Birth from the People Behind Food Matters

I love absolutely everything about this birth story.  I love it so much I'm going to stop blabbing and just cross post it.



From the Food Matters Blog:
By James Colquhoun, Filmmaker Food Matters &Hungry For Change

For those following us on online and onFacebook (nearly 300k, thank you!!!) you might have seen Laurentine's pregnant belly over the past few months. Well we recently had our baby and we wanted to share our unique story with you. I think you'll find it interesting commentary on birth and the beginnings of life as a human.

I call this an unusual story because it is not the typical hospital style birth that dominates our culture. 

Ever since Laurentine and I first met at college at 1999 (yes we're college sweethearts!) we would joke about starting a family and having lots of kids running around. We did however feel deep down inside that there was some important work calling us before we did so which is indeed what happened.

That work was to become the FOOD MATTERS film which helped heal my father from chronic fatigue syndrome, depression and anxiety plus free him from the pharmaceutical drug bandwagon. Then more recently HUNGRY FOR CHANGE which chronicled our experience with helping my father keep his weight off and covers many of the challenges that most people face when trying detoxes and fad diets. This has cemented our belief in the innate healing capacity of the human body and has influenced our opinions on health, life and birth in a deep and lasting way.

The Mind and The Body Need To Be Ready For Conception
Late last year we knew it was time for us to start a family so we prepared our bodies (both of us, you can't get away with this guys!) most importantly focusing on detoxification and rejuvenating our bodies plus balancing our hormones (testosterone, progesterone and oestrogen in particular). We first tried to conceive in Amsterdam when we were there on a 6 week trip writing the Hungry For Change book and visiting Laurentine's European family. Even though we had our bodies in order it didn't happen right away.

After we returned to the US and settled into our new home in Santa Monica Laurentine and I felt that much more 'nested' and conception happened immediately. There was obviously a part of us that needed to feel like we were home (or had a home base) before her body wished to conceive. I have no scientific data on this but can imagine that you might understand why this could be so.

"We had our inner biological terrain ready but we needed to have our mind's dialed in."

During the gestation period we were eating well and supporting the baby's development as best we knew how (there is a lot of info on this which we can save for another time). In preparation for the birth we consulted many of the experts from the films plus other leading experts and we developed some interesting rituals to help welcome this baby into the world. One of the more interesting ones we loved was making baby feel welcomed, expected and accepted.

You Are Welcomed, You Are Loved, You Are Accepted!
We would say this on a daily basis to baby as we knew this was important in making baby feel welcomed and loved, to develop a strong connection to our voices (which they can connect with from the 3rd  trimester onwards) and to aid in a speedy postpartum connection. This work is backed by Bruce Lipton (author of Biology Of Belief) and helps connect with the baby's subconscious mind in early life.

As for the actual birth and labour process Laurentine and I held the very strong belief that...

Birth Is A Natural Process And Not A Medical Emergency
We of course appreciate that there is no place like a hospital when the safety of mom and baby is compromised and you need emergency critical care however we believed that everything should be allowed to progress as naturally as possible for as long as possible before any intervention (if at all).

Read the rest of this amazing story here.

The Doula As Witness-Cross Post from The Childbirth Collective

by Jess Helle-Morrissey, MA, MSW, LGSW, LCCE, CLEC

Doulas serve a multi-faceted role in a birthing family’s life: supporter, encourager, normalizer, educator, guide. We rub backs, we squeeze hands, we stroke hair, we breathe, we hold space.  We press cool cloths to a birthing woman’s head as she brings her baby (or babies) forth from the warm, wet womb to the bright spinning world.

One role that is often overlooked, but is perhaps most sacred to my own doula heart, is that of witness. As doulas, we witness over and over again that unique and unparalleled moment in a woman’s life when she becomes a mother. Whether it’s a first birth, or a seventh, a mother is born each time she births a baby.

When a woman has a transformative birth experience (and really, what birth isn’t transformative?), she deserves to be fully seen. And that role is often uniquely the doula’s. Partners are witnessing, but they are most often deservedly caught up in their own personal experience of the moment. Midwives, doctors, and nurses are present, but they have medical tasks to attend to. Doulas are able to attend wholeheartedly to that moment.

We witness the joy of birth. We witness mamas finding their true selves for the first time in their lives as they birth their babies. We see the look on a mama’s face when her baby is five minutes old as she tells us, “Everyone said I couldn’t do it, but I knew I could.” We witness the hilarity of birth – I’ll never forget one mama who turned to me after birthing her twins and exclaimed, “That was f*cking AWESOME!” We get to see the way a partner looks at the birthing woman in complete awe as she makes her way through contraction after contraction. We get to see him or her wipe a tear away as this new little person makes that first yawling cry.

We witness the disappointments, too. And when things don’t go as planned, we can remind her that she is strong because we have seen it with our own two eyes, and we have felt it in our own doula souls. And we remember in a way that she might not.

So as witnesses to those moments, we begin to help her reframe:  Last summer, one of my doula mamas had a surgical birth after a long and difficult labor. In a case like this, it is easy to go to a place of dwelling in what went wrong. I go to my postpartum visit. We talk about all that happened, and I validate the disappointment. I sit with the pain.  But I also tell her, because I need her to hear, “I have never seen anyone work so hard for so long. I have never seen anyone fight so hard for what she wanted. You. Are. Amazing.” And she begins to feel it is true because I have seen it and I know it to be true. She knows I was there. She knows I saw her fully. And as I write this, I remember her fierce birthing spirit as if her baby was born yesterday, and I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up a bit. Because I will never forget her strength, and the gift she gave me by allowing me in.

Above all, it is that sheer strength of birthing women – no matter how they give birth – that we doulas are witness to. The strength to carry on when it feels like all the reserves have been depleted. The strength to make a choice to go a different direction than we’d dreamed. The strength to joyfully claim a place in the history and lineage of birthing women.

And the repercussions of that witnessing can last a lifetime. I spent a good part of my own life feeling like I was not a very strong person. When I gave birth to my twin boys, I found strength I never even dared to imagine I had in me. Today, more than two years later, each time I see one of my two wonderful doulas, I still stand a little taller and feel that swell in my heart – “SHE has seen my strength! She knows the amazing things I am capable of!” A bit dramatic? Perhaps. But life-changingly, soul-stirringly profound for this mama? Most definitely.

So when you invite a doula into your life for some portion of the nine months of your pregnancy (and a couple months after), know that the benefits don’t end there. We not only witness, but we also remember. I tell my mamas, “If you ever need to be reminded of how incredible you are, call me and I will tell you as many times as you need to hear it to believe it.” So on behalf of all doulas,  thank you to birthing families everywhere who invite us to witness your incredible journey. Thank you for giving us the best job in the world.

Cross-Post: Doula-ing for Cesareans

One of the things that a new doula must do in order to be certified is to attend births, sometimes three and as much as five. This doula has attended a whooping 0 births. Are you willing to be my first mama?

I have, however, been a back up doula to a few of my doula friends, yet none of them have needed a back up, so I'm waiting. I was pretty sure that July would be my month, especially since my doula friend has two mamas with very close due dates. I was a bit disappointed to learn that one mama had elected for a scheduled c-section. Not because I oppose the c-section, but because I knew that a c-section would mean that there was no chance that the two mamas would overlap.

It got me thinking about how important a doula is, even to a mama who's having a c-section so I was delighted to find the following post. Read it here.

Getting Insurance to Pay for Midwives

Cheryl Senter for The New York Times

Earlier this week the NYT posted an article siting America as the costliest place to give birth. Several people, myself included, cross-posted the piece and the comments section has hundreds of replies. Many people blame the insurance companies for the price of birth, while others blame doctors and hospital's often unnecessary and costly interventions. What was missing was other birthing options; at home or in a birthing center with a Midwife.

NYC has only one free standing birthing center, Brooklyn Birthing Center. This is where I hope, Gd-willing/Inshallah/Bezrat Hashem, to give birth when my partner and I get pregnant. The fact of the matter is, birthing with a midwife is substantially cheaper not because you receive inferior service, but because most midwife births are women-centered. A midwife and doula team supports a mother and her partner fully and holistically, relying not on the use of pitocin and monitoring to get the baby out, but on the body's own ability to birth a child.

Here's a quote from the article:

In the United States, the use of midwives varies hugely by state and region; they can deliver babies at a birthing center, in hospitals or in homes. They generally need physician back-up in case a pregnancy has complications they cannot handle. There are few midwife births in the South and Texas, while the rate is above 15 percent in Oregon and New Mexico. In Britain and Denmark, more than two-thirds of all births are attended by a midwife.

Read the entire article on the NYT here.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Warns Against Inductions

I think it's important that birth professionals; whether OBs, midwives, doulas or childbirth educators keep an open mind. This, I realize, is hard because it's very human to form ideas, thoughts, or convictions, but when it comes to birth it's really up to the mother to decide what she feels is best for her.

Keeping that in mind, I'm aware that sometimes a mother will have ideas about birth that may not necessarily align with my own thoughts about birth, but those thoughts, my opinions, must be pushed aside so that I'm able to fully-support a mother. I do, however, think that women should look into all of their birthing options and educate themselves on the many options available to them. If I can think of one criticism of the medical and healthcare system it would be that it doesn't empower patients, especially women who are pregnant. Instead a woman, under the care of an insensitive or authoritative physician, can sometimes feel small and inadequate. She is made to fear her body and the birthing process and doubt whether her body is "big enough" "strong enough" or "young enough" to do what it's supposed to do.

I love this quote by Ina May Gaskin:

Remember this, for it is as true and true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

 Read the ACOG's complete article: Five Things Mothers and Physicians Should Question

Don’t schedule elective, non-medically indicated inductions of labor or Cesarean deliveries before 39 weeks 0 days gestational age.

Delivery prior to 39 weeks 0 days has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of learning disabilities and a potential increase in morbidity and mortality. There are clear medical indications for delivery prior to 39 weeks 0 days based on maternal and/or fetal conditions. A mature fetal lung test, in the absence of appropriate clinical criteria, is not an indication for delivery.

Don’t schedule elective, non-medically indicated inductions of labor between 39 weeks 0 days and 41 weeks 0 days unless the cervix is deemed favorable.

Ideally, labor should start on its own initiative whenever possible. Higher Cesarean delivery rates result from inductions of labor when the cervix is unfavorable. Health care practitioners should discuss the risks and benefits with their patients before considering inductions of labor without medical indications.

NYT Cross-Post: Birthing in America is Costly!

Josh Haner/The New York Times

As a doula, my job is to sort of come outside of myself, my wishes, my thoughts and my needs to focus solely on a mother as she labors. This means that I support a mother who wants to give birth in a hospital with an epidural as equally and fully as a mother who wants to give birth squatting in her living room. As a woman who's TTC I find this article by the New York Times shocking!

I've been considering a home birth when we, Gd willing, get pregnant. Birthing at home or at a Birthing Center with a midwife and doula insures woman-focused, mother-lead birthing with a caregiver you've had a continuous relationship with, but it's also, quite shockingly, cheaper!

In nearly every other developed country in the world, midwives, not OBs attend births. Why? Because birth isn't a medical "problem" and OBs are trained surgeons. Of course, and I know this because I have fibroids which may put me in the "high risk" area of moms, some births have medical complications where having an OB is necessary. But for women who are healthy, birthing is and should be a natural process. Our bodies were made and are perfectly capable of birthing babies.

It wasn't until the 1950s that birth came to hospitals, before then the majority of American births were done at home. It's also interesting to note that while our births have moved into the hospital and away from the home, we've lost more mothers and babies. In fact, the U.S has one of the worst mother and baby mortality rates.

What are your thoughts on this article? 

From the New York Times: American Way of Birth; Costliest in the World

 LACONIA, N.H. — Seven months pregnant, at a time when most expectant couples are stockpiling diapers and choosing car seats, Renée Martin was struggling with bigger purchases.At a prenatal class in March, she was told about epidural anesthesia and was given the option of using a birthing tub during labor. To each offer, she had one gnawing question: “How much is that going to cost?”Though Ms. Martin, 31, and her husband, Mark Willett, are both professionals with health insurance, her current policy does not cover maternity care. So the couple had to approach the nine months that led to the birth of their daughter in May like an extended shopping trip though the American health care bazaar, sorting through an array of maternity services that most often have no clear price and — with no insurer to haggle on their behalf — trying to negotiate discounts from hospitals and doctors.When she became pregnant, Ms. Martin called her local hospital inquiring about the price of maternity care; the finance office at first said it did not know, and then gave her a range of $4,000 to $45,000. “It was unreal,” Ms. Martin said. “I was like, How could you not know this? You’re a hospital.”Midway through her pregnancy, she fought for a deep discount on a $935 bill for an ultrasound, arguing that she had already paid a radiologist $256 to read the scan, which took only 20 minutes of a technician’s time using a machine that had been bought years ago. She ended up paying $655. “I feel like I’m in a used-car lot,” said Ms. Martin, a former art gallery manager who is starting graduate school in the fall.

Keep Reading at the NY Times

What are the Benefits of Having a Doula

"If a doula were a drug, it would be unethical not to use it.". 

                                 ~John H. Kennell, MD

In my last post I explained a bit of what a doula does, for this post I wanted to show some benefits in having a doula at your birth; whether you birth in a hospital, in a birthing center, or at home. Mothers giving birth vaginally as well as via c-section both benefit from having a doula at their birth. 

Let's get right to the statistics:

Doulas reduce the labor time, reduce the need for medication, and reduce the need for cesarean. Plus, there is the added bonus of a women there to support you.

Studies have also shown:

• 50% reduction in cesarean birth
• 30% reduction in requests for pain medication
• 60% fewer requests for epidural anesthesia
• 25% decrease in the length of labor
• 30% decrease in use of Pitocin
• Reduction of medical cost
• Increased breastfeeding success
• Greater overall satisfaction

Source: Klaus, Kennell, and Klaus, Mothering the Mother, New York, Addison-Wesley, 1993.

Numerous clinical studies have found that a doula’s presence at birth

• tends to result in shorter labors with fewer complications
• reduces negative feelings about one’s childbirth experience
• reduces the need for pitocin (a labor-inducing drug), forceps or vacuum extraction and cesareans
• reduces the mother’s request for pain medication and/or epidurals

Research shows parents who receive support can:

• Feel more secure and cared for
• Are more successful in adapting to new family dynamics
• Have greater success with breastfeeding
• Have greater self-confidence
• Have less postpartum depression
• Partner's have more confidence in their ability to assist in the birth.

Suggested Reading: The Doula Book Klaus, Kennell and Klause

If you are pregnant I would be honored to speak with you further on the benefits of having a doula at your birth.

What Does a Doula Do?

The majority of my friends are excited that I'm in the process of becoming a doula, but the majority of them have no idea what a doula is or what it is that I'll be doing as a doula.

One friend wants me to be her doula to "deliver her baby"

Doulas don't do that.

Another said she'd like me there to help her talk to the doctors.

Doulas don't do that either.

And yet another wants me there to help her figure out what to do.

Doulas don't really do that either.

So what, exactly, does a doula do?

A doula is a non-medical support person for the laboring woman and her partner. Because a doula is a "non medical" she cannot prescribe or recommend medications or interventions. She also cannot help in any aspect of the birth (delivering the baby, handing surgical tools to the OB). She's there solely as a support to the mother and her partner.

A doula is professional trained in childbirth and provides emotional, physical and informational support to the mother who is expecting, is experiencing labor, or has recently given birth. The doula’s purpose is to help women have a safe, memorable and empowering birthing experience.

A doula recognizes birth as a key experience the mother will remember all her life. She facilitates communication between the laboring woman, her partner and her clinical care providers

A doula will show support by looking into a woman's eyes while she's having contractions, matching her breathing to the mothers'. A doula will offer massage, aromatherapy, essential oil therapy, or simply hold and stroke the hand of the mother.

A doula will work with the couple or mother during prenatal appointments to help craft a Birth Vision (Birth Plan)

A doula encourages and supports the partner, allowing them to break for naps and stays with the mother during those times.

A doula helps the couple understand various comfort measures and teaches the partner how to do them with the laboring woman.

A doula is encouraging and comforting.

A doula informs the expecting parents on all aspects of birth, labor and encourages the couple to learn about medical interventions and assess which interventions the couple is comfortable with.

A doula is patient, sincere, kind and compassionate.

When labor can last anywhere from 12-48 hours (and sometimes longer!) A doula provides constant and uninterrupted support if only through tender touch.