Pregnancy and Birth
Donna Taylor explains placenta encapsulation an...
Placenta consumption, also known as placentophagy, has been documented as far back as 500 BC, so it’s by no means a new thing or a passing trend. However, with more women sharing their testimonies, it’s moving from being an ‘out there’ practice to something many women consider alongside hiring a doula, choosing a hypnobirthing practitioner or taking an antenatal yoga class. Back in 2008, Lynnea Shrief, founder of the Independent Placenta Encapsulation Network (IPEN), was the first person to offer placenta encapsulation services in the UK, in addition to her doula practice. She went on to create a comprehensive training programme which is continuously developing to enable birth professionals to safely provide the service in the UK and around the world. The main motivation for most women who decide to encapsulate their placenta is that they want to use the capsules to help avoid postnatal depression. Others, committed to a healthy...
Donna Taylor explains placenta encapsulation and its benefits
Placenta consumption, also known as placentophagy, has been documented as far back as 500 BC, so it’s by no means a new thing or a passing trend. However, with more...
Focus on the birth experience, not just the out...
“... At least she's healthy; that's all that matters.” Those can be the most well-meaning, and hurtful comments a woman can hear after giving birth. Our society seems to have a strange relationship with pregnant women. When a woman is waddling around, her ever-growing midsection a sign to all those around her of the life she is bearing, we give up subway seats and parking spots, we hold open doors and offer to help with groceries. However, once that woman goes into labour, suddenly we no longer revere her, but fear her and what her body is going through; we have to try to contain and control the situation, so we start focusing 100% on the baby, leaving the mother's thoughts and wishes behind as emotional casualties. Somehow, in a matter of moments, this woman who was previously viewed as a dainty flower is now something to be man-handled and...
Focus on the birth experience, not just the outcome
“... At least she's healthy; that's all that matters.” Those can be the most well-meaning, and hurtful comments a woman can hear after giving birth. Our society seems to have...
Empowered Birth: the miracle that is the uterus
The topic of the uterus is massive, and having recently read Dynamic Positions in Birth by Margaret Jowett, it seems to me to be at the core of what we are working with as midwives with women during pregnancy and birth. I will continue discussing the uterus in the next issue as well because it is such an important organ that one column cannot do it justice. The uterus is the most amazing and underestimated part of the human body. It has evolved to have two functions: firstly, to be a safe haven, a lifeline and an incubator for the foetus during the nine months of pregnancy; and secondly, to propel the baby to the outside world. During labour, its job is to combine both simultaneously. It can repeat this process many times in a woman’s lifetime. In Jennifer Worth’s book Call the Midwife, she describes a mother with 22...
Empowered Birth: the miracle that is the uterus
The topic of the uterus is massive, and having recently read Dynamic Positions in Birth by Margaret Jowett, it seems to me to be at the core of what we...
How to celebrate the rite of passage into mothe...
Pregnancy and birth are such enormous milestones in any woman’s life, but as a culture we barely acknowledge them. Many other cultures have marked these important rites of passage with customs and rituals, finding ways of celebrating impending motherhood and birth. Our usual markers are medical: the pregnancy test, the dating scan, cutting the cord, the first injections; or commercial, in the form of the American baby shower. Even traditional religious rites such as christenings are falling by the wayside. For weddings we have engagement parties, hens and stags, wedding breakfasts and honeymoons; we have the giving and receiving of rings, and speeches. For birth, a far more lifechanging event, we have very little. In many traditional cultures, whilst young men would receive harsh initiations into manhood, women had none as it was acknowledged what a vast initiation childbearing was, both physically and spiritually. The mother-to-be would be guided by...
How to celebrate the rite of passage into motherhood
Pregnancy and birth are such enormous milestones in any woman’s life, but as a culture we barely acknowledge them. Many other cultures have marked these important rites of passage with...
Empowered Birth: rebozo after birth
Over the past couple of years, I have been attending training courses to learn about the shawl called a rebozo – a woven piece of fabric with beautiful tassels, bright colours and patterns. Due to the demand from people who would like to own their own rebozo, they are shipped from overseas by birth workers who have a relationship with the weaving families, and our knowledge of their usage in traditional midwifery in Mexico, Ecuador and Brazil is thanks in part to Naoli Vinaver – a midwife herself – who shares her culture. Rebozo ‘manteada’ is the technique used (also known as ‘sifting’) which moves a mother from her sympathetic or stressed state to her parasympathetic or calm state, so that she can relax, rest, and feel in control, able and intuitive in pregnancy and in labour. Having learnt the techniques in training, I then had to become confident and...
Empowered Birth: rebozo after birth
Over the past couple of years, I have been attending training courses to learn about the shawl called a rebozo – a woven piece of fabric with beautiful tassels, bright...
How water can help during pregnancy, labour and...
“Are you having a water birth?” “I’d like one, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed. My baby is measuring too big… Too small… I have strep B… I had a c-section last time… My blood pressure’s high… I’m overdue… There’s only one pool in hospital… I’ve got gestational diabetes… My partner’s aquaphobic!…” Being an Aqua Yoga teacher, I’m privileged to have been privy to the light-hearted birth chats between many pregnant women over the years. Many have clearly gained a great deal from the qualities of water week after week, and have groaned with dread at the thought of getting out of the swimming pool at the end of each class. Yet what still amazes me is the prevalent fear and doubt around birth choices – about what is allowed, including water birth. If you have immersed yourself in water while heavily pregnant, you’ll understand how wonderful it...
How water can help during pregnancy, labour and birth
“Are you having a water birth?” “I’d like one, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed. My baby is measuring too big… Too small… I have strep B… I...
Empowered Birth: sterile water injections
I have recently been asked to research (and potentially implement) a technique in which the midwife injects four small quantities of sterile water into the lower back of the labouring mother. This is something I was unfamiliar with and I was set on a path of discovery. I have learned that the practice is known and offered to women in labour by midwives all over the globe. Units from Australia, New Zealand, California, Scandinavia, as well as some from the UK, have responded to my query to say that this is part of their practice. Sterile water injections (SWI), administered by midwives, are a simple and well-established method of managing labour pain. This intervention was first used to alleviate pain associated with kidney stones and was introduced to obstetrics in the 1970s. Using a syringe, small amounts of sterile water are deposited intradermally near the sacral area. The sterile water...
Empowered Birth: sterile water injections
I have recently been asked to research (and potentially implement) a technique in which the midwife injects four small quantities of sterile water into the lower back of the labouring...
A doula reflects on the primal experience of birth
Farts were always funny in my household. Much to my mother’s irritation, my dad, my brother and I took great delight in all toilet-based humour. This dubious tradition has carried on into my own home, with my husband and our two sons under five all enjoying anything rude. Fortunately this has stood me in good stead in my role as a birth doula! Birth is not glamorous. Birth is messy, primal, animalistic and very ‘real’. For me, this is part of the reason why I love being a doula. I am not involved in crunching numbers or marketing strategies. I do not spend days in a tidy office worrying about ‘blue sky thinking’ and sales figures. I am instead frequently vomited on, have my shoes covered in a sudden gush of amniotic fluid, am blood spattered, or am covered in tar-like baby poo. I am clung to by sweaty, heavily...
A doula reflects on the primal experience of birth
Farts were always funny in my household. Much to my mother’s irritation, my dad, my brother and I took great delight in all toilet-based humour. This dubious tradition has carried...
Empowered Birth: reflections on the history of ...
I have recently read the book Midwifery from Tudors to the 21st Century: History, Politics and Safe Practice in England. The author is a retired midwife teacher, Dr Julia Allison, whose research influenced government policy through the publication the Changing Childbirth report in 1993.1 Its goal then was to review policy of NHS maternity care and childbirth, and to make recommendations. In previous decades, midwives had all but lost their roles and had become obstetric nurses. Parts of the report are as relevant today as they were then: Care is provided “with the pregnant woman at its centre.” She can make choices “after hearing all of the available options and having procedures and interventions carefully discussed and explained… Gone, or going, are the days of doctors’ paternalism (or maternalism, for that matter). As professionals we owe it to our patients to develop our skills in providing them with information clearly...
Empowered Birth: reflections on the history of midwifery
I have recently read the book Midwifery from Tudors to the 21st Century: History, Politics and Safe Practice in England. The author is a retired midwife teacher, Dr Julia Allison,...
Empowered Birth: water birth
Last month, my colleague Sarah and I delivered a presentation on water birth as part of the mandatory update training that all midwives undertake annually. We felt unhappy that in previous years training around water births had focused on risks and potential problems. We observed a bias being taught that created anxiety, raised doubts and diminished our colleagues’ confidence. There was no balance, and certainly no attention given to physiology or what a smooth birth might look like where mum and baby are healthy and well. We proposed a session on updating water birth skills as we had witnessed some apprehension and lack of intention in facilitating births in water. In the birth centre, we find them magical, and we learn so much about the physiology of both mum and baby when they are immersed in warm water. Through the training, we wanted to reduce overcaution in promoting the use...
Empowered Birth: water birth
Last month, my colleague Sarah and I delivered a presentation on water birth as part of the mandatory update training that all midwives undertake annually. We felt unhappy that in...