Pregnancy and Birth
Empowered Birth: energy medicine
Energy medicine is based upon the belief that changes in the life force of the body affect health and can promote healing. The idea of life force in traditional cultures – the belief that a special energy vitalises all life – has been shared by people around the world since ancient times. Since the 17th century, western medicine has focused on physical aspects of disease. A new paradigm emerged in the 1990s, one which celebrates the creative, subtle, empowering and wise aspects of ourselves. Energy medicine is a broad term that encompasses many therapies – hands-on and hands-off, in close proximity and remote – and what they all have in common is a focus on a person’s internal energy and ability to be well. Having undertaken much training over the years, I believe in the power of energetic medicine. When I am with women in pregnancy or in labour, I...
Empowered Birth: energy medicine
Energy medicine is based upon the belief that changes in the life force of the body affect health and can promote healing. The idea of life force in traditional cultures...
Empowered Birth: online birth support
I have recently joined a physiological birth group on the social media app Clubhouse. (Clubhouse allows you to listen to interesting discussions on various topics and join in with the conversations.) It has been great fun, and I have already met many people through listening and sharing my viewpoint. I recommend anyone with an interest in birth to join, listen and, if they want to, engage with the conversation. All are welcome. There is no hierarchy, no hidden agenda, no fee and no critique. The group organiser, Kemi Johnson, is passionate about spreading the conversation around physiology and how to protect it in birth. Johnson has now started a WhatsApp group too, bringing together like-minded people for support and resources. I have been introduced to birth workers from across the country who describe the status of birth in their region, with updates on the challenges they have in their local...
Empowered Birth: online birth support
I have recently joined a physiological birth group on the social media app Clubhouse. (Clubhouse allows you to listen to interesting discussions on various topics and join in with the...
Empowered Birth: adaptive changes our body make...
“The baby will work out the best way to move through her mother – even if we don’t understand it.” Rachel Reed The uterus is phenomenal, and yet completely undermined. I think it needs to be the centre of our consideration in pregnancy, checked in on and looked after. Sophie Messager (author of Why Postnatal Recover Matters) shares this knowledge through her rebozo work (you can read her feature ‘Closing the Bones’ in Issue 70). Mothers are always full of appreciation when I use the rebozo, and I would love to do some Closing the Bones massage; it sounds so comforting and completing after any birth. In the last issue, I described the several functions of the uterus, which culminate in expelling the baby into the world. Within days after this, the uterus begins to revert to its pre-pregnancy state. By the time it is ready to undertake this job, though,...
Empowered Birth: adaptive changes our body makes in pregnancy
“The baby will work out the best way to move through her mother – even if we don’t understand it.” Rachel Reed The uterus is phenomenal, and yet completely undermined....
Losing it: birth on the big screen
Nedua Hussain examines the disempowering and unrealistic depictions of birth in movies and TV, and shares why it matters more than we think I love films, I love going to the cinema or watch films online. I love to watch people’s lives played out on the screen. Childhood, adolescence, finding a partner, having children, death…but hang on, when have I last seen a birth scene? When I looked closer, I realised that in general, childbirth scenes are largely absent in films or omitted completely (we see a pregnant woman and then we see her with the baby as though birth hasn’t happened). Why is something so central to human existence not portrayed? We see pictures of naked women regularly in the public domain, on and off screen, women being beautiful, sexual beings in all kinds of situations – but not while birthing their babies. But let’s look at those films...
Losing it: birth on the big screen
Nedua Hussain examines the disempowering and unrealistic depictions of birth in movies and TV, and shares why it matters more than we think I love films, I love going to...