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6/4/2024 0 Comments Owning your birth environment In some senses, we're all birthing within the same environment. We're all living in the same culture and most of us are being cared for by the same medical system. Some things are outside of our control like how well-funded our local maternity services are or what the priorities of the management teams are. We see headlines in newspapers and form an expectation of what's "normal" from the births we see in television dramas. Pregnancy is a time were we can really start to reflect on how our cultural and family environment has affected us and our expectations and about what is in our control to change within ourselves. If you didn't even know you had choices about your birth we hope this information will get you started thinking about the things inside your control and what choices you really want to make.
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6/4/2024 0 Comments Help your body birthInformed Birth Planning Knowing how your body works can help you work with it and your baby to feel positive and confident in your birthing decisions and experiences. There's no one type of positive birth. Neither is a positive birth only possible if all your hopes and plans come true exactly as you wish. A birth you can look back on and feel positive about means one where you knew you were supported by those around you and when you were given the chance to make the best fully informed decision for you whatever the circumstances on the day. You can have a positive home water birth, a positive planned c-section birth, a positive hospital labour ward active birth, a positive birth with an epidural, any kind of birth that feels like the right choice for you.
We're called Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond because we want everyone to have access to the information they need to make their own decisions. We're there to support you to make your own decisions we're not interested in telling you what those decisions should be. We often talk about shifting your focus from what is out of your control to what is in your control and how this may help you plan for a positive birth regardless of what's in the news or how hospital policies may change. Now it's time to get practical we've been collecting ideas about what practical activities and ideas can help to raise our positive birthing hormones and help us switch off our worried brains and let our bodies get on with the work of labour and birth. What can we do that is within our control. 6/3/2024 0 Comments Normal for a new parent The original title of this blog was normal infant behaviour. But as I started to write it I realised that it’s not enough to just know what to expect your baby to be like. As a team when we talked about what we would include in this post many of us reflected on how it feels to be a new parent, especially for the first time. What would we like expectant parents to know? That parenting is hard & however prepared you feel, it will still potentially hit you like a juggernaut. You feel what you feel - There's no such thing as a perfect parent In modern western society, we're often not really used to being around small babies. When you find yourself pregnant, especially for the first time, there’s so much information on what you should and shouldn’t do it can be very overwhelming and feel like you’re being expected to achieve some kind of perfect parent status without any actual practical support.
You might be one of these people to whom parenting seems to come easy, you might have an instant rush of love as soon as your baby is placed in your arms, feeding your baby may go just as you hope, your baby may sleep for a good four hours every time and they may laugh and gurgle on their play mat whenever they're awake. Or any one or all of those things might not happen and that would also be perfectly normal. When we see parenting represented on TV or social media it can seem like there are two extremes. People are either hashtag blessed with a perfect baby and life or they are comically hopeless at everything. But the reality is everyone struggles sometimes. Everyone is trying to find their own way of parenting. It's completely normal to have some amazing moments and some moments when you just want to crawl back into bed and cry. 6/3/2024 0 Comments Making a birth plan"Your birth plan will only end in disappointment." We hear it said so often birth is unpredictable, you can’t plan a birth, making a birth plan is just setting yourself up for disappointment and feeling guilty. But in our experience of working with families, it is precisely because birth is unpredictable that having a birth plan is so important and can often be the thing that prevents feelings of guilt and disappointment. Maybe people don’t like the idea of birth planning because they think making a birth plan means writing down your ideal birth and thinking positively and then all your wishes will come true. If you can plan a holiday you can plan a birth.
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AuthorPosts by team members who are doulas, antenatal teachers, placenta specialists and birth nerds among other things. Archives
August 2024
CategoriesAll Birth Birth Plan Mental Health Peer Support Postnatal Postnatal Plan |
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