Happy International Peace Day!

Doula Speed Dating

Are you thinking about using a doula as a part of your birth plan?  Then please come to our Doula Speed Dating event this Wednesday at 6pm to meet and greet with Embrace Birth's Doula team! Whether you're an Embrace client or not, we invite all expecting families to join us for light refreshments and a chance to meet your local doulas.  Doulas are like birthing coaches, they can help you with techniques to manage pain during labor and are there to give you emotional, physical and informational support before, during, and after your birth.  Come learn all the benefits of having a doula and get an opportunity to meet....The Right One!

Using a Peanut Ball in Labor

From Director of Birthwell Birthright, Tanya Strusberg, comes an amazing article on the benefits of using a peanut ball versus pillows, blankets or even a traditional swiss ball.  Specializing in Lamaze childbirth education, she is a great resource for natural birth techniques.  We utilize the peanut at Embrace Birth Center and think it's an extremely useful tool for mothers to promote dilation and increase comfort.

What is a peanut ball and why could it be helpful for me in labour?

Most people are familiar with the standard birth ball (sometimes called a fit ball or Swiss ball). They come in a range of sizes to suit women of all heights and are without doubt an essential labour tool to have.

The standard round birth ball has become a common site in a birthing suite, but the peanut ball is a relative newcomer.  In the last few years, the use of a peanut ball for labour has increased, especially for mums who choose an epidural or who need to rest. The peanut ball doesn’t slip, slide or flatten like pillows, keeping a mum’s legs properly supported and the pelvis open. The use of a peanut ball has been seen to help shorten labour. Although there has not been a large study on their effectiveness, many midwives and hospitals are seeing excellent results.

A peanut ball is similar to a birth ball, except that it dips in the middle, giving it its distinctive peanut shape. Peanut balls also come in a variety of sizes, again depending on a woman’s height, but also depending on how she plans to use it. Smaller peanut balls are designed to be used between your legs, whereas larger peanut balls are designed to be sat on, or to lean over.

Peanut Balls are typically used two ways primarily:

1. The labouring mother is in a semi-reclined position, with one leg over the ball, and the other leg to the side of the ball. The doula, midwife, or other support person pushes the ball as close to the mother’s hips as is tolerable for her. Many feel this position promotes dilation and descent with a well-positioned baby.

2. While the mother is in a side-lying or semi-prone position, the peanut ball is used to lift the upper leg and open the pelvic outlet. Many feel this position helps rotate a baby in a less-favorable posterior position to a more favorable position for delivery.

What size peanut ball should I use?

Peanut balls come in a number of sizes:

45cm – Recommended for women who are under 160cms

50cm – Recommended for women who are 160cm – 170cms (most common size)

60cm – Recommended for women who are 174cm or taller or plus size women

70cm – ONLY to sit on and straddle

For the full article along with even more great resources, click here to visit the Birthwell Birthright website.

Educating, Empowering & Encouraging Women from Pregnancy to Motherhood

Think about the first mother that ever walked the planet.  Then think about the second, the third, and so on. All helping the other give birth from having lived through it themselves. Soon there was an abundance of mothers and babies who now make up the more than 7 Billion human population on this earth. Wow, what a thought.

Women have been giving birth since the dawn of human existence and we truly feel in our hearts, is an intuitive experience.  All women know instinctively how to give birth. Midwifery has been practiced throughout the ages before there was medicine or hospitals.  It has been practiced all over the world with varying traditions and expressed uniquely through local cultures. We believe that giving birth is a sacred experience not only for the mother and her family, but the community.

Advances in medicine, technology and science have led us to the practices we use today. Ultra-sounds find the position and the sex of the baby.  We now know how to keep mothers healthy during their pregnancies with lots of heavy prenatal care bibles. There are vast hospital wings dedicated solely to pregnancy.  But with all of this technology, we believe the advantages of using a midwife is giving the human, emotional, intuitive and physiological profoundness of birth it’s proper reverence.

We nurture the deeply connective mother and child bond through safe delivery practices that don’t separate you from your experience. Instead, we give you the power of choice by giving you all of our knowledge.  We want to honor your traditions and listen to your wishes. We empower mothers!

Embrace midwives are highly trained, with a low tech, high touch mentality.  Our goal at the Embrace Birth Center is to educate, empower and encourage women from pregnancy to motherhood!   

A Letter to our Midwife

We originally found this article in the Huffington Post, and we really love the way that it represents the point of view of a new mommy and her opinions about her midwife. We've talked time and time and again how this is supposed to be a beautiful experience between a mother and her child. A moment to be shared with your loved ones if that is your desire but most importantly it should be an experience that is safe, loving and comfortable. Hear what this new mom has to say about her midwife below. 

"This is my heart-felt thank you letter to the midwife who in my mind, showed the world how it could be done. I write this is in the hope that it will be shared with midwives and parents everywhere, to remind everyone how birthing is messy and painful and scary but also amazing and wonderful and sacred... and a human experience!

A Letter to our Midwife

As our daughter nears her first birthday, I want you to know something.

I don't know if you get letters like this everyday or even whether you think you deserve them.

But I have been thinking a lot about you and how you helped us safely deliver our baby into this world all those months ago and I wonder if perhaps, I could have written a letter like this for the birth of our first daughter.

I don't know if midwives like you are rare or if all share the same grace and understanding. But here is what I am truly thankful for, as a mother, as a woman and as a human being.

Thank you for speaking to me throughout the whole experience of giving birth with compassion, kindness and love. You made me feel at ease. You enabled me to feel strong and powerful. You reminded me how capable I was, how amazing my body was... how I could keep going, even though the pain was great and I was tired.

Thank for asking me if I wanted to be checked internally on our arrival. Yes, it might have been necessary but being asked made me feel relaxed and in control and that my body belonged to me.

Thank for you agreeing to a calm, peaceful and natural birth and for honouring all of our requests, even when the same music had been played on repeat for four hours and you asked, quietly, would I like to change it. And when I replied 'Nooooooo'! you simply kept playing the CD.

Thank you for taking care of my husband as he took care of me by asking him if he was ok, whether he wanted a drink and did he want a rest after rubbing my back for an hour and for you to take over.

Thank you for being in the background and leaving me and my husband to birth our baby... and for stepping in, calmly at every moment needed.

Thank you for not batting an eyelid when I asked my husband to repeat a prayer continuously during the most insanely intense part of the whole birthing experience... and for saying 'How lovely!' when I whispered a prayer into our babe's ear straight after birthing her. I felt as if you wholly respected and honoured our wishes and our faith.

Thank you for keeping the lights low, the pool warm, and the ambience calm and serene in the birthing room... I felt like we were in a unique and sacred space. Giving birth is sacred and special as well as off-the-scale painful! And you completely honoured every single need and request.

Thank you for restoring my confidence and validating my previous birthing experience where harsh words had been spoken, where I felt trapped and confined, disrespected and dishonoured.

Thank you for speaking in the calmest of tones throughout and for telling me... yes! That is supposed to happen! (on numerous occasions!)

Thank you for looking deep into my eyes and telling me... You can do it. I know you can. I believe in you.

Thank you for the aftercare... for laughing at my ramblings whilst having stitches afterwards and for laughing at my inappropriate comments when I couldn't help myself (gas and air... such fun!)

Thank for to the midwife who stepped in to join you and to rally together to realise the final moments of baby arriving into this world, for leaving the cord until it stopped pulsating to cut it without me not even asking... for offering to take photos of us all in our postnatal bliss.... thank you SO much! Thank you for enabling me to leave the birthing centre feeling in charge, feeling loved, feeling empowered and strong and able and completely wonderful!

You may not realise this but I think of this event frequently and it has left me feeling on top of the world.

This is how birthing can be... no matter how it happens, whether or not the mother has pain relief or a C-section, whether her feet are in stirrups or whether she is down on all fours... this is how it should be. A human, loving, supportive, wonderful experience.

Thank you.

Victoria shares her full birthing story on her positive parenting website Mama Baba Do.

Connect with Victoria on Facebook!"