren’t special!! Your grandmother did it, your great, great, great grandmother did it, and you can toooo!!!” –Hathor the Cowgoddess

“As a mother to be, your critical task is to prepare for a birth that has no script. This requires great courage, flexibility, and a capacity for inner awareness.” –Pam England

“All natural birth has a purpose and a plan; who would think of tearing open the chrysalis as the butterfly is emerging? Who would break the shell to pull the chick out?” –Marie Mongan

(Butterfly & the Cesarean story link shared by a Facebook fan)

“You are pregnant and you are powerful. You are bold and you are beautiful. Go forward in your boldness, in your beauty and in your connectedness. Trust your body to birth and know that the collective power of women worldwide will be with you.” –Your Birth Right

“Nursing does not diminish the beauty of a woman’s breasts; it enhances their charm by making them look lived in and happy.” ~ Robert Heinlein

“[When a woman] has had an ecstatic birth, you can’t talk her into taking drugs that aren’t good for her body. You can’t talk her into a hysterectomy…You can’t talk her into a crummy diet…She knows what this body is capable of. She loves this body. This body loves her…there’s nothing like the transformation avail…able at birth…she becomes illuminated…she’s a channel for life…she’s a channel for life in all its forms.” –Christiane Northrup, MD

“Miscarriages are labor, miscarriages are birth. To consider them less dishonors the woman whose womb has held life, however briefly.” –Kathryn Miller Ridiman

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.” ~ Helen Keller

“Motherhood instantly ups your ante in the human sweepstakes. It gives you a very personal stake in the future, and makes you vulnerable…It can also empower. Women who hesitated to speak for themselves may find their voice and advocate energetically for themselves as mothers and for the welfare of their children. Motherhood…the single most common transformational experience in the world.” –Valerie Young

“I think one of the best things we could do would be to help women/parents/families discover their own birth power, from within themselves. And to let them know it’s always been there, they just needed to tap into it.” –John H. Kennell, MD

“[sex], birth, and breastfeeding are survival behaviors of our species, and they’re not supposed to hurt…The way we structure those behaviors often contributes to the pain that is experienced…”–Kathleen Auerbach

“Women birth everywhere–in woods, in shacks, in quaint homes and suburbs and palaces, under trees, in taxis, and lately, in clinics and hospitals. It’s hard to birth in power without privacy, love and a place called home…” –Sister MorningStar

“The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.” ~Margaret Fuller

“Birth today is a doctor dictatorship in many practices and in many hospitals. Mothers and babies are missing the healthiest possible beginning, both physically and emotionally. Their human rights are being violated.” –Jan Tritten

“If society hinders the optimal breastfeeding by mothers who work outside the home, society needs to change, not women.” –Elisabet Helsing, World Health Organization

and from UNICEF: “The promotion of breastfeeding must not be seen as an excuse to exclude women from the labor force. The burden should no longer fall on women to choose between breastfeeding and work. The burden is on society to facilitate breastfeeding and indeed child care.”

“One does not give birth in a void, but rather in a cultural and political context. Laws, professional codes, religious sanctions, and ethnic traditions all affect women’s choices concerning childbirth.” –Adrienne Rich

Discussion following on the Facebook page: Me: Do couples truly have a free choice of where to give birth? Ultimately speaking, I guess yes, but according to my clients insurance companies dictate their birth location…

Another poster:

The choice is taken from people far too often! Money talks, doctors can scare, insurance companies manipulate, etc., etc.
Sometimes the choice is pretty much taken away. 😦

AND the cultural, political, etc. The quote is so true… our choices don’t occur in a void, all those things affect choices in childbirth. Its just that sometimes, many of those choices are dictated by the above, and so, can severely limit what we do get to choose.

Me again: When we do the “pain pie” exercise in my classes, I always talk about how sometimes choices are actively stripped away from women and we need to keep that in mind when we hear “bad” birth stories–not, “she ‘failed’ or made the ‘wrong’ choices” but that her pieces of the pie were taken away from her (sometimes forcibly!).

Prompted by the above:

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” –Alice Walker

“Life becomes precious and more special to us when we look for the little everyday miracles and get excited about the privileges of simply being human.” -Tim Hansel

“The beauty of my body is not measured by the size of the clothes it can fit into, but by the stories that it tells. I have a belly and hips that say, ‘We grew a child in here,’ and breasts that say, ‘We nourished life.’ My hands, with bitten nails and a writer’s callus, say, ‘We create amazing things.'” -Sarah (I Am Beautiful)

Three Hours into 1.5 Minutes??

Dec11

I most often write blog posts directed at pregnant women, not birth professionals (though I hope the pros find my posts useful as well!). Via the excellent Passion for Birth blog this morning, I read this article that is very relevant to childbirth educators.

The article addresses how educators/presenters can attempt to cram three hours worth of information into 1 and half minutes and how that is NOT effective or helpful. They do so out of fear that this is their “only chance” to reach those learners (but the cramming style actually does not reach learners either).

Ugh. I found myself cringing a bit when reading because I think I have this tendency for sure. It was also relevant to me in my non-birthwork life. I am faculty at Columbia College and am teaching my first college class this session (final exam tonight!). All of the principles in the article are things I strive to keep in mind when teaching college students as well (and sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail. The actual class is 5 hours a night—though now six, because I missed one week and made it up sequentially over the following 5 weeks of class—which makes it tricky to keep people engaged, though also gives me plenty of time not to be cramming information into people’s heads).

Anyway, so the summary of points from the article (OMG. I’m taking a metaphorical three hours to get to my point…;-) were as follows:

Learners want relevance
Learners don’t care about history
Learners want minimal detail
Learners want connections
Learners want focus
Learners want applications
Learners want practice

I remember reading somewhere else at some point (I think during my ICEA certification process), that most learners do NOT want the amount of information and level of detail that you can provide. The first three on my list above are things I find myself falling into in birth education—I tend to give lots of details and some end up being irrelvant (I don’t want anyone to miss anything!) and I do have a tendency to give lots of history, background, and overexplanation.

So, good things to keep in mind! I want to be effective, not inefficient or irrelevant. I have been thinking a lot lately about my classes and how I’d like to improve them and change them and “deepen” them. Reading this article made me think even further about my approach and what I hope to accomplish. I have this sense lately that something just isn’t “working” and I want to go beyond—stretch my boundaries and dig in further.

And Even More Birth Quotes

Nov2

Continuing my semi-regular addition of birth quotes I’ve used on the Talk Birth Facebook page recently.

“When women understand what’s available to us at birth, then we won’t ever give that over to an ‘expert’ the birth power, the orgasmic power that’s in our bodies” –Christiane Northrup

“Women have the inner power and the inner knowledge of giving birth. There is a parallel of sexuality and giving birth. Women who are giving birth, trust yourselves. Trust your inner power. Trust your ability to give life. This is something absolutely sacred that is inside all women in the world.” –Ricardo Jones, MD

“If women experienced the ecstasy of birth, they would have the high that would get them through the hormonal changes of the next week. Your body and your inner wisdom give you that high.” –-Christiane Northrup

“While many of us believe that encouraging a laboring woman to move when and how she wants to is healthier and safer than making her stay in bed, waiting for evidence that it produces better health outcomes is putting a burden of proof on normal birth that has never been applied to routine intervention.” –Amy Romano

“Pay attention to the pregnant woman! There is no one as important as she!” –Chagga saying, Uganda

“A pregnant woman is like a beautiful flowering tree, but take care when it comes time for the harvest that you do not shake or bruise the tree, for in doing so, you may harm both the tree and its fruit.” –Peter Jackson

“Can we create a world where all needs are met with dignity and individual culture is retained; where a baby anywhere in the world is born nonviolently and according to the instincts of its mother; where people progress in directions of full potential and spirit is not sacrificed; where women no longer obey, submit and apologize for who they are?” –Sister MorningStar

“If birth were a medical disaster in waiting, routine medical intervention would not disrupt the process. It does. If technology were integral to the process of birth, routine technology would improve outcomes. It hasn’t. If birth were inherently painful, all women would suffer without medicine. They don’t. The initial assumption[s] are proven faulty.” –Kim Wildner

“Having a baby [is] an opportunity to transform a life, because in the moments of labor and birth all the forces of the universe are flowing through a woman’s body…’If you have 12 babies you only get 12 of those opportunities. This is big fun.'” –Sister MorningStar

“I think that women can be just completely surprised by the change in them from giving birth—you have something powerful in you—that fierce thing comes up—and I think babies need moms to have that fierceness—you feel like you can do anything and that’s the feeling we want moms to have.” –Ina May Gaskin

“Birth has been broken. The spirit of women with respect to their innate birthing power has been broken. We can do nothing about the millions of broken births that have already taken place, but by seriously looking at the effect of fear–the powerful emotion that clouds our thinking and causes the birthing body to break down–perhaps we can keep the finely tuned, precision bodies of women whole for future generations…” –Marie Mongan

“When you destroy midwives, you also destroy a body of knowledge that is shared by women, that can’t be put together by a bunch of surgeons or a bunch of male obstetricians, because physiologically, birth doesn’t happen the same way around surgeons, medically trained doctors, as it does around sympathetic women.” –Ina May Gaskin

“In a modern world, ‘getting through’ labour without numbing or dumbing the process can be a very powerful experience for a woman, and very challenging.” –The Pink Kit

“When it comes to pregnancy and birth, we as a culture and as individuals need to wake up and claim our right to literally birth right!” –-Christiane Northrup

“Birth may bring you face-to-face with your insecurities, doubts, inadequacies and fears, as well as your joy, determination, willingness and courage.” –The Pink Kit

“$13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding.” –Frank Oski, MD

“Let us initiate our daughters into the beauty and mystery of being strong and confident women who claim their right to give birth and raise their children with dignity, power, love, and joy.” –Barbara Harper

When it comes to birth classes, “restricting yourself to what ‘everyone else does’ will only get you what everyone else got. The numbers say this is a very sad limitation to place on yourself.” –-Kim Wildner

“In the absence of the medical indication for which they were developed, birth interventions are at best worthless, at worst, harmful.” –Kim Wildner

“Let parents know that they don’t need special techniques and gadgets to give birth safely and happily. Make sure to communicate to every mother you help, that she has all the essential ingredients for a safe, healthy birth within herself. A womb, a baby, a vagina, and a few warm pieces of fabric make an excellent, complete birth kit.” –Laura Morgan

“Women’s bodies have their own wisdom, and a system of birth refined over 100,000 generations is not so easily overpowered.” –Sarah Buckley

Birth Talk

Oct19

As I have referenced several times before I have a special interest in the language of birth. That is part of the reason my blog/business is so-named—because is it is a blog that “talks birth” (as in, “let’s get together and talk birth!”), but also because the way you talk about birth matters. I have also referenced before that it was originally going to be called Birth Talk, but when I went to get the gmail address, it was already taken (by a childbirth educator I coincidentally later came to know!). I’ve come to really “bond” with my Talk Birth name and now “birth talk” sounds slightly odd to me (though “talk birth” is really the odder phrasing).

A couple of months ago, I read an interesting article by Debra Bingham about Taking Birth Back. It it, she asks you to consider–when talking about birth–how your basic assumptions affect your discourse (the way you talk about birth):

1. Does your discourse include stories about the power of women?
2. Or do the stories shift the locus of control away from women and their bodies to other authority figures such as nurses, physicians, or machines?
3. Does your discourse assume that women are physiologically capable of giving birth and nourishing their own children?
4. Or does your discourse assume that women’s bodies are fundamentally flawed and in need of medical attention and intervention?

I am frequently attempting to shift the locus of control from “authority” figures back to women–it is shocking to me how ingrained the terminology is about medical care providers (even midwives!), “letting” someone do something, etc.

And, an enormous part of my life revolves around stories about the power of women, so I think I have that one down 😉

The prevailing social discourse about birth assumes a locus of control external to the woman and you rarely hear stories about the “power of women” amongst the general public or mainstream media. Ditto for the assumption of women’s bodies as fundamentally flawed, except replace “rarely” with “frequently.” These messages are so dominating that I think it is hard for women to really “hear” positive birth talk–it seems like a “joyful birth” must be a myth or impossible. Likewise, when a woman is striving to keep the birth talk around her positive, it can be very difficult to override the predominately negative messages coming at her from every side. I see this in my classes, “I believe birth is a natural event, etc., etc. BUT….” (followed by a “I trust my doctor’s judgment and if he wants me to have this GTT test or this extra ultrasound to check my fluid level, etc. I guess I will do it…” comment that contributes to the “climate of doubt” in her life). There are also the woman’s own “inner voices” to contend with—I hypothesize that the loudly-shouted cultural voices about birth contribute a good deal to the “negative voice” in her inner dialog.

I don’t know any way to “fix” this other than to continue “talking birth”–good, healthy, positive, normal, humanistic, natural, joyful birth–as widely and frequently as I can!

Let labor begin on its own…

Oct9

One of my blog posts that gets the most hits and is a consistently searched for topic is one that I wrote called “how do I know I’m really in labor?” I revised it recently for participation in a blog carnival at Science and Sensibility about letting labor begin on its own. Let Labor Begin on Its Own is the first of Lamaze’s Six Healthy Birth Practices. Why is letting labor begin on its own so important? Well, the onset of labor is a complex biological system that has its own wisdom–when a woman’s body is pushed into labor on someone else’s timetable rather than her own, the whole biochemical “dance” of labor and birth is impacted. What may seem like a harmless “jump start,” actually has a cascading effect on the rest of the birth (and has an impact on the baby as well). A significant impact is that induced labors are often much more painful than spontaneous labors. If a woman is planning an unmedicated birth, the increased intensity of artificial induced contractions coupled with the lack of the biologically trigged endorphin release that helps birthing women naturally cope with pain, often leads directly into a request for medications. The woman is then sometimes left feeling like she “failed” in her “natural birth” plans and that she “wimped out” and “just couldn’t handle it.” However, she was dealing with something much different than a “natural” labor and so it makes sense that a “natural” birth then didn’t happen. Of course, the cascade of other interventions that accompany an induction, such as an IV and continuous monitoring also severely restrict a woman’s mobility (which also has a dramatic impact on her ability to cope).

I am saddened when I hear women blaming themselves for “not being able to handle it” (or, conversely being angry at “natural birth zealots” for misleading them…), when they were actually just missing significant pieces of their “pain coping pie” as well as dealing with a (probably) more difficult labor. We need to remember to look at the overall healthy birth climate of the birth setting and the use of the six healthy birth practices, rather than at personal “failure.”

There are a lot of excellent links on letting labor begin on its own in the rest of the blog carnival!

How do I know I’m really in labor?

Sep28

When I was in early labor with my first son, I spent quite some time upstairs in our computer room googling, “how to know you’re really in labor” or, “signs of true labor,” or “the difference between false labor and real labor,” or, “how do I know I’m in labor,” or, “how to know I’m in labor.” I would do this between contractions and then when I had a contraction I would think, “Wow! This is definitely it!” Then, it would ease, and I’d start googling again, certain I must just really be experiencing “false labor.” One of my biggest fears was arriving at the birth center and only being two centimeters dilated (or possibly not in labor at all!). So, in honor of my former self, I offer a list of some ways to to gauge whether you are experiencing true labor.

It is true labor if/when:

Your contractions fall into a regular pattern. And, that pattern involves contractions that are lasting longer, feeling stronger, and occurring closer together.
If when you walk around or otherwise increase your activity, the contractions also increase.
And if changing positions and drinking plenty of fluids also do not cause the contractions to ease…
The sensation begins in your lower back and spreads like a band around your belly causing a peak of tightness and discomfort in the front and then fades away again.
You have been feeling some gastrointestinal upset and may be experiencing diarrhea also.
You have pinkish or blood streaked, mucousy discharge.
Your membranes have ruptured (keep in mind that labor only begins in this way for roughly 10% of women. So, if your waters have not released, do not be discouraged thinking that you must not be in “real labor.” Many women do not experience their waters breaking until they are pushing or are starting to feel like pushing).
Truly, I think that the best sign that you are in labor is if you really feel like you are in labor. This is one of those things that doesn’t feel that helpful to a first-time mom—“yes, but how will I know?! What if I’m in labor and don’t know it until the baby is coming out?!” I promise that for the wide majority of you, at a certain point, you will just know that you are in labor and there will be no more questions about whether this is “really it”—that is the best sign, when you stop wondering “is this really it?” My observation is that this point comes along when you enter active labor and enter your “birth brain” instead of your analytical, logical brain.

Is this really it?

If you are still wondering, “is this really it?” my best piece of advice is to ignore it! Pretend like nothing is happening. Go about your normal day and your normal routine. If you would normally be sleeping, sleep. If you would normally be eating, eat. Go for a walk, water the plants, feed the dog, bake something, go to the store, etc. When your contractions need your full attention, they will ask for it 🙂

Symptoms of pre-labor (“false labor”)

Some “symptoms” that what you are experiencing is instead practice labor, pre-labor, or “false labor” (I do not usually use the phrase “false labor” because I think it is dismissive of women’s experiences. All contractions are doing something and so I refer to them as “practice” rather than “false.” Another good phrase to use is “pre-labor” contractions. My midwife with my second baby referred to them as “toning contractions”):

The contractions are irregular (no pattern) and are not increasing in frequency or intensity.
If you change positions or drink two large glasses of juice, water, or tea, the contractions subside.
The contractions center in your lower abdomen and do not involve your back.
The contractions go away if you take a walk, take a shower, or lie down.

This is also a popular question in birth classes. Because labor is a new event for you, it can be hard to know what to expect until it actually happens! There is pdf handout here with some additional signs and information. There is also a helpful handout with a sort of flowchart of signs/symptoms here.

Oh, and by the way, when I did finally go to the birth center, I was 10 centimeters dilated and started pushing about 30 minutes later!

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What about induction?!

On a closely related topic, why bother with all this guessing about whether or not you’re in labor? Why not be induced instead? Good questions! There are numerous reasons why you should let labor begin on it’s own—labor that begins on its own is usually safer and healthier for both mother and baby. Also, it is less painful than a labor that is induced with medications such as Pitocin. For more information about letting labor begin on its own, check out Lamaze’s Healthy Birth Practice #1, or this video clip from Mother’s Advocate: