Pregnancy and Birth Education
Pregnancy and birth education are an integral part of each visit. In a relaxed and informal way, I will share information with you, review books and films, and provide handouts on various aspects of pregnancy and birth:
♥ Your growing baby
♥ Your changing body
♥ Labour and birth
♥ Birth decisions - making informed decisions
♥ Your changing body
♥ Labour and birth
♥ Birth decisions - making informed decisions
Here are some sample handouts:
My Baby at 4 Weeks From Conception
(usually considered 6th week of pregnancy by common dating methods)
Congratulations! You have probably just recently discovered that you are pregnant. While you have been wondering, “Am I, or aren’t I?” your baby has already been performing some amazing feats of development.
By now, your baby is about 8 mm long, roughly the size of a small raisin. Your baby’s eyes, ears, and limbs are beginning to develop, and baby’s brain is beginning to divide into its five distinct parts. Baby’s little heart has begun beating, and blood cells are circulating. The beginnings of the placenta and umbilical cord are delivering blood and oxygen to your growing baby, and all of baby’s major organ systems are in place. Of course, they have much developing still to do, but already your baby is a distinct little individual.
Right now, it almost looks like baby has a tail. This is because the spine and spinal cord are growing faster than the other systems, but everything else will soon catch up. Day by day, your baby will continue to make amazing changes.
Why not explore some of the Internet sites that provide week-by-week news on your baby’s development, such as: http://www.baby2see.com/development/week1.html
You might also want to get a copy of this gorgeous book:
A Child Is Born, by Lennart Nilsson.
It is a photographic window into the miracle world of the womb.
Enjoy your little miracle! ♥
By now, your baby is about 8 mm long, roughly the size of a small raisin. Your baby’s eyes, ears, and limbs are beginning to develop, and baby’s brain is beginning to divide into its five distinct parts. Baby’s little heart has begun beating, and blood cells are circulating. The beginnings of the placenta and umbilical cord are delivering blood and oxygen to your growing baby, and all of baby’s major organ systems are in place. Of course, they have much developing still to do, but already your baby is a distinct little individual.
Right now, it almost looks like baby has a tail. This is because the spine and spinal cord are growing faster than the other systems, but everything else will soon catch up. Day by day, your baby will continue to make amazing changes.
Why not explore some of the Internet sites that provide week-by-week news on your baby’s development, such as: http://www.baby2see.com/development/week1.html
You might also want to get a copy of this gorgeous book:
A Child Is Born, by Lennart Nilsson.
It is a photographic window into the miracle world of the womb.
Enjoy your little miracle! ♥
Is My Pelvis Too Small?
Every man, woman, and child alive today is descended through a long line of pelvises that did the job just fine. It is only a very recent modern phenomenon that surgical birth is routinely “needed” because a woman’s pelvis is “too small” (the medical term is cephalopelvic disproportion, or CPD). It makes one wonder. Have women’s pelvises suddenly shrunk in the last 30 to 50 years? Or is it our birth practices that have become more constricted?
First of all, what is your pelvis? It is actually four separate bones at the bottom of your trunk and the top of your legs: two big hip bones that wrap from the sides to the front, your sacrum at the back, and your tailbone. These bones form a big basket just perfect for holding up your abdominal organs and your growing baby. And with its three built-in stretch points, your pelvis is the perfect design for letting your baby out when it is ready to be born.
The two joints between the hip bones and the sacrum are made of a flexible cartilage that becomes even more flexible and rubbery due to hormonal activity during the final weeks of pregnancy. The same type of cartilage joins the two hip bones together in front at your pubis. Did you know that there is no such thing as a “pubic bone?” It is actually a joint! Your pubic joint is specifically designed to stretch and flex as your pregnancy draws to its climax. By the time labour starts, your baby’s head has begun to mold to the shape of your pelvis, and your pelvis has begun to mold to the shape of your baby. It is a remarkably elegant little system.
When labour is allowed to progress without time pressures and without chemical or mechanical interference, your pelvis and your baby will work together to gradually stretch and squeeze each other into the perfect shape for baby to pass through.
Did you know that African pygmy women, who average about 4 feet in height and 80 pounds in weight, give birth to babies of an average weight of 8 pounds? That would compare to an average Canadian woman of 5 feet 6 inches tall giving birth to a 14-pound baby! Or to put it another way, it would be the same as a 130-pound woman giving birth to a 13-pound baby. And there are many who have done just that, without surgical intervention. If you would like to read more, here's a great place to start: http://midwiferytoday.com/articles/pelvis.asp
I’d like you to meet my friend Sara. She is so petite that she can sit comfortably in a toddler’s rocking chair. Both her babies, born the normal way, were over 7 pounds. And Sara herself was a 10-pound baby born to a mother just as petite as she is. In fact, like the majority of the world’s population, Sara and her babies have come through a long line of petite women with pelvises that were plenty adequate.
Perhaps we should start thinking of CPD as standing for “Calm, Patient Descent” instead of medical code for “inadequate woman.” ♥ |
Reclaiming Third Stage
Third stage is typically described as the time immediately after birth when the baby’s cord is clamped and cut and the placenta is removed from the mother. Oddly enough, this describes what other people are doing to the mom and baby. What are mom and baby actually doing during those magical first moments after birth?
In a nutshell, they are falling madly in love. But so much more than that is going on.
During second stage, mom and baby have experienced an adrenaline rush that gives the final oomph to those last moments of baby’s birth. In third stage, the adrenaline subsides, and oxytocin and endorphins - the love and happiness hormones - reach their peak. These hormones fuel the bonding process, ready the mother’s body to produce milk, and help her uterus to gently shrink. Often, the mother will instinctively suckle her newborn at her breast, and this further stimulates the production of oxytocin.
Typically, at the start of third stage while mom, dad, and baby indulge in a private lovefest, the uterus takes a little break from the hard labour it has just performed. After the family has had a few minutes to get acquainted, mom’s body will begin to intrude some firm reminders that her birth work is not quite finished. As her uterus contracts to shrink and close off blood supply to the placenta, the placenta gradually separates itself from the uterine wall, and her final contractions will cue her to push the placenta out.
For baby, third stage is a time of multi-miracles. While in the womb, the placenta has performed much of the function that baby’s heart, lungs, kidneys, digestive system, skin, and liver will now take on. With baby’s first breath, air fills the lungs, the hole in the baby’s heart closes, and oxygen-rich blood is circulated to the lungs and other organ systems. For a time, the baby’s umbilical cord continues to function as a lifeline to a backup oxygen and blood supply while the baby adjusts to life outside the womb. As the baby’s blood is gradually diverted away from the placenta, the jelly-like material in the umbilical cord (Wharton’s jelly), which has acted like bubble wrap to protect the cord’s blood vessels, begins to liquefy. The weight of this gradually clamps off the vessels, and the cord becomes limp, pale, and pulseless. Baby’s transition from a watery world to dry land is complete. (Check out this fantastic photo series of the changes to the cord at http://www.nurturingheartsbirthservices.com/blog/?p=1542)
Some birth practitioners choose not to cut the cord until it has clearly stopped pulsing. Some strongly advocate not cutting the cord until the placenta has been birthed. Some families even opt for a “lotus birth” where the cord is never cut at all but is left attached to the placenta until it dries up and falls away from the baby.
Most doctors and some midwives have a policy of clamping and cutting the cord immediately after birth. At this point, the cord is still pulsing, and up to 50% of the baby’s blood volume is still in the cord and placenta. Besides being messy, cutting the cord this early robs the baby of much of the blood supply that the newly functioning organs were counting on. It also allows the baby to be separated from mom in the first few moments after birth, and instead of blissfully bonding in mom’s arms, baby can be whisked away by zealous strangers for routine exams and injections. This causes a return of high adrenaline levels for both baby and mom and interferes with several of the biological processes in progress.
Most doctors and many midwives have a time limit on delivery of the placenta, and “active management” of third stage is the norm. In other words, everyone but mom actively manages the birth of the placenta. A shot of synthetic oxytocin is routinely given, even by some homebirth midwives, which artificially intensifies uterine contractions. If the mother has not birthed the placenta within 15 minutes or less, it is literally pulled from her by having the birth attendant apply “gentle traction” to the umbilical cord stump. This practice leads to possible hemorrhage, retained pieces of placenta, and even prolapse of the uterus and emergency hysterectomy.
Be sure you know what your birth attendant’s policies are with regard to third stage. And be sure to know what your own policy is about this. It is odd that after a completely natural, mother-directed first and second stage, it has become the norm to doubt the process and have someone else take over and “actively manage” the third stage.
If you want to leave the birth of the placenta and the decision about what to do with the cord in your attendant’s hands, that is up to you. But if you want to be the one who actively manages the grand finale of your birth experience, don’t be shy about reclaiming third stage for you and your baby. After all, it is your birthright. ♥