8 Do's and Don't's for a Safe and Healthy Birth

Janel Martin-Miranda, MA, LPC, copyright, 2006
http://birthkeeper/blogspot.com

Your obstetrician and your grandma both agree on what to do to prenatally to guarantee a healthy baby and a healthy delivery. Grandmas have known this wisdom for eons, and now logic, scientific research, and experience shows us it is true.

You need to:

1 - Eat a nutritious diet
2 - Drink lots of water
3 - Exercise regularly
4 - Get plenty of rest
5 - Avoid sick people
6 - Minimize stress
7 - Don’t use drugs
8 - Don’t lie on your back

Most women adhere to these like their baby’s health and life depended upon it. And, it does. BUT, have you thought about how these science-based admonishments for pregnant and breastfeeding women are NOT practiced during labor and birth in the hospital?

Let’s take a look at the list again and see if the very same do’s and don’t's that are medically and scientifically critical for healthy prenatal (brain) development ALSO apply to the brain of the laboring and birthing baby. Perhaps, when you compare prenatal and labor and birth together, we’ll all form a collective, chin-rubbin’, “Hmmm, something’s not right here.”

1 - Eat a nutritious diet
Labor and Birth:
Generally, most hospitals "restrict food" or do not "allow" laboring women to eat. Maybe some jello or juice, but not a meal. So, no protein and carbohydrates during the birthing mother and baby’s long marathon ahead of them – and, no water either.

Of course, a woman doesn’t always feel like eating during labor, even as she complains of hunger. And, really who wants to eat the notoriously nasty hospital food? A loved one who knows her, and her favorite or comfort foods, knows what to do – how to respond to her and nurture her.

The hospital ritual of depriving a mother of food just might have more to do with the days when woman tended to vomit because of the drugs used, and because of the potential for surgical birth today. (More likely when she's not nourished). For nine months an adult woman knows what her body can tolerate -- she's become a master at it. Women know how to trust their bodies and to know what they need, wherever and when they give birth.

2 - Drink Lots of water
Labor and birth:
During labor and birth, generally water for the laboring woman is minimized, but she is offfered all the ice chips she wants, whether or not she prefers it. "It’s the hospital policy."

Our bodies are 70% water. On an easy day in life we are told to drink eight glasses a day for health. But during labor and birth that be might hours to days in length, a woman is not allowed to judge how much water her body needs. This is dangerous – she needs to be fully hydrated for many aspects of health, including maintenance of healthy blood pressure and elimation of toxins.
When woman’s uterus dilates to 7-9 cm her body will naturally stop to take a break and to gather energy for the big burst of effort she will need to birth her baby. At this time she needs water to hydrate her uterus so it can work optimally. She also needs to be left alone and for the room to be dark and quiet – this is when a woman goes deep within to the ancient part of the brain that knows how to give birth.

In the hospital this lull is seen as “failure to progress” and because it is so close to being fully dilated, hospital staff panic. Something has gone wrong! She is bombarded with questions and medical caregivers tend to want to augment labor with artificial hormones, all of which interferes with the woman’s physiological process. Her ancient brain and her body never make the connection. This results in a longer labor and pushing and interventions when rest, fluids, and quiet is all she needs.

3 - Exercise regularly
Labor and birth:
Women are advised to continue their exercise regimes to maintain good overall health and muscle tone. Obviously, strength and flexibility are benefits of being fit througout pregnancy.
Movement (and sound) is a key to birthing the least painful and stressful way.

Most women prefer to be moving and adjusting throughout labor and quite often, a woman likes to have one leg up and to twist her hips, working with her baby to move through her pelvis.In a birth center or at home, women will move from room to room, in and out of the shower or tub, be intimate with partner, take walks, bounce on a ball, play with her older children, cook meals, and dance during early labor.

Wherever she births when she is left alone she will most often be on all fours during labor and birth which opens the pelvis centimeters more – enough to birth with less pain and without cutting her perineum. When left to allow their bodies to guide them women rarely, if ever, choose to lie in bed to labor or birth. It's too painful and decreases the pelvic outlet -- making labor too painful and making her feel out of control. She is not able to go into the pain when lying on her sacrum.

4 - Get plenty of rest
Labor and birth:
Rest IN a HOSPITAL!?!? Yeah, right! We all know the stories and jokes about adult patients wanting to go home in order to get some rest. Loud voices of strangers, phones ringing, machines beeping, nurses doing frequent checks; and don’t forget the shift change chaos and the residents, blood drawers and janitorial staff who must do their work right when you get to the toilet or settled in a cozy rest.Nowhere is the constant disruption by nursing staff more damaging than to the laboring baby and mother who need to stay in connection with one another. In between her contractions she must go within to rest. Those two to eight minutes of quiet and rest are profoundly important to mother and baby.

5 - Avoid sick people
Labor and birth:
Ah, the hospital IS where SICK people go!! Hospitals are the germiest places on the planet. THAT alone is reason enough to not give birth in a hospital. It is estimated that nearly 100,000 patients per year die per year from hospital acquired illness. Later, your infant is more likely to become sick shortly after going to the pediatrician for his or her “wellness check.”

Every woman is prepped for an IV in the event of a fever or an emergency cesarean. If a woman uses epidural anesthesia for pain she has a second puncture wound in her spine accessing her cerebral spinal fluid, a direct route to her brain. Every puncture makes her highly susceptible to an invasion of new germs for which she has no immunity. Birthing babies do not have immunity to the germs at the hospital. Both have immunities for being in their own home.

Birthing women and babies often are on antibiotics which is now known to contribute to other health issues – because the normal flora the mother and baby need is killed and they are susceptible to germs in the hospital. Patients in the general population do not have immunity to germs like staph, pneumonia, or influenza. How safe can it be for a newborn, with no immunity to be exposed to all of it at once?

6) Minimize stress
Labor and birth:
The hospital environment is one of the most stressful for staff and for patients. (I hear there is not really a shortage of nurses, just a shortage of nurses who are willing to work in that environment). Patients experience noise, constant disruptions, waiting for attention and information, increased blood pressure just walking in the door, and physical violations (even when helpful) by strangers. Everyone complains about the gowns and their inability to maintain dignity.Having a baby is high on the index of stressful events. Could the stress be minimized?

Imagine how a woman manages to give birth so exposed to strangers, with so many disruptions, hungry, fearful, and numb from the waist down. Imagine a woman and man at home in their own home and environment surrounded by people (trained) they know and trust who will respect their wishes. A baby will live the life he or she is born into – stressful or peaceful.

7) Don't lie on your back (The baby’s oxygen supply is compromised.)
Labor and birth:
Even though she told not to lie on her back during pregnancy, especially the last trimester. She is on her back for most of the labor and birth, especially if she uses epidural anesthesia for pain.

In the hospital women are routinely confined to bed, especially since 85% of them use epidural anesthesia for pain relief. Numb from the waist down she is unable to even roll over. As she lies on her back she is, as the physicians warn her during prenatal period, impairing the blood supply to her baby. As she sits on her sacrum she restricts the pelvis from opening. She is also sitting on a huge bundle of nerves and this severely increases her pain.

New walking epidurals are meant to give women more mobility, but she is still "BWUID" (Birthing While Under the Influence of Drugs" and with minimized oxygen), and she is unable to move in the way needed for birthing her baby through her pelvis. Why is it ok to birth under the influence but driving under the influence is major social and legal problem?

8) Don't use drugs
Labor and birth:
Don't use drugs especially illicit, alcohol, and smoking because they pass through the placenta to the baby. Drugs prescribed by your physician are ok.

Apparently, there are only two things that are consistent “No-no’s” for both a pregnant woman and a laboring and birthing woman in the hospital – don’t smoke or drink alcohol. Are we really to believe that drugs affect the human baby during pregnancy and breastfeeding, but NOT during labor and birth?

Where is the scientific evidence that the baby’s brain and body “turn off” during labor and birth, or can differentiate between illicit use and prescription use? None of the drugs women are told are safe during pregnancy have had trials to show this, and none of the drugs EVER used in obstetrics have been shown safe for the laboring and birthing brain – which has a billion neurons at birth.

What is the reason for these glaring discrepancies in logic, science, and practice -- other than the belief that the relative short period of labor and birth, and the experience of it, is not critical to the baby’s brain development? Could it be that medical science is distorted to support certain practices - that better serve the system and time needs of medical staff? To maintain the status quo of hospitals as the “safe” place to birth?

Did you believe the medical wisdom for prenatal development and care doesn’t apply to the laboring and birthing baby, but now you wonder about that?? Do you have a child who was born “under the influence” of epidural anesthesia or are you an obstetric physician and just now feel a combination of anger, fear, and denial? That’s your inner wisdom, feelings, your body speaking to you. Feelings are stored in the body and processed through the brain. What one can’t process through the brain comes out as denial and anger. Stay tuned for more information on how to deal with the guilt and anger, and how to help your child.

Inducing Baby's Labor and Birth

Labor is not something outside of and separate from mother and baby. It is not just the mother's experience. Labor and Birth are also THE BABY'S BIRTH, in relationship with his or her mother. Birth is not just about the mother -- her pain nor is it about hers or the doctor's convenience. Nor is it about his or her malpractice woes.

Birth is the baby's birth -- Babies have their own biologically programmed impulse for beginning labor and this is crucial for their lifetime. Babies whose labors are induced have their biological impulse to start birth disrupted. This disrupts -- and imprints in the brain -- their ability to plan, begin, take action, follow-through, and integrate. They experience a grievous loss of connection with the mother, because of the inducing and as a result of the drugs used for painful induced labor. This creates patterns that persist for a lifetime if not healed.

We must change our language — inducing labor is about inducing babies. Even when a mother uses herbs, castor oil, and/or acupuncture to induce her BABY'S labor, her action is inducing and this is experienced by the baby. Prenatal and birth psychology and healing tell how we can do so when medically necessary in a way that supports the baby's process.

The Womb to the World -- A Template for Living

We now know that the prenatal period is the foundation for health and wellness -- or pathology and pain. Personality, behavior, and health (i.e., blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, etc.) are all expressions of early uterine life. Evidence-based, peer-reviewed research in the last decade confirms this -- what we have intuitively known (and yet denied.) Conception and prenatal experiences determine the architecture of the brain and all body systems for the lifetime. We are concieved, gestated, and birthed in the biology of our mother's hormones, based on her experience and environment. Simple logical - if one allows himself to consider the magnitude of this - tells us that the human being is built during the prenatal period and that this time must be pretty important, if not downright defining. The prenatal and birth experiences as DEFINING is what investigators and theorists in all aspects of science -- medicine and psychology -- are exploring and finding true. Scientists in physics, cellular biology,physiology, epidemology, ethology, medicine, psychology, and brain studies are all coming together to form the picture of the importance of the experience of the human being from conception, and earlier. (The mother's egg and father's sperm are each a living cell).

Everything the mother experiences is experienced by the conceiving, gestating, laboring, and birthing baby and is imprinted in the on the newborn baby's brain.

Labor and birth is the first physical, independent experience of the human being. As one transitions from the womb to the world this just might be the single, most significant and defining experience in the human's life. It is established a set of survival skills in the brain and body of the laboring and birthing baby. What happens here is critical for the human being for the lifetime -- are the mother and baby drugged, is it bright and noisy, with strangers and their time frames, rough treatment or is the woman in power of her own body, following and allowing hers and her baby's physiology to happen, quiet, dark, surrounded only by people who love her?
This all matters in the experience of transitioning from uterine life in symbiotic connection with the mother to being an independently functioning being -- it is critical for the human brain. Within seconds every system must work efficiently at birth. At the moment of birth, we visually see and physically hold a completely separate, functioning human being -- one whose body AND brain has just completed a critical, monumental, development task. This human was a totally functional human being in the womb for months. His or his body was and will continue to be regulated by the mother -- her heart, her nervous system, and her voice and touch will continue to support the survival of this new being.

During birth how the mother and baby are cared for will be expressed in their lifelong relationship. Trauma to the head, neck, shoulders, and hips during the birth experience is the first physical experience, but especially to those born in the hospital. Unresolved and unacknowledged, the first traumas during birth is the cause of infant, child, and adult issues, including chronic pain and physical and emotional dysfunctions.

What keeps society from embracing and applying basic biology and physiology to birth -- so that we must reform how babies are born in hospitals? What keeps one from observing simple physiological fact that babies remember birth? Most of us have been birthed "under the influence" of drugs and experienced a very violating transition from the womb to the world. Our own births create the template for both needing and fearing medical interventions. The denial of our own birth by previous generations who didn't know the impact of their actions feeds the politics (of medicine, the drug companies' influence, and insurance companies), denial (of a society who does not know how to forgive and change directions), and fear (of malpractice for doctors and guilt and shame for mothers and fathers).

Recognizing that prenatal development and labor and birth are keys to physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual well being creates a monumental need for society to change how we treat women and babies in birth. It calls for an overhaul of every service we fund and provide for in our society. The effects of the prenatal and birth periods is totally unrecognized in medicine and psychology, and so solutions to the myriad of social and personal problems is ignored. For example, not even in addiction studies, autism, depression and violence or even basic parenting does our society look at the earliest brain development and birth experience (of baby and mother and father) for answers. The detrimental impact of drugs and interventions at birth is ignored, and the contribution of conscious conception (wanted children are happier), prenatal development (healthy body and brain) and natural, empowered birth (non-violent survival imprints) is overlooked.

Again, our own births and the collective denial supports the denial of the importance of the prenatal and birth experiences as the foundation (cause, if you must) of the multitude of medical, emotional, psychological, educational issues in our society. To acknowledge this is to open a huge Pandora's box that require change -- PERSONAL, individual change as well as political and systemic change. Changing how we conceive our babies, how we treat and support pregnant women, and how we treat women and babies in labor and birth. It would require looking at the science that supports the healing of trauma and the brain. It would require chaning the way we train professionals in medicine, psychology and anyone who works with birthing women, babies, and children.

A Framework for Healthy, Safe Birth

Based on the perspectives of Pre and Perinatal Psychology and the physiological, science-based Midwifery Model of Maternity Care

By Janel Martin-Miranda, MA, LPC Copyright, 2005

A Framework for Healthy, Safe Birth:

• Honors birth as the human's spiritual and biological process in relationship with his or her mother and father from conception throughout life;
• Supports a woman and her partner to be responsible for their baby and birth choices from conception, prenatally during labor and birth, in order to be responsible throughout their child’s life.
• Acknowledges that the majority of healthy women are capable of natural birth without drugs and interventions, just as the majority of women and men were able to conceive and gestate their baby without drugs and mechanical support;
• Acknowledges the growing scientific research showing that medical management disrupts the baby's biological process for birth (an event and expression of the continuum of brain development), and that this trauma is imprinted in the brain (and contributes to life-long physical, emotional, and psychological dysfunctions); and,
• Recognizes that the obstetric malpractice crisis is a symptom of a larger social and political issue of holding physicians responsible for birth which has removed the responsibility for the continuum of development (preconception, conception, gestation, labor, birth, and post-natal) from men and women;
• Recognizes that the obstetric malpractice crisis is an issue of control over maternal choice and that this is, in part, a result of the hundred years of medical intervention and drugs, and now involves insurance, drug company, and litigation attorney influences over true scientific knowledge;
• Recognizes that this is a social and political system problem that equally, but differently affects the ability of obstetricians to provide quality care for women and decreases the ability of a woman and man to take responsibility for their baby's labor and birth; and
• Sees the need to control litigation has lead to the increasing use of the drugs and technology (never shown to be safe but withdrawn only after extended periods of maternal and infant trauma and loss), that harms women and babies, prevents parental responsibility; thus, maintaining the obstetric malpractice crisis; and,
• Calls for a national reform of maternity practices as the evidence-based research and mortality statistics show in the US that a healthy woman and baby are NOT SAFE and best cared for in hospital settings (BECAUSE woman do not have control over choice and doctors are wrongly and disproportionately responsible for birth);
• Demands that hospitals, doctors, lawyers, and politicians engage with midwives, consumers, and concerns citizens to create new laws based on the evidence-based science and that honors woman's body, supports her birthing choices, and allows her to be make decisions and to take responsibility for her choices from pre-conception throughout life; and importantly,
• Acknowledges that birth is not just about the woman's needs and experience, nor is birth about the doctor's schedule and malpractice woes....
• Knows that Birth is the BABY'S birth! And, that baby will be affected for life by his or her birth experience.

Copyright, 2005 Janel Martin-Miranda, MA, LPC

Safety in Birth: Doctors vs Midwives

"Studies show it takes about takes seventeen years for medical research to get fully incorporated into medical practice. This means your doctor isn't always acting on the most recent knowledge." (in Spirit, page 106 in "Does Dr. Know best? Often,but not always. So take responsibility for the quality of your healthcare.")

The article continues, "Plus medicine is full of controversy and conflicting theories."

Nowhere is this so damaging as it is in the birth of a baby. First, the use of drugs in birth is clearly shown by research and logic to be bad maternal care. Second, Doctors and midwives are now battling over who is more scientific and who provides the safest births. Women who chose midwives do so in large part to avoid the pressure to use drugs in birth (and other reasons not discussed here.) Midwives practice the physiological belief that a woman's body is built to give birth, that pain is manageable and even empowering, and that the natural processes are best for mother and baby. The physiological model of childbirth is rooted in biology and physiology, ironically the foundation for medicine. For most pregnant women, the midwifery model of care is safest.

Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, MD, JD, MPH, medical doctor of Homefirst in Chicago, IL, now the largest physician- and midwife-attended homebirth practice in the nation says that, “homebirth is safer than hospital birth for those 90 percent of mothers who are low risk. The problem is that obstetricians treat all women as high risk.”

This tendency to see every pregnancy as a potential high risk is reported to contribute to the c-section rate being close to 30% in the United States, an all time high. The Consortium for the Evidence-based practice of Obstetrics in California, US, states, "The primary purpose of maternity care is to preserve the health of already healthy mothers and babies." (www.sciencebasedbirth.com).

Low to moderate risk women are best cared for by midwives who work in partnership with physicians in the event that something happens during labor and birth. The best care -- a blending of modern technology and ancient wisdom best happens only when physicians and midwives work together as respected partners. The current battle between midwives and doctors leaves midwives practicing alone and sometimes, dangerously, in order to provide the services women want. In the event of the need to go to the hospital, both the birthing woman and her midwife are often treated poorly. It is the baby who is being hurt the most by the social debate that keeps maternal health caregivers at odds.

Ina May Gaskin, credited with bringing midwifery back to the states is the founder of The Farm. She reports less than a 2% cesarean rate and other stellar statistics over 30 years (http://www.inamay.com/statistics.php.) I have met Dr. Eisenstein and I trained with Ina May and her midwives. As a young resident, Dr. Eistenstein trained with a female homebirth physician forty years ago and his children were born at home. His staff of nurses, CNM, and Family Practice physicians have mobile units that attend only homebirth. Ina May was closely associated with a physician who both trained her and backed the Farm midwives for many years. Whole Health Family Practice and Birth Center is the only birth center in Missouri. Family Practice physicians and direct entry midwives both attend either homebirth or birth center births. This model of family physicans and midwives working together seems to work well to practice scientific integrity in birth. They have better maternal and infant outcomes for low and moderate risk woman than do surgically trained obstetricians. They tend to have high cesarean rates. Imagine? Obstetric residents typically never witness what many believe is a "normal birth."

Critical in the Physician-Midwife Team is that the model honors healthy women and the physiological process of birth, they do not use drugs in their practices and they instead support waterbirth, and they create a relationship with the woman so that they know her as a person. Women who choose the non-drug method do so to be in control of her body and responsible for her choices. She knows that drugs harm the birthing brain. Thomas Verney, MD author of "The Secret Life of the Unborn Child" and co-founder of the Association for Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Health suggests a third professional on the team. A trained prenatal and birth counselor (more about that in a future entry.)

This model of physician-midwife team is under high attack from the obstetric community. Currently, the use of drugs in birth is widely accepted by both women and physicians, although the evidence shows it leads to many complications and issues for women and baby (see long list of resources at the end.) A major US television news report recently stated that most drugs used in obstetrics are NOT approved for obstetric use (that would include not approved for the BABY!) The drugs are FDA approved for other uses and a physician can use them for anything. It is called “off-label” use. These drugs are used on pregnant, laboring and birthing women and babies without trials to show they are safe. For example, Cytotec, a drug approved for ulcers, but contraindicated in pregnancy because it causes miscarriage, is used for inducing. It is said to be the cause of uterine rupture in first pregnancy and vaginal birth after cesarean.

Epidural was shown unsafe (in obstetric medical literature) for women and babies by 1992 (see list of research below). Now fifteen years later epidural is seen as "natural" birth by birthing women and their partners, and is promoted as safe by medical caregivers. Recent research compares the different kinds of narcotics and other drugs in the epidural cocktail to determine which is least damaging. How is this good science? Seems like Epidural’s run will be longer than seventeen years.

Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, says that "Obstetrics, which is really a combined philosophy, business, and religion, does not have science as its base," and,

"Obstetricians practice much more philosophy than science. Pregnant women are tested, medicated, and operated on to excess every day by this profession in an unethical and dangerous way. This unscientific medicine is dangerous to us as a nation. Our maternal and infant mortality rate is unacceptable for a society as sophisticated as ours. We produce more premature infants than any other country with our interventionist technology and then praise ourselves for saving some of their lives."

I am an advocate for a system that expects and supports the partnership of midwives and physicans. The most alarming is the widely accepted practice now demanded by both women and doctors is inducing THE BABY’s labor and the use Epidural Anesthesia. It now considered normal and sometimes even called “natural.” It is currently a consumer driven trend that is unsafe and unchecked by medical professionals whose own research journals shows it is unsafe.

Think about what's being done to women and babies in history and right now. Is it evidence-based and safe? Historically, the drugs used on laboring and birthing women and babies have NEVER been shown to be safe. Drugs and interventions are stopped ONLY AFTER years of harm and death to women and babies. Think about that – historically, women and babies have been NON- informed and NON- consenting subjects in one long experiment.
In the fifteen years since it's been known to be dangerous for women and babies, epidural has become so routine that 80% of births involve epidural anesthesia. During the same time frame, there has been an epidemic of new "unexplained" disorders (autism, asthma, colic, ear infections, depression, etc) and other never-before seen rates of childhood disorders. BUT NO ONE in medicine, psychology, or even addiction studies is looking at the effects of NARCOTICS on the birthing brain.

This, even though we know that babies laboring and born with epidural have heart and breathing issues. And, NONE of the NARCOTICS used in epidural have been shown to be SAFE for the birthing brain. NOW, research looks at the different narcotics in order to use the least problematic ones. WOMEN AND BABIES are one long research project and it is wrong!

There is also no acknowledgement, no concern or observation by doctors of the high number of women with back problems, depression, headache, limb weakness, new allergies and illnesses, Women present these symptoms to a doctor but she or he is NOT likely to even consider the epidural as the problem. Doctors know the possible effects of epidural -- they are mandated to disclose it, but when they see the presentation of it repeatedly -- in babies, children, and women -- they don't see it. When presented with the scientific information, doctors and pregnant women will deny it. WHAT is that about???

Source: http://www.fensende.com/Users/swnymph/Epidural.html

Maternal complications of epidurals include:

[Uitvlugt, A. "Managing complications of Epidural Analgesia" International Anesthesia Clin. 1990;28(1):11-16]

· Maternal hypotension(5 studies). This reduces uteroplacental blood supply and can cause fetal distress. (8 studies)
· Convulsions (4 studies)
· Respiratory paralysis (3 studies).
· Cardiac Arrest (6 studies)
· Allergic Shock (2 studies)
· Maternal nerve injury due to needle injury, poor positioning, forceps injury, infection, hematoma, or subarachnoid injection of chloroprocaine. The last three usually cause permanent injury. (9 studies)
· Spinal headache (3 studies)
· Increased maternal core temperature. (2 studies)
· Temporary urinary incontinence. (1 study)
· Long-term backache (weeks to years), headache, migranes, numbness, or tingling. (2 studies)

Serious complications occur despite proper procedure and precautions. The epinephrine test dose can cause complications. (12 studies)

Epidural anesthetics "get" to the baby. (5 studies)

Epidurals do not protect the fetus from distress. In fact, they cause abnormal fetal heart rate, sometimes severe, which may occur with or independant of maternal blood pressure (11% - 43% depending on the study and type of medication used - the 43% was found with Bupivacaine, the most common drug for epidural.) (15 studies)

Stavrou C, et al. "Prolonged fetal bradycardia during epidural analgesia" S Afr Med J 1990;77:66-68

Epidurals may cause neonatal jaundice. (2 studies) [Clark, DA & Landaw, SA. "Bupivacaine alters red blood cell ... jaundice associated with maternal anesthesia" Pediatr. Res. 1985; 19(4):341-343]

Epidurals may cause adverse neonatal behavioral and physical effects. (these are both direct effects and indirect effects from the increased rate of labor complications and interventions.) The importance of this is debated. (4 studies)

Epidural anesthesia may relieve hypertension, but hypertensive women are at particular risk of epidural-induced hypotension, which reduces placental blood supply. (2 studies)

Epidurals substantially increase the incidence of oxytocin augmentation, instrumental delivery, and bladder catheterization. (21 studies cited)

Saunders, NJ, et al. "Oxytocin infusion ... primiparous women using epidural..." BMJ 1989;299:1423-1426

Diro, M. and Beydoun, S. "Segmental epidural analgesia in labor: a matched control study". J Nat Med Assoc 1985;78(1):569-573.

Chestnut, DH, et al. "The influence of continuous epidural bupivacaine analgesia on the second stage of labor and method of delivery in nulliparous women". Anesthesiology 1987;66:774-780.

Kaminski, HM, Stafl, A, and Aiman, J. "The effect of epidural analgesia on the frequency of instrumental obstetric delivery". Obstet Gynecol 1987;69(5):770-773.

Philipsen, T and Jensen, NH. "Epidural block or parenteral pethidine as analgesic in labour; a randomized study concerning progress in labour and instrumental deliveries". Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol 1989;30:27:33.

Gribble, RK and Meier, PR. "Effect of epidural analgesia on the primary cesarean rate". Obstet Gynecol 1991;78(2):231-234.

Thorpe, JA et al. "Epidural analgesia and cesarean section for dystocia: risk factors in nulliparas". Am J Perinatol 1991;8(6):402-410.

Thorpe, JA et al. "The effect of intrapartum epidural analgesia on nulliparous labor: a randomized, controlled, prospective trial".

Am J Obstet Gynecol 1993;169(4):851-858. Nel, JT. "Clinical effects of epidural block during labor. A prospective study". S Afr Med J 1985;68(6):371-374.

Yancy, MK et al. "Maternal and neonatal effects of outlet forceps delivery compared with spontaneous vaginal delivery in term pregnancies". Obstet Gynecol 1991;78(4):646-650.

Stavrou, C, Hofmeyer, GJ, and Boezaart, AP. "Prolonged fetal bradycardia during epidural analgesia". S Afr Med J 1990;77:66-68.

Eddleston, JM, et al. "Comparison of the maternal and fetal effects associated with intermittent or continuous infusion of extradural analgesia". Br J Anaesth 1992;69:154-158.

Bogod, DG, Rosen, M, and Rees, GAD. "Extradural infusion of 0.125% bupivacaine at 10 Ml H-1 to women during labour". Br J Anaesth 1987;59(3):325-330.

Smedstad, KG and Morison, DH. "A comparative study of continuous and intermittent epidural analgesia for labour and delivery".

Can J Anaesth 1988;35(3):234-241. Chestnut, DH et al. "Continuous infusion epidural analgesia during labor: A randomized, double-blind comparison of 0.0625% bupivacaine/0.0002% fentanyl versus 0.125% bupivacaine". Anesthesiol 1988;68:754-759.

In first-time mothers, epidurals substantially increase the cesarean rate for dystocia. This effect may depend on management. (12 studies cited)

Thorpe, JA et al. "The effect of intrapartum epidural analgesia on nulliparous labor: a randomized, controlled, prospective trial".

Am J Obstet Gynecol 1993;169(4):851-858. Diro, M. and Beydoun, S. "Segmental epidural analgesia in labor: a matched control study".

J Nat Med Assoc 1985;78(1):569-573. Chestnut, DH, et al. "The influence of continuous epidural bupivacaine analgesia on the second stage of labor and method of delivery in nulliparous women". Anesthesiology 1987;66:774-780.

Thorpe, JA et al. "The effect of continous epidural analgesia on cesarean section for dystocia in nulliparous women". Am J Obstet Gynecol 1989;161(3):670-675.

Philipsen, T and Jensen, NH. "Epidural block or parenteral pethidine as analgesic in labour; a randomized study concerning progress in labour and instrumental deliveries". Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol 1989;30:27:33.

Gribble, RK and Meier, PR. "Effect of epidural analgesia on the primary cesarean rate". Obstet Gynecol 1991;78(2):231-234.

Thorpe, JA et al. "Epidural analgesia and cesarean section for dystocia: risk factors in nulliparas". Am J Perinatol 1991;8(6):402-410.

Abboud, TK et al. "Continuous infusion epidural analgesia in parturients receiving bupivacaine, chloroprocaine, or lidocaine - maternal, fetal, and neonatal effects". Anesth Analg 1984;63:421-428.

Stavrou C, et al. "Prolonged fetal bradycardia during epidural analgesia". S Afr Med J 1990;77:66-68.

Smedstad, KG and Morison, DH. "A comparative study of continuous and intermittent epidural analgesia for labour and delivery". Can J Anaesth 1988;35(3):234-241.

Epidurals decrease the probability that a posterior or transverse baby will rotate. Oxytocin does not help. (7 studies)

Saunders, NJ, et al. "Oxytocin infusion during second stage of labour in primiparous women using epidural analgesia: a randomised double blind placebo controlled trial". BMJ 1989;299:1423-1426.

Thorpe, JA et al. "Epidural analgesia and cesarean section for dystocia: risk factors in nulliparas". Am J Perinatol 1991;8(6):402-410.

Kaminski, HM, Stafl, A, and Aiman, J. "The effect of epidural analgesia on the frequency of instrumental obstetric delivery". Obstet Gynecol 1987;69(5): 770-773.

Thorpe, JA et al. "The effect of intrapartum epidural analgesia on nulliparous labor: a randomized, controlled, prospective trial". Am J Obstet Gynecol 1993;169(4):851-858.

Having an epidural at 5cm dilation or more eliminates both excess posterior/transverse and excess cesarean for dystocia. (2 studies)

Thorpe, JA et al. "Epidural analgesia and cesarean section for dystocia: risk factors in nulliparas". Am J Perinatol 1991;8(6):402-410. Thorpe, JA et al. "The effect of intrapartum epidural analgesia on nulliparous labor: a randomized, controlled, prospective trial". Am J Obstet Gynecol 1993;169(4):851-858.

Epidurals may not relieve any pain or may not relieve all pain. (3 studies)
Thorpe, JA et al. "The effect of intrapartum epidural analgesia on nulliparous labor: a randomized, controlled, prospective trial". Am J Obstet Gynecol 1993;169(4):851-858.

Eddleston, JM et al. "Comparison of the maternal and fetal effects associated with intermittent or continuous infusion of extradural analgesia". Br J Anaesth 1992;69:154-158.

Crawford, JS. "Some maternal complications of epidural analgesia for labour". Anesthesia 1985;40(12):1219-1225.

Innovations in procedure - lower dosages, continuous infusion, adding a narcotic - have not decreased epidural related problems. (13 studies)

Naulty, JS. "Continuous infusions of local anesthetics and narcotics for epidural analgesia in the management of labor". (this is a literature review) Int. Anes. Clin. 1990;28(1):17-24.

Diro, M. and Beydoun, S. "Segmental epidural analgesia in labor: a matched control study". J Nat Med Assoc 1985;78(1):569-573.

Chestnut, DH, et al. "The influence of continuous epidural bupivacaine analgesia on the second stage of labor and method of delivery in nulliparous women". Anesthesiology 1987;66:774-780.

Thorpe, JA et al. "The effect of continous epidural analgesia on cesarean section for dystocia in nulliparous women". Am J Obstet Gynecol 1989;161(3):670-675.

Thorpe, JA et al. "Epidural analgesia and cesarean section for dystocia: risk factors in nulliparas". Am J Perinatol 1991;8(6):402-410.

Thorpe, JA et al. "The effect of intrapartum epidural analgesia on nulliparous labor: a randomized, controlled, prospective trial". Am J Obstet Gynecol 1993;169(4):851-858.

Abboud, TK et al. "Continuous infusion epidural analgesia in parturients receiving bupivacaine, chloroprocaine, or lidocaine - maternal, fetal, and neonatal effects". Anesth Analg 1984;63:421-428.

Eddleston, JM, et al. "Comparison of the maternal and fetal effects associated with intermittent or continuous infusion of extradural analgesia". Br J Anaesth 1992;69:154-158.

Bogod, DG, Rosen, M, and Rees, GAD. "Extradural infusion of 0.125% bupivacaine at 10 Ml H-1 to women during labour". Br J Anaesth 1987;59(3):325-330.

Smedstad, KG and Morison, DH. "A comparative study of continuous and intermittent epidural analgesia for labour and delivery". Can J Anaesth 1988;35(3):234-241.

Chestnut, DH et al. "Continuous infusion epidural analgesia during labor: A randomized, double-blind comparison of 0.0625% bupivacaine/0.0002% fentanyl versus 0.125% bupivacaine". Anesthesiol 1988;68:754-759.

McLean, BY, Rottman, RL, and Kotelko, DM. "Failure of multiple test doses and techniques to detect intravascular migration of an epidural catheter". Anesth Analg 1992;74(3):454-456.

Delaying pushing until the head has descended to the perineum increases the chances of spontaneous birth. (a time delay of 1 hour is not really delaying - it needs to be a positional not timed thing...)

Evidence is divided as to whether letting the epidural wear off before pushing increases spontaneous delivery. (4 studies)

Happy Mother's Day

A week late, and on my dad's birthday, I want to share a sweet mother's day wish from a dear mom I know. To all moms ...


I wanted to send a letter to you that would let you know I care. You are beautiful on the inside as well as the out.

Since birth you have sown in your children, patience, love, caring, understanding, and discipline. All for the hope that one day those seeds would germinate, grow, and fruit into a fine adult. I know your tending will bear good rewards.

Today I hope for you, all the labor of love you have invested is reflected back through your children. As a mother you know every day is Mother's day. I am just glad we are recognized.

With all our love,
Tim, Carrie, Brianna, & Jasmyn
The Hutchison's

You Are Your Prenatal Brain

“You are your brain.”
--Dick Swaab, Dir. of the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research

I like to say, "You are your PRENATAL brain."

...brain function and behavior are critically influenced, even permanently modified in major ways, by the environmental condition that exist during development. How we think, reason and see are not just inherited characteristics. Brain function, behavior, mood, IQ, and emotional stability are not solely a product of our genes.”
—Peter Nathanielsz, MD (OB), PhD (Vet) in “Life in the Womb:

It is scientific and logical that physiologically the structures begun at conception and completed by the end of the second month of gestation DO establish the biological, hormonal, emotional, and mental foundation for who we are to be our entire life. Every experience thereafter, whether in the womb, laboring and birthing, or life long is part of one long continuum of brain development.

From conception forward, the baby (brain and body) has developed in the maternal relationship and response to the environment. You are your prenatal brain. The human baby's experience and feelings of safety, love, support, worth, being wanted, etc are established prenatally through infancy. From before conception, in the sperm and the egg, we are fully living tissues of our parents and influenced on a cellular level by their lives.

Presumably our soul exists before conception and coming from God, the Creator, the Source, has a consciousness as it prepares to come into this live union. From conception and during gestation, and in labor and birth there is not one second of time that is not critical in building the baby's brain and body. Every system and brain is literally built according to mother's physiology and hormones, her nutrition, her toxins, her life experiences, and her perceptions of herself, the baby's father, and the world.

Birth is the human's first physical experience as the baby leaves the warm, safe womb to become a physiologically independent being. Continuing from and building upon the prenatal experiences and brain development, the labor and birth experience creates the emotional, physical, and psychological foundation for being in the world. It is a lens through which our brain experiences the world and will wire up our neocortex during childhood. From the last trimester through the first year of life, the Limbic system of the brain is "online" and developing our earliest perceptions and memories of love and fear, the two basic emotions.

This is preverbal memory, the precursor to the baby's language. The expressions of the early development don't "just show up" when a child learns to talk. By the day of labor and birth the newborn brain has a billion neurons present already wiring up the neocortex. It is logical and scientific then that babies remember birth. The experience of labor and birth is vitally important in the brain development of the human baby. Those billions of neurons, BUILT during the prenatal experience, will be the foundation of the neo-cortex, thinking brain for life, unless we repattern it. We do this at any time during infancy through adult years, by acknowledging the early experiences and providing new experience for the brain to rewire.

Your Birth

Your birth is a critically important event in your life. Your birth was THE event that adds the finishing touches to you brain, and to your relationship with your mother. If one is a "bun in the oven" during gestation, then labor and birth are the "icing on the cake." The experience creates hormonally and perceptionally, your view of the world. The process of leaving your mother's womb is a template for your relationship with her and with the world for the rest of your life.

When you claim your own birth as YOURS, as your own entry into this world, you can then and only then, begin the process to embrace who you really are. Our gifts are found in healing our traumatic experiences. As you embrace your traumas as part of your journey and as developing your survival skills, you find you have to give up victimhood. You can now be grateful that there are technologies to sort it all out.

Embracing who you are from the prenatal and birth perspective - when YOUR brain and body was built - and experiencing re-imprinting of your early experiences - will change the way you treat yourself and others. And, very much so, you will change the way you treat babies.

Become a Baby Keeper.

I AM the Union of My Father and Mother

Somewhere in time, when once again I was "stuck" in a love relationship and working like a maniac but "hitting brick (career) walls" again, I had exhausted all other avenues of figuring out, "Why do I do what I do, and in relationship to one who does what he does?" (I had even gotten degrees in psychology, counseling, and conflict resolution to figure out how to find love, attachment, and security, AND to empower other women). I think it was 1998 during a “life and death” moment, I made a serious plea to God to heal me or just take me. "I want to go to my deepest, darkest depths to heal whatever keeps me from being who I am meant to be and doing what I am meant to do on this planet."

Well, as we all know, one ought to be careful for what one prays. My desperate plea was heard and led me to an amazing journey healing my own birth trauma and studying the new and emerging field of Pre and Perinatal Psychology. It involved a short year in NY for what can only be explained as “karmic” and the jumping off point into the unknown. This journey, amazing as it is, has been the challenging claiming 0f my life, my perceptions, and my actions.

Seven years after my turning- point prayer, I define A Baby's Birth as:

"a continuum of critical periods of physiological development that begins even before conception and completes at the mother's breast, in the arms of the father, and will be lived throughout life."

My birth is mine; it defined me for my life.

I found every single moment of my life and my issues (or “tissues” as I now say) to be a reflection of my gestation, labor, and birth experiences, and these were a reflection of my conception experience. Conception is a critical experience -- for the lifetime. I found everything my mother felt, did, and ingested, as well as how she was treated and how she perceived intercourse during my conception to be the core of me. How and with what I was built is how I AM. During labor and birth every person, and thing said and done, how it was done, drugs used, hospital staff emotions and needs -- every second of labor and birth now belongs to ME as it was imprinted on MY brain as I, ME, the BABY, experienced my earliest beginnings. It created how I see myself in the world.

I even found that the lifelong thought of "get me out of this or let me die" during challenges, and how I have tended to be too independent and resisted help when I really needed it (angering people whose imprint is to rescue) was a "birth imprint." My healing creates a deep yearning in me to be a part of supporting women to know and trust their bodies from before conception and beyond; and, to choose loving peaceful people to be in the room when her baby (a soul in a body with a brain) is being born. My studies have taught me how to teach medical caregivers and midwives how to be with a women in a way that supports peaceful birth. The future of the planet depends on our children.

And, I know now, the trauma from my birth is also an amazing gift. I know how to support a baby or an adult to find their resources and gifts in their shadows. How we get from the warm, dark, womb where we are one with our mother to being a physiologically independent, but still helpless being is when and how our survival pattern for life is established. (I suspect our personality is as well.) And, oh, Baby, do I know how to survive. One of my ex’s once told me angrily, “You survive when you don’t even need to.” It's true, I see now. I DO know how to get "through it” -- whatever “it” is. It’s imprinted on my brain, and like a magnet, I (and you) attract what it is I (you) need to either heal it or perpetuate it, including people. That man just happened to be born two months premature during the bombings in Europe in early June, 1944 and he was breastfed by another woman because his mother's milk didn't come in. He was quite the survivor as well. He even taught me a Hungarian saying, "That's like the owl saying to the sparrow -- what big eyes you have!" Imagine the literature in psychology about what attracts people to each other and it doesn’t even look at our birth experience and how we came into the world!! I call these "intersections" where we "crash" in our early, preverbal imprintings.

We are hormonal beings – our imprints are hormonal based. I have come to believe that these situations and relationships we find ourselves in are co-created and for the purpose of healing. Without intention to heal, our relationships deepen the wounding and need to survive. Our male and female relationships at their worst – with violence, for example – are no longer so complicated when both people pursue healing their earliest wounds of not getting what they needed (See my entry, What a Baby Needs). The one who expresses the anger is in relationship with the one who goes within. It’s a dance whose choreography was established in the prenatal and birth experiences.

We are addicted to OUR OWN neuropeptides and hormones established at birth. MD’s, PhD’s and OB researchers Nathaneilsz, Odent, Perts, and Wirth explain this so it must be scientific). I know now that I don't always need to go through life like it is "life and death" and to "find the place of most resistance" (an imprint from forceps) in the type of work place or man I chose. I no longer send out the “rescue me” vibe only to angry about it. The important thing is that because of the healing work – in my central nervous system – I have options, in my body-mind-soul. I don’t have to use exhausting psychological or invasive medical technology and drugs – I only need to find the place within me.

My traditional religious upbringing and training in psychology and biology never trained me to embrace the three as connected - body, mind, and soul. The mainstream traditional theories and practices are not the most scientifically up-to-date. Traditional medicine, psychology, and religion never led me to see humanity in terms of Father, and baby in the flesh, and Mother! There is no separation - via medicine, psychology, or religion - of who we are, the physiological Union of our father's sperm and our mother's egg. We embody them both and we best embrace it – no matter where mom and dad are, no matter we there are/were, and what they did or didn't do to or for us, we are them.  We carry their stories and their ancestors stories. We will live out the secrets of our ancestors unless we choose to embrace who we are, heal who we are.  We can do so within.

We Are Each the Union of the Mother and Father

We each physically began as the union of our father's sperm and our mother's egg coming from some other place -- heaven? Isn't that where babies come from and where we go at the end of life? The continuum of birth must then be the profoundly defining moment in our physical life. Our parent's relationship throughout gestation is the fertile soil upon which our brain, body, perceptions of the world are created. Our emotional, psychological, spiritual, and of course, physiological being is established in the womb. That is clearly scientific.

Whatever happened, how our mother perceived it, her feelings, what she ate and ingested, her environment will be ours to live with throughout life. Clearly, there is no way around it, our society ought to focus on the pre-conception through infancy period of time in order to solve the myriad of health and social problems. If we did so, we would have to address the issue of what is truly the safest for the laboring and birthing human baby. We would have to change the way we fund resources in the services we provide for children and familes, and we'd have to change the way we treat women and babies in birth.

My Birth

My birth was MY BIRTH! Not my mother's -- she had hers. And, it sure wasn't the doctor's birth, even though he certainly gets too much credit just because he happened to save my life by dragging me out with forceps (2 loops of my cord around my neck) after stopping and starting MY labor while my mom's body was numb from the waist down. The doctor and my parents were joyful that I survived. Of course my mother "forgot" the horrible part at her joy of holding me. However, my headache, oxygen deprivation, and broken clavicle prevented me from engaging joyfully with her. My bonding and attachment to this woman who wanted me and loved me was terribly over-shadowed by life-saving medical interventions. I was always "such a good baby" because I know now, I was too hurt to cry. What a bummer to live forty-two years under that shadow, but what gratitude I have for the opportunity I have had to heal it.

How could I not want to create the most peaceful and loving birth for every baby coming in? How could I not fully appreciate the benefits of fully trained physician? It is very true, that if not for the physican, I would have died. It is also very true in this new era of energy medicine, a focous on the body-mind-spirit, and consciousness that those life saving actions could have been done with more compassion for me as a baby AND the damage could have been repaired in my early years. Every human being coming into this life at conception through birth deserves loving, conscious, intentional touch and support. Every human baby needs the opportunity to share his or her experience of birth, and to release the traumatic memory from the tissue, and to experience self-attachment.

So, Birth is the Baby's -- each of us were born. THAT would be our own birth. Obviously. Hello!? My mom, the doctor, dad, and the nurses each had their own birth. My mom's birth was a twin homebirth on a blistery winter January day in 1930 in rural Iowa. She came first, butt-first, her sister second. My grandmother gave birth to twins – and it was my mother’s birth and her sister's birth.

MY birth was 26 years later in a hospital in Iowa with my dad present – unheard of in 1956. Since then I have given birth to four other souls who chose to come into a body on this planet via my body. What an honor. What awesome souls they each are. My teachers! Each of them had their own birth -- each profoundly different and defining of who they each are as humans and who they are in relationship with me, and their world. How could it not be!?!?

What is not embraced by our society is that the BABY's brain (MY BRAIN) remembers the joy and the pain and fear and horror of the lifesaving efforts. Every baby, you and yours, and babies you care for as a professional or as family, friend or stranger -- they all have their own experience of their birth. May I say "DUH!" again!?! What's wrong with our society devaluing the sacredness of birth and the importance to the baby -- in order to manage pain and save lives? When and how did this happen?

It's the Baby's Birth Intro

I pose what I now think is just so obvious that to not know it just seems insane. BIRTH IS THE BABY'S BIRTH, but apparently to most of the world, this is a foreign thought. Once you "get it" maybe you'll be like me -- thumping my head, saying, "DUH!." I have spent six years in the study of Pre and Perinatal Psychology and birth trauma healing, and I continue to heal and understand my own experience as a birthing baby and as a birthing woman.

I am a Prenatal and Birth Focused CranioSacral Therapist focusing on supporting women and men to be responsible from pre-conception through infancy in order to develop a healthy relationship with their baby and to create optimal brain development from the beginning of life.

First, I am an advocate of a woman’s right to choice and to be responsible for her choices and her body and her baby’s birth. Secondly, I am an advocate for tort reform that no longer holds physicians responsible for the outcomes in birth WHILE legally and socially demanding the use of evidence-based research in obstetrics. AND, importantly, towards these goals, I am an advocate of society embracing that the birth is seen as the baby's birth. I believe that our focus of concern ought to be on what is healthiest and best for the baby. A baby's birth should not be about the needs of doctors, midwives, insurance companies, and hospital and staff, or even just about the mother.

What is the role of these professionals and caregivers in labor and birth if the baby truly is the focus? This is the question, the challenge for our society to look at -- how to socially, morally, and legally make birth about the baby. It requires that we look in places we may find scary, both within ourselves and how we treat and interact with babies. It challenges us to bravely open up to the possibilities and the ramifications of the scientific research findings of the last decade - in physiology, cellular biology, physics, brain studies.

Opening your mind even a little will allow you to see how what we are doing early on as child-bearing and birth women is creating our social problems. Importantly, we then see how our society sanctioned use of drugs and technology during labor and birth harms women and babies in their most vulnerable time. This “bad news” is ignored by our society because to consider it would mean major change in the business of obstetrics and midwifery. Opening your mind to the new findings in science allows us to see the "good news" about how we can change what we are doing AND we can heal ourselves -- no matter how old we are, and we can contribute to the health, wellness, peace of the planet.

What a Baby Needs

The early preconception through postnatal period -- the primal period -- is now scientifically confirmed to be the origin of health and illness; wellness and dysfunctions; joy and pain; and fear and love in the human being. Scientifically and logically, there is no break in the continuum of brain development from conception through birth, infancy, childhood, and adult life. Therefore, it's easy to see that the resolution of any health or emotional issues related to where and how birth is safe, must look at the pre and perinatal development, fetal experience, and birthing baby's experience, based on what a human being needs at each stage.

(References: Primal Health, by Michele Odent, MD, Life in the Womb: The Origin of Health and Disease by Peter Nathanielsz, MD, PhD, Association for Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Health at www.birthpsychology.com, and BEBA, www.beba.org.)

What every baby needs in the earliest BRAIN development - from conception throughout pregnancy, birth, and beyond - in order to live his or her highest potential is:

• To be wanted and welcomed at conception by two loving adults who are physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and financially prepared to be parents.
• To have complete nutrition and a toxin-free womb in order to build a healthy, fully functioning brain and body.
• To feel safe and protected by parents throughout pregnancy and birth.
• For parents to be in respectful, loving relationship and to have as little stress as possible throughout pregnancy and birth.
• To be emotionally connected with and nurtured by parents throughout pregnancy, at birth, and beyond.
• To have his or her own biologically programmed impulse and timing for birth while in continued relationship with the mother and safety of the father.
• To complete the biologically programmed self-attachment sequence of coming to the breast in his or her own timing – resting in the arms of the mother and father and without interventions.

Clearly, a baby needs to be conceived, gestated, and born into a world that is welcoming, safe, nuturing, and loving - rather than being unwanted, violent, abandoned, and poorly nourished. This is not only logical but scientifically based. A baby needs a drug-free, peaceful birth in connection with his or her mother. Because it matters. In the brain. Pun intended.

The newborn baby's brain has more than a billion neurons and each one is experiencing the labor and birth experience and the new world.

Everyone present during labor and birth, everything said and done by them is imprinted in each of these billion cells. It creates the first perception of the world. Imprinting of maternal experience has been happening in the developing baby's system since conception. Science tells us that the gestating baby's body and brain is fully formed by the end of the first trimester. From conception forward the baby, as every living organism, is developing and surviving in struggle between growth or protection. Of course, from conception forward, the baby is growing, developing, and learning. Science tells us that babies are highly sensory. For example, they hear and interact with the outside womb, especially in the last trimester.

My upcoming articles will address the information in the previous paragraph and the stages more in depth. I am asking you expand your thinking to also consider how we treat conception, pregnancy, and what we are doing to babies during labor and birth and the first hours and days of life. No other period of time is so critical as the pre-conception through infancy period of life.

My next posts will be specifically about the needs of the laboring and birthing baby.

Be a Baby Keeper!!

Janel

Introducing My Blog

Welcome to my blog. My first entry -- and so much to say!

My mission in life is to participate in the preservation of the sacredness of birth of the human being and making birth safe for the baby. To do this we have to keep the baby as the focus of his or her birth. Hence, the title of my blog, It's the Baby's Birth and my name, Baby Keeper!

I invite you to engage with me in a respectful dialog about what the human baby needs during the entire continum of birth from preconception, through gestation, labor, and birth.

There is a huge battle going on around the country and the world -- about whether birth is safest in the hospital with doctors or at home with the midwives. I suggest neither is safe, safer, or safest; but both could be if caregivers in each were to focus on what a baby needs to be safe during labor and birth. Because It's the Baby's Birth.

I am going to post my short articles and I invite you to post your comments. Anyone who is involved in birth and engaged with babies are invited to have a challenging, intense and deepening dialog.

I will not allow disrespectful posts. I will not tolerate rude comments or personal bashing of any kind. No bashing based on race, gender, geography, party affiliation, religion, or profession. So, to be clear ... no doctor bashing, no lawyer bashing, no nurse bashing, no midwife bashing, no psychologist bashing, no mother bashing, and no George bashing. NO bashing! And, believe me, "I tell you this because I need to hear it," as my friend says. I can get pretty intense myself about what I believe I know. Working through my own prenatal and birth imprints taught me a lot about misdirected anger and powerlessness, and how to take responsibility for my own feelings - which leads to my better ability to be responsible for my behavior.

My intention is to provide a respectful, safe place for people with divided, diverse and opposing but equally important ideas to share their own perceptions. This requires the upmost care and compassion for others. Please join with the intention of learning, sharing, growing in the focus of birth being on the baby.

I try to live by the "Four Agreements" by Miquel Ruiz:
1- Don't take things personally
2) Don't make assumptions
3) Be impeccable with your word
4) Do your best every day

I find these particularly helpful on online communications as we do not know one another and don't have the benefit of seeing the other's body language or hearing their tone.

We can share our perspectives from our training and experience in the way we'd like to be treated -- heard, seen, acknowledged, supported, and valued. Hey, that's just what every baby wants and needs.

And that's one of the topics of my first articles!

Joyful Baby Keeping

Janel,
The keeper of babies as the focus of birth.