yogaforbirthandbeyond.com.au

Doulas:Creating good birth support

Julia — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:33:22 +0000

Doulas are becoming more and more popular in Australia and many women find having a doula attend their birth and support them pre and post natally makes a significant positive difference to their experience, and research supports this view. In Canberra we are lucky to have some wonderful doulas, you can find their details on the website www.yogaforbirthandbeyond.com.au. A great article about doulas, birth helpers, is Doulas . Its from the excellent website promoting natural birth www.bellybelly.com.au

If you choose not to have a doula, you might like to consider having an extra back up person, a sister, close friend, your mother to be on call or go with you. Labour is unpredictable and your birth partner and you may really appreciate having extra support and help.

Aromatherapy for Pregnancy, labour and birth

Julia — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:30:33 +0000

Many women love to use aromatherapy during pregancy, labour and birth, however there is some controversy over which oils are safe to use. It’s wise to check with a qualified aromatherapist and she can also often make up some oils specifically for labour. There are many wonderful therapists in Canberra, one is Suzie Williams (suzie@essencehealing.com.au) 0413 332933

For general ideas see AROMATHERAPY FOR LABOUR AND BIRTH and AROMATHERAPY FOR PREGNANC1 Most hospitals, Birth Centres have electric aromatherapy burners as candles are not allowed for safety reasons.

Creating a Birth Space:How to enhance the birth process

Julia — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 10:11:45 +0000

Dr. Sarah Buckley is an inspirational GP in Brisbane who travels around Australia lecturing about natural birth, birth hormones and many other interesting topics. If you would like to have a free copy of her e-book “Ecstatic Birth” please go to her website www.sarahbuckley.com it is well worth reading. Her book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering is also a wonderful guide to birth with lots of research to back up her philosophy. A summary of her ideas on important factors during birth can be downloaded here: Creating a Birth Space

You might like to also look on You tube or google Orgasmic Birth. The DVD of this will be shown once at a term to the prenatal yoga students at Yoga For Birth and Beyond in Canberra.

If you’d like to know more about the hormones of birth and how they affect labour you might like to attend one of the Preparing for Natural Birth workshops in Pearce, Canberra where we cover their influence as well as massage and acupressure for labour and the essentials of Active Birth. For details of the next course please refer to the website.

Birth Beliefs: How what we believe affects birth

Julia — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:58:47 +0000

We all have different beliefs and attitudes towards birth that we may have learned from our mothers, the media, general cultural influence and some of these beliefs may not serve us. Sometimes these beliefs are deep in the subconscious and can come out during labour and birth. One way to counteract those you are aware of is by talking with a friend or partner to examine them, use affirmations regularly – another way is to attend Calm Birth classes which work with those subconscious views and help you to go into labour more relaxed and confident. Tracey, the most experienced Calm Birth teacher in Canberra and Childbirth Educator, believes strongly in women’s innate ability to birth and helps partners to also feel they can really support in a caring and useful way. You might want to check out her website Calmbirth classe

One important aspect of preparing for birth is to talk about preferences and choices with you partner/birth support person. Some people find making a birth plan is a good way to know what sort of decisions you might have to make, even though we cannot “plan” how birth will go. An example of an extended Birth Plan follows – for giving to your carers I recommend a short version of the most important points BIRTH PLAN. You might choose to use the words “Birth preferences” – good to make sure your language is friendly.

Finally there is a great organization in US called CIMS which aims to improve maternity services and make hospitals “mother friendly” They have free downloads and one very useful one which might help with your birth plan is “Having a Baby? Ten Questions to Ask”

It can be found on their website www.motherfriendly.org just look for free documents and downloads to find the brochure.

Active Birth and Yoga: Yoga as birth preparation

Julia — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 02:53:09 +0000

Janet Balaskas has greatly influenced the return of women choosing their positions for labour and of taking a more active role in how they would like their birth to be. She founded the Active Birth Centre in London and is the author of several books, the best known of which is New Active Birth. It’s a really important book to read when you are pregnant so that you understand both the philosophy and practical aspects of Active Birth. Despite her ideas being recognized as not only valid but in helping women to have shorter,less painful labours and feel more satisfied with their experience, it is said that still only about 40% of women are encouraged in labour to be more upright and use positions which open out their pelvis and facilitate labour.

You can subscribe to a regular newsletter at the Active Birth Centre which gives you relevant information according to your stage of pregnancy and some weeks after you’ve had your baby.

In the Yoga For Birth and Beyond prenatal classes in Canberra we focus on preparing the body and mind in many different ways so that women feel self-reliant and confident when they go into labour. We include many different labour skills so that each woman has a variety of tools to use.

Another useful birth preparation is to massage the perineum during the last 6 weeks of pregnancy – the following article explains guidelines to protecting your perineum and how to do perineal massage during the last 6 weeks of pregnancy:Preparing perineum June 2011