The past 3 weeks have been busy-between piece mealing day care while our day care provider was on vacation, to teaching my birthing class, to being a support person for 2 friends in labor, to coordinating a midwife talk from Anchorage & seeing clients at the clinic...never a dull moment. But it will slow back down significantly this week.
As many people close to me know, I have recently taken significant interest in birthing and womens health issues with my new clinic. One goal of opening up my clinic was to have a chance to teach birthing classes, post partum classes AND be able to do doula/labor support work. A doula is someone who is with a mom (and her husband or others) during labor to provide support, ideas, comfort, massage, etc... research shows that having a doula at labor decreases the need for interventions, decreases c-section rates AND improves the mothers feeling of confidence and sense of well being after delivery. There is currently 1 other practicing doula on the island and a need for many more so we can help many more women in labor!
I love being in labor with women-I get to utilize my massage skills, my knowledge of anatomy and physiology in helping explain what is going on, and I LOVE coaching moms through contractions. And of course-the best part where they meet their baby for the first time. What an honor to be part of that experience.
Last night was the midwifery talk and around 40 people came-about twice as many people as I expected. People kept coming in the door and we kept pulling out more chairs. Barbara Norton spoke-she is a certified nurse midwife from Anchorage who owns and directs the Geneva Woods Birthing Center. She spoke about the rising c-section rate in correlation to rising use of electronic fetal monitoring, how to encourage moms to do healthy laboring and how the US is #26 in the world for infant/mother mortality and we spend twice as much on maternal health care as the countries towards the top of the list (like France for instance).
Some people may think, "well, whats the big deal? About having a healthy, good delivery?" The big deal is that physically for the mom it is a MUCH EASIER recovery for the mom to avoid a c-section. AND to mention how empowering it is to have a regular childbirth with your family/friends/support around--to know you did it. And as Barb mentioned, how empowering it is for the husbands involved to know that they were part of the experience. And to see their wife in labor and to be proud of their wife for doing such an amazing job. It sets the stage for feeling confident as a parent.
As Patrick says with regards to me and womens health/birthing---I need passion management therapy. I'm way to excited about this topic!
This afternoon is my 5th prepared childbirth class, which I'm excited about. I'll be doing another session in April.
Tomorrow Stuey turns 2!!! How fun!!!
Zoya
The top photo is Stuey asleep in my arms two days ago-he wasn't feeling great with a bit of a cough. Its still lingering, but the kids cough syrup from Cactus Flats really seems to be helping keep him clear!!
1 comment:
I'm so glad there are people like you out there. Sometimes I think that hospitals tend to rush deliveries. I think that without the Pitocin I would have gone into labor eventually and could have avoided those nightmarish contractions and the C-section......
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