This just in

Just stumbled over this site today

Mothers Naturally

Sure, it’s sponsored by a midwifery organization, so there is a midwifery bias.  BUT it’s about approaching your pregnancy and birth from a natural and healthy perspective, birth is another angle of reproductive choice.  There are some great sections of this site that ask simple basic questions that can help you determine just how natural a birth would be right for you, and to assess if the care you are receiving from your current provider really meets your needs.

Emphasizing that all those medical interventions may not be the healthiest choice for you or your baby, and that you ultimately are in charge of your baby and your birth.  Even if you hand it over to a care provider, it’s still your choice.  Once that baby is born, you will have the ultimate responsibility making choices about their care, education, health, diet.. why not start making those choices now.  What might seem best for the masses, is not necessarily best for you, or your child.  Question everything, especially if it is routine.  Find our why they do it, ask about alternatives, and think about whether you think it’s really necessary for your family.

Discrimination, Fear and Loss

For some reason, folks tend to be afraid of what they don’t understand.  Rather than look at it, and ask the question, “what am I afraid of?” they look away, pretend it’s not there, snub, and potentially miss out on some very valuable insight and understanding.

Some of the books I’ve turned to as excellent resources as a student, are dismissed by others simply due to assumptions about the author’s faith or background.  Without ever reading the book, without ever speaking to the author, assumptions are made, and based on a fear that what is contained in the book MIGHT make somebody uncomfortable, so it’s dismissed.  To me, dismissing an entire work because it may come from a spiritual bias that is not exactly congruent with my own, is no different than doctors who believe homebirth is dangerous.  They may have never SEEN a home birth, and they won’t even look at the evidence that would potentially allow them to see that they are wrong.  It makes them uncomfortable, and they don’t even want the information.  If they open to it, they might have to admit that some of the things they do don’t make any sense, and even potentially cause harm.  More importantly, they might feel compelled to CHANGE.

Good thing we don’t sit around and dismiss all books by physicians as the *other* or enemy camp, or we would miss out on Michel Odent, Sarah Buckley, or Marsden Wagner.

We lose so much, lumping people in as “other” before we even know who they are. Most times, out of fear.  Fear of what?  That you might see things another way?  That you might have to question yourself?  It is possible to love others, accept others, respect others, without becoming others.

If you are strong in your faith, whether that be religious/spiritual faith, or just standing on your basic life principles, simply READING about someone else’s point of view is not going to be enough to shake that.  Seeing other angles should strengthen your own inner strength and knowing of who you are.   It should give you a stronger sense of self, standing next to these other people.  Perhaps more than just standing with others who are more like yourself.

If it doesn’t, you really need to look at what it is you are standing on, and standing for.  And who you are standing with, and why.

The Value of Apprenticeship

Beginning to serve women in birth can be a deeply humbling experience filled with honor and joy, as well as apprehension and uncertainty. Each and every birth is as individual and unique as the woman and her baby in the process. While there is a framework, like a house, each birth has a different floor plan and designer colors. The medical world has tried to make birth be like cookie cutter houses in a housing development, where even the landscaping is dictated, but they still cannot control what goes on inside the houses.

In this exciting and unpredictable, beautiful world of birth, getting started can be daunting. Having completed your early academic training in construction of birth, you know your carpentry and framing skills, and you have an idea of the many other choices available. But using those skills and gaining the experience and confidence to use them in such a way that you feel comfortable in your own skills takes time. Trying to use them without guidance might imprint fear and uncertainty into your own psyche from the beginning and be difficult to overcome in the future, especially when a difficult or unknown situation arises.

Having a mentor as a guide can help with this transition by modeling trust in birth and confidence in herself, helping to imprint from the beginning a deeper calm and trust in the new midwife that carries over. This trust and confidence translates into calmer births for her clients, and fewer transfers due to anxiety or impatience.

Apprenticeship also fosters community among midwives. Taking on an apprentice inspires seasoned midwives to really feel the sense of abundance in the universe, knowing that more midwives means more availability to women, and more work for all. A depth of community means a deeper well of support and backup, which leads to fewer burned out midwives. It may also inspire a deeper sense of cooperation between midwives, which leads to better information, less fear and more confidence in their own skills. It also instills this sense in the new midwives, which may make them more likely to take on apprentices themselves.

Taking on apprentices enables wise experienced midwives to pass down some of their wisdom, something only gleaned from years of work and experience, to new midwives giving them a stronger head start. Apprenticeship for a new midwife gives her the hands on experience she needs, with guidance to help nurture her confidence and deeper calm trust along the way, really reinforcing her foundation of skills with practical experience.

Sustainable Simplicity

One of my favorite things is my little Herons Dance, Pause for Beauty e-mails that I get. It’s like a little smidge of peace and tranquility amidst the clutter and spam..

This week, the little message that comes with it really touches home for me. Along with all my exploration of what is my life philosophy, what am I doing, and who am I really questions.. I still am clambering to figure out what the answers are because every time I get close, there is some distraction or some chaotic vortex that sweeps by a little too close and I’m sucked in.

My life seems to me involving more moments of walking into the proverbial rooms and forgetting what I was doing there… There is definitely a little something to what is said here that resonates with me, like a compass reminding me where I was headed and why. And what exactly it had to do with my dream about the Tom Petty oracle flying through space. Really. It’s connected. and has to do with being born full of music, or color, and being able to let it out to share with the world in a way that makes the whole of existence vibrate just a little bit more towards the joy, courage, deep, full and whole end of the spectrum and move away from the fear and deathly quiet empty darkness that we seem to be slipping towards when we’re not paying attention.

Just wanted to pass on the tranquility. I’m thinking the second paragraph makes an excellent Mission Statement..

You can subscribe to this for free yourself HERE As a customer of theirs, I also highly recommend their products.. just beautiful..

Dear Heron Dancers,

I spent Friday night and all day Saturday in quiet solitude. I paddled a few miles of river Saturday morning, and then went to a swimming hole at the base of a waterfall with my dog. The river was high and fast. It was a beautiful, glorious day.

I keep saying to myself that I want a simple life, but keep meandering off that path into complexity. Spending the day in quiet Saturday led me to this thought: re-center your life around the things you are grateful for. If you are successful at that, you will live a simple life, a life close to wild nature, a life close to good friends, healthy food and work that contributes to the Greater Good.

How difficult will it be to maintain that discipline? It won’t be easy, I suspect. For one thing, I’m attracted to complexity because it is interesting and challenging. Adventure is complicated. Simplicity can be boring.

Many of the truly powerful people I’ve known– the centered, the balanced people, the people who have affected my life with their kindness and gentleness—have been clear thinkers who had found their way to that discipline, sometimes through a life of misadventure and miscalculation. They live or lived simply, had confronted themselves, had come to peace with themselves. I noticed a kind of quiet about them.

In celebration of the Great Mystery of Life,

Roderick W. MacIver

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Sustainable, Solar powered AC?

How very practical. More power to the AC on days with the most solar power, when you need it the most. Why didn’t we come up with this before?

A solar cooled air-conditioning system by ZDNet‘s Roland Piquepaille — Spanish scientists have developed a new eco-friendly air-conditioning system. The researchers are relying on solar energy for cooling their devices. They claim that their technology does not harm the ozone layer and reduces the use of greenhouse gases. The research team has ‘designed and built an absorption chiller capable of using solar and residual heat as an energy source to drive the cooling system.’ Even if this research effort looks promising, the scientists don’t provide any information about availability or pricing for such devices. But read more…

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Sustainable Birth

Two of my social concerns are Restoring the Sacred and Private nature of birth (aka rescuing it from the medical protocols that pervert it) and living a more sustainable lifestyle. So, I have to ask then, what exactly would qualify as a sustainable birth?

I automatically think home birth of course, but how could even hospital birth be more sustainable and life-friendly? I’ll be thinking on this and writing more later.