Issue 66

A Doula’s Perspective

Women who choose to include a doula in their birth plans are generally planning a hospital birth. In my doula practice, I frequently hear clients say that they want their birth “to feel like a homebirth” as much as possible in a hospital setting. As I work with these women prenatally I try to learn more specifically what this means to them.

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Some Thoughts On Unassisted Childbirth

When I was a beginning midwife thirty-some years ago, U. S. women were just beginning to recognize that they could make choices in how they gave birth. Their mothers had mostly assumed that they had to do whatever their doctors said with no loved ones nearby, even when that meant submitting to mandatory forceps deliveries, routine pubic shaves, enemas and large episiotomies. Midwives were not available to more than 99 percent of women then, and few women knew that midwives could be a possible option.

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An Ethnographic Account Of Lotus Birth

When I see one of my Lotus birth babies gingerly holding her cord, I feel the goodness of leaving them intact. Her cord, his placenta, the baby’s companion in the womb, who has sustained mother and child through pregnancy, has shared the baby’s magical prenatal world.

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What The Unassisted Birth Movement Teaches Midwives

This whole movement toward unassisted birth should shake us midwives up! I hate to say this because I am a midwife, but we have done as much as docs and hospitals to scare women about birth and to frighten them out of trusting their bodies.

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Promoting A Positive Hospital Experience

Kathleen Johnson is a registered nurse, childbirth, lactation and infant massage educator. She has attended home, birth center and hospital births and currently works part-time in a hospital birth center and part-time in her private holistic nursing/healing touch practice. Kathleen is completing her master’s thesis on “The Experience of Spirituality in Pregnancy” and welcomes stories from mothers and their attendants about their own spiritual experiences during pregnancy and birth. Visit her Web site at www.spiritbirth.org.

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Shoulder Dystocia: The Basics

The head had come out, mostly. The chin pressed deep into the mother; it didn’t emerge in the way expected. The baby grimaced but stayed tight. His chin didn’t arch and swing to the side so that he could face his mother’s thigh. My mentor said softly but firmly, “check for the cord.” Slipping my finger out of sight, I felt an odd crease around the baby’s neck but couldn’t get under it; so, no cord, I thought. I placed the same finger on his shoulder and pressed gently to corkscrew the baby. I worried that pressure could cause him discomfort. My finger pressed tentatively. No movement resulted at all.

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Balancing Chi And Integrating Feng Shui

In the past 27 years of practice, I have evolved from the new-nurse-technowizard in the birth environment to a well-seasoned holistic practitioner.    During the past decade as the creator and coordinator of a hospital-based doula program and a perinatal education specialist, I have become aware of the impact that the birthing environment has on the laboring mother, her social support and the birth experience itself.

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Creating A Sound Environment: Drumming For The Childbearing Year

Drumming has a rich and long history rooted in ancient cultures. Drums were used for communication and primeval expression in virtually every area of the globe. Drummers were healers. Drummers were women. Women and their clans drummed for many occasions including both spiritual and physical rites of passage. The drum was an empty shell to be filled with expression, the birthplace of healing sounds, a womb.

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Marion’s Message: Making the Best of the Birth Environment

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Midwifery Today, Issue 66, Summer 2003.Join Midwifery Today Online MembershipSelena and Mac are country people.* I attended their births early in my career and learned a lot from them, especially when they had Sophia, their third baby and first daughter.Mac didn’t believe in hospitals or doctors. He and I had lengthy debates and I had pointed out to him that he went right to the emergency room when his leg was broken. However, he saw that as somehow different from childbirth. I made sure he knew what my protocols were and what kinds of situations I believed were safer in the hospital.Sophia turned to a breech position when she was 32 weeks along and Selena started doing the tilt board and some acupressure points to encourage her to return to head first.My phone rang a little after six one morning. It was Selena and her voice was a tearful wail. “I’m in labor!” she said. “I’ve been having cramps all night and I’ve been telling myself I ate something bad, ’cause I’ve had a little diarrhea too. But it’s not that! I can feel the pressure! Can you come and see if I’m in labor?”“I’ll be right there!” I replied. I pulled her chart from my files. Just as I thought, she was not yet quite 36 weeks. And possibly still breech! Hurriedly, I dressed and drove to their home.Selena was lying on the thick rug in their living room, her legs propped up on a big pillow. A quick exam revealed the irregular presenting part of a complete breech, covered by the taut, smooth surface of the waterbag. No cervix could be felt.“You’re complete,” I said. “And the baby’s still breech. And premature, Selena.”“What do you advise?” She looked at me in… Read more…. Marion’s Message: Making the Best of the Birth Environment

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Mother-Friendly Nurse Intervention

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.

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The Sacred Place Of Birth

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.

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The Atmosphere Of Homebirth

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.

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