Category: Childbirth

WHEN YOUR DOULA IS ALSO A BIRTH PHOTOGRAPHER

7/30/2019

Do you remember being a little kid and being asked: "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

I do. And I also remember that although it wasn't explicitly explained, the answer to that question was supposed to be only one career.

It took me a long while to figure out that in reality, people can and often do have many interests and it's totally okay to do different things to earn a living throughout your life.

For the past few years, most of my efforts and passion have been focused on being a doula and helping people prepare for childbirth in traditional and not so traditional ways. But before being a doula, I went to film school. I am and will always be a storyteller (and a rather visual one!)

The very first birth I ever attended I also photographed. And ever since, I have loved bringing my camera to births. At the beginning, I wasn't getting great imagines. I struggled with the very specific challenges of a delivery room, but with some fantastic additional training and supported by an ever-growing amount of experience and practice, my confidence as a birth photographer has gotten stronger.

Lately, I have been asked an interesting question a lot:

How do you balance both documenting the birth while staying present as a doula?

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LA PRIMERA SONRISA, BIRTH FILM REVIEW

2/4/2019

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I watch a lot of films about birth and to be honest a lot of them are very similar to each other. They carry important messages: birth has become increasingly medicalized, birth is normal (most of the times), you can do this, emergencies do happen, midwifery care makes a huge difference.

All these things are true, although sometimes a bit repetitive from a birth worker's perspective. But here I am, still watching films about birth. One of the reasons why I do it is because each one speaks to a difference audience, connects with different people, and holds a unique piece of wisdom.

La Primera Sonrisa is a documentary made by Mexican filmmaker Guadalupe Sánchez Sosa. What makes this film special is its unique cultural perspective, as well as its focus on sexuality and emotions in birth. The film follows internationally renowned midwife Naoli Vinaver, whose own homebirth short film, Día de Nacimiento, became famous in the birth world in 2015.

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TOP 3 MUST-WATCH MOVIES FOR HOME BIRTHERS

10/27/2018

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As a former filmmaker and forever film-lover, moving pictures speak deeply into my heart. We live in a culture flooded with images and these have a powerful effect in us.

During pregnancy, when you're particularly sensitive, the stories you hear and movies you watch work their way into your big picture of birth and can have a deeper impact on you than learning all the science and anatomy of birth.

Taking that into consideration, these 3 movies are my favorite suggestions for people planning a home birth (arranged in my recommended order for watching):

1. WHY NOT HOME?
When you're considering choosing home birth, you will almost always confront some backlash. It often comes from people who genuinely care about your wellbeing, although some people are just nosy. Why Not Home? offers a very well-rounded perspective on the safety of choosing home birth coming from an unexpected source: nurses, doctors and midwives who attend birth in the hospital. This movie is great to watch with a partner if either one or both of you are on the fence about home birth. Learn more in their official website.

Why Not Home? The Surprising Birth Choices of Doctors and Nurses from Jessicca Moore on Vimeo.

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The Definitive Guide to a Turning a Breech baby in 7 Steps

9/23/2018

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Guest Blog Post by Dr. Bob Mason, from Active Life Chiropractic.

Having a baby in a breech position is one of the most common reasons for a cesarean birth. In some cases, a vaginal breech birth is possible (depending on the circumstances), but getting a breech baby to turn head down can save you a lot of worries. While some babies tend to turn head down by 34 weeks, others need a little help. Actually, they typically don’t need help, they just need the proper environment in order to move. The following guide is designed to help you provide a better environment for a vertex presented baby (head down).

Keep in mind, that while many mothers do all they can to help a breech baby turn, not all babies can be positioned into the vertex position. While doctors are not 100% certain of the reason, the American Pregnancy Association lists the following reasons for a breech baby: multiple pregnancies, if a woman has had a premature birth previously, if the uterus has too much or too little amniotic fluid, if the uterus has an abnormal shape or if there is a placenta previa.

Results from the techniques listed below vary from person to person. Do not do any part of this guide that causes pain or discomfort and be sure to talk to your healthcare provider before beginning any of the movements suggested in this post.

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THESE ARE MY HOURS: A NEW MOVIE ABOUT BIRTH

8/4/2018

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These Are My Hours is a new movie about birth, and it's completely different from any other movie about birth that has ever been done.

Although it is technically a documentary, it feels a lot more like a fiction film because it tells a single story of a single mother birthing her child. This movie is not about statistics, evidence-based information or public policies.

Instead, watching These Are My Hours is a lot more like actually being at a birth. And not any birth, but one in which a woman takes matters into her own hands and fearlessly rocks her experience, even though at times it seems impossible to do.

I had the honor to chat with Emily Graham, the subject of this film, who shares with us how she got involved in this project, why it is important for her, and what she hopes for the film to do in our crazy world.

THESE ARE MY HOURS from Peripheral Productions on Vimeo.

M: Tell us, how did you get involved in the birth world?
E: I had my first baby at home almost 10 years ago and I found that after I gave birth I still wanted to read all the books and talk about it and I realized that I was interested in learning about it and working in birth more than just as a mother. So I asked my midwife if I could work with her. Despite me having never trained in anything related to health or birth, she said yes.

“My birth work is all about women finding their truth and expressing their autonomy through their birth experience.”

When my baby was nine months old, I started attending prenatal appointments and births with her. I worked with her for a few years. I had another baby with her and then I moved to South Carolina, where I live now. I studied with Whapio for two years, doing her holistic midwifery program. My plan at the beginning was to become a licensed midwife. But as I got more experience and of course as I trained with Whapio and heard of her philosophy, I decided that I didn't want to be licensed by the state and I didn't want to practice midwifery the way it is in our culture.

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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NATURAL BIRTH IN THE HOSPITAL

6/7/2018

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Having a natural birth in the hospital is something that rarely just happens to people, especially first-time parents. Did you know that more than 80% of women who give birth in St. Peter's Hospital have an epidural? That's a big number! Of course, many of these people were never planning to have a natural birth (which can mean different things to different people, but for the purpose of this article it means no pain meds).

What this means is that if you're flirting with the idea of a natural birth, just hoping for it to happen most likely won't get you there. Trying to have a natural birth in the hospital can sometimes be like being on a diet and spending all day in a candy store. A natural part of labor is getting to that point of feeling like you can't do it anymore like you need to "give up." Birthing from Within mentors call it "the gate of great doubt." So when pain relief is so readily available, you really need great tools and even greater support to get through the hard parts without drugs.

“If you're flirting with the idea of a natural birth, just hoping for it to happen most likely won't get you there.”

So what can you do if you're hoping for a natural birth in the hospital? Here are some ideas for you!

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Should your parents be invited to the delivery room?

12/31/2017

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After three years of attending births, one of the things I see pregnant people commonly stress out about is deciding whether or not they should have their parents or parents-in-law at the birth.

For some, the answer is clear: Either they would love to have their relatives at the birth or they feel absolutely confident on not having them around.

But for the ones who feel hesitant, how do you decide?
Here are 6 questions to consider when making a choice.

1. WHY?
Ask yourself why you are considering asking your relatives to join: Is it because their presence brings you comfort? Do you feel obligated? Do you want to be polite? Do you think they have “the right to be there”? Do they think they have the right to be there? Do you want to avoid confrontation? Are you afraid of hurting someone’s feelings? If their presence is not going to bring you comfort and you answered yes to any of the other questions, you might want to look into this issue a little deeper.

2. ARE THEY BRINGING FEARS OR NERVOUSNESS?
Childbirth is a deeply intimate experience and you need to be surrounded by people who trust the process wholeheartedly and who support your decisions 100%. If your relatives are bringing nervousness or fear into your space, their presence is not going to benefit you and therefore, not going to benefit your baby.

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Does Birth Really Have To Be Painful?

1/24/2017

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WHAT HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT BIRTH?

I still remember the first time I heard someone talking about birth in a positive light.
I was living in Mexico City at the time and I went to visit a friend’s country house over the weekend. My friend's sister was there with her kids. She had a very friendly and smart three-year-old son and a sweet little baby girl around 2 months old.

I had just graduated college a few months earlier. Having babies was the last thing in my mind at that point, so I’m not sure how we even got started on the conversation about labor. I think I mentioned something about how painful I imagined birth to be, based on all the stories I have heard. She shook her head gently and told me about her experience. “It was a unique sensation,” she said, “but I wouldn’t call it pain.” She went ahead and told me about giving birth in a big tub of water and how lovely it was. She said she had been so relaxed that she had often fallen asleep in between contractions.

Well, she definitely blew my mind a little bit. First, I didn’t have idea that babies could be born underwater and second, painless birth? You gotta be kidding me!

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The Value of Meditation for Overcoming Pregnancy Anxiety

12/28/2016

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Pregnancy can be quite stressful. After all, your life is changing dramatically and the worries of the world all of the sudden seem much more overwhelming. New financial demands pile up, contradicting advice and information can be confusing, everyone has an opinion about your life, and your identity often seems to be replaced with the simple label: pregnant.

To make things even harder, you’re supposed to stay relaxed and happy, since everyone knows that stress is not good for the baby. Some studies have shown moms with high levels of anxiety during pregnancy are more prone to go into birth prematurely and their babies more likely to have complications.

“Some studies have shown moms with high levels of anxiety during pregnancy are more prone to go into birth prematurely and their babies more likely to have complications.”

“Just relax” might sound like great advice, but people who struggle with depression and anxiety know that it’s not as easy as it sounds. If all this sounds familiar, you might want to consider the extreme, insane-sounding thing that I’m about to propose: a 10-day silent meditation course.

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5 SOUNDS THAT CAN MAKE BIRTH AWESOME

7/28/2016

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Playing the didgeridoo at the first birth I ever attended as a doula.

A PERSONAL STORY

There are many different factors that play into birth experiences: Your birth location, your support team, your unresolved fears, your preparation, the involvement of your partner, etc.

Everyone is different and therefore needs different things, so the decisions that are right for one person are not necessarily right for another person. We all know that, right?

All this being said, I do want to share with you some little snippets of my birth story mostly because I learned a lot from it and I think some of the tools I used could be helpful to people birthing in all sorts of different settings.

You don’t need to be having a water birth or a home birth to embrace the power of using your voice or to enjoy the non-touch massage vibrations of the didgeridoo.

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WHEN YOUR DOULA IS ALSO A BIRTH PHOTOGRAPHER

LA PRIMERA SONRISA, BIRTH FILM REVIEW

TOP 3 MUST-WATCH MOVIES FOR HOME BIRTHERS

The Definitive Guide to a Turning a Breech baby in 7 Steps

THESE ARE MY HOURS: A NEW MOVIE ABOUT BIRTH

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NATURAL BIRTH IN THE HOSPITAL

Should your parents be invited to the delivery room?

Does Birth Really Have To Be Painful?

The Value of Meditation for Overcoming Pregnancy Anxiety

5 SOUNDS THAT CAN MAKE BIRTH AWESOME

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