I love attending home births - they’re often calm and cozy, even when labour gets intense. Here are my top tips for a great homebirth (most require prepping BEFORE labour but the last three can be done as early-labour-do tasks).
All tagged Doula Tips
I love attending home births - they’re often calm and cozy, even when labour gets intense. Here are my top tips for a great homebirth (most require prepping BEFORE labour but the last three can be done as early-labour-do tasks).
As a doula, one of the best things I can do to support your labour is create a birthing space that feels safe, private and unobserved.
Why does it matter? Because when you feel safe, private, and unobserved, your labour may be less painful, happen more quickly, and result in fewer complications for you and your baby (want to learn more about this? Check out Dr. Sarah Buckley's work on physiological birth).
Do you ever get tired of hearing about surrender? Yay, me too.
The reason birth workers go on about it so much though, is because surrender is often a necessary part of birth and parenting – sometimes it’s surrendering to the power of the surges running through your body, or surrendering to the need for unwished for medical interventions, or surrendering to the sleep deprivation and high needs of your newborn in the early weeks of postpartum.
A few months ago, I read the book Your Medical Mind: How to Decide What Is Right for You by Jerome Groopman, MD and Pamela Hartzband, MD. The book covers both internal and external factors that influence our medical decision making while also diving into some of the cognitive shortcuts humans use to make those decisions (SPOILER ALERT: while cognitive shortcuts often help us make quick decisions, they don’t always help us make good decisions).
Here's what might be going on.
Have you ever found yourself leaving a care provider's appointment thinking "What just happened?" and wishing you had a few more minutes with them to figure out what they were recommending AND how you feel about it?
If so, here are five questions to consider:
May is International Doula Month and we've been celebrating by sharing a doula tip a day on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We have compiled all of the tips here, in one easy to find resource, just for you. From pregnancy, through labour, and into the immediate postpartum period, we hope you find a few tips here that you can put to good use.
Packing your birth bag is a ritual of modern pregnancy.
Maybe you’re the type of person who packs your bag weeks in advance – you like to feel prepared, with lots of time to spare. Or maybe you’re the type to pack your bag during early labor – a practical busy job to keep you distracted during those first crampy contractions.
No matter when or how you pack your bag, you’ll likely have researched what to put in it. There are many sample lists available online (some of them pages long!) and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
We’d like to simplify things for you.
Seeing the person you love working hard to cope with the intensity of labour as she works to bring your baby earth side can be a powerful, and at times overwhelming, experience. Here are 10 practical things you can do...
