Learn what a Midwifery Today Online Membership can do for you. = Membership Article.
Photo by Cornelia Enning
A number of authors have called attention to the language we commonly use in discussing birth and how particular words shape our understanding of birth.
Photo by Michal B.
Classical homeopathy embraces the whole person. We look beyond the individual symptoms a client presents to see the constitution as a whole in order to find the appropriate remedy. The characteristics of a substance help us to understand some of the healing properties of the homeopathic remedy.
The National Library of Medicine
Working in hospitals that serve as the place of birth for thousands of women a year provides many nurses with opportunities for mother-friendly nurse intervention. Mother-friendly nurses all over the world provide supportive measures that normalize birth.
Photo by Martha Dominguez de Gouveia
Since the 1960s, there has been a lot written about the place to have a baby. The “safety” lobby has pushed more and more for all hospital births, while, with a strength of its own, the “normality” lobby has pulled birth back into the home. The debate about whether home is best has continued in and out of the newspapers and professional journals, with women supporting the desire for choice to birth in either area.
Michel Odent sits at a table with our country contaact from the Netherlands, midwife Mary Zwart, at the Midwifery Today conference in the Netherlands in 2002. Photo by Jan Tritten
I began interviewing Dutch midwives and obstetricians in an effort to understand how they successfully negotiate working together, especially in the hospital setting. I wanted to know what the Dutch do differently when, in other countries, the differing philosophies of birth that typically characterize these two professions have often made for tense and even hostile working relations.
Read more…. Working Relations: Midwives And Obstetricians In The Netherlands
Photo by Rebekah Vos
The prenatal care and education has been given. The relaxation exercises have been repeated over and over again. Instructions for the timing of a contraction are neatly typed on a paper taped to the refrigerator. A list of “who to call” is taped beside it. All the preparations are in place and labor begins.
Photo by Brooke Lark
I have a passion for birth. I also have a passion for cooking. To inform myself about birth I digest what I can from professional journals and soak up midwifery wisdom from those who are really in the bedroom “with birth.” But mostly I listen to and spend time with women. When I want to try something new in the kitchen, however, I experiment. Occasionally, I have the desire to visit with the great chefs of our time. Julia Child is, of course, a favorite. To my surprise, her words struck me as a midwife one evening.
Photo by Eric Payne
The environment is the surroundings in which we live and act. We also use this term to refer to the natural world that is affected by human activity. We can think about how the environment affects birth. For example, how does bright light or a crowded or empty room affect the birth process? But, we can also think about how birth affects the environment. What does a birth do to the space and the people that take part in this activity? Whose space is it? Is it sacred?
Photos by Caroline Brown
There are many ways to help protect the birth environment. One is by educating women about what to expect and what to try to avoid. It is all about informed choice. I am a nurse, homebirth midwife and the childbirth coordinator at a small, rural health center in Maine.
Photo by M.T ElGassier
Whatever the mother tongue, the reference to death is typical of a certain stage of labour. My own observation of births on both sides of the Channel, both in a home-like hospital (Pithiviers, France) and at home, are confirmed by detailed reports of births throughout the world, in the past and at present. However, the expression of a fear of death has rarely been studied, even by such acute observers as Grantly Dick-Read, the author of Childbirth Without Fear (1955).
Photo by Caroline Brown
A few weeks before I gave birth to my first child, I woke up in the night sweating and frightened. I had dreamed that I was lying in a pool of blood and had just given birth to a little lamb. A friend told me of a dream that she had before giving birth; someone was chasing her, she lay on her back and was pricked by a thin stick and a stiletto heel.
Photo by Joel Muniz
I listen carefully as women speak about their fear of giving birth and the courage it will require. At times, it seems women think that fear and courage are mutually exclusive; that if they feel afraid they will not be able to act courageously to give birth in the way they might hope. Recently I was at a baby shower for a doula client. Each woman was asked to tell her last birth story in three minutes.
