Sarah J. Buckley is a trained general practitioner, mother of four homeborn children and writer on pregnancy, birth and parenting. She lives with her family in Brisbane, Australia.
Photo by Joanna Kosinska
Poetry – Issue 144
Third stage represents a time of amazing physical and emotional changes for mothers and their newborns, and this transitional period is best managed by Mother Nature while attendants patiently wait in the background.
Photo by Shawna Wentz alunadayae@gmail.com
A discussion of primal health would be incomplete without the inclusion of epidurals in labor, since they are used in approximately two-thirds of US births and are common in most developed countries. Frequent contributor Sarah J. Buckley, MD, explains the effects of this intervention, providing a good argument against using it for uncomplicated births.
Read more…. Epidurals: Risks and Concerns for Mother and Baby
Photo by Etienne Delorieux
The newborn baby’s placenta is the focus of a variety of rituals throughout the world, which Sarah shares with us.
Read more…. Placenta Rituals and Folklore from around the World
Photo by Edward Cisneros
This article was adapted from a chapter in Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering, by Sarah Buckley, MD. It tells the whole story of prenatal testing and questions its routine use.
Read more…. Prenatal Diagnosis—Technological Triumph or Pandora’s Box?
Photo by Diana Polekhina
Protecting mothers and babies involves prioritising models of care that value drug-free labour and birth and that support laboring women in achieving this. The drugs discussed in this paper include opiates, inhaled analgesics, epidurals, sedatives and oxytocin.
Ilissa Kolly—www.beanfamilywellness.com
A vision of Birth came to me in the months after I gave birth to Zoe, my second baby. As I meditated on the challenges that I had encountered during my labor, I began to see my experience—and Birth herself—as a huge multi-faceted crystal. I saw that the different aspects of Zoe’s birth, like facets of a crystal, would not add up to one clear picture but would reflect at many different angles.
Photo by cheng feng
Lotus birth is the practice of leaving the umbilical cord uncut, so that the baby remains attached to his or her placenta until the cord naturally separates at the umbilicus—exactly as a cut cord does—at 3 to 10 days after birth. This prolonged contact can be seen as a time of transition, allowing the baby to slowly and gently let go of his or her attachment to the mother’s body.
