Note to reader: I am not a medical care provider. If you are pregnant and find yourself with a fever over 101 degrees or believe you are fighting something more than a seasonal cold, call your midwife or doctor, but also do your own research and take responsibility for your health.

It’s that time of year, when the changing of seasons bring more frequent challenges to our immune systems. This year, with the H1N1 flu a concern, people seem to be taking their kids to the doctors more quickly when they believe something is “not right”.

A common bacterial infection during the winter months is streptococci, an inflammatory infection of the throat. Common symptoms include: a sore throat that is red with white patches, a fever over 102 degrees, fatigue, headache, stomach ache and/or nausea. Antibiotics can be taken to treat the infection, but as Shonda Parker (author of The Naturally Healthy Pregnancy) reports, “Studies have shown that antibiotics taken within the first 48 hours of a strep infection actually increase the risk of a recurrent infection”. New studies also show that taking antibiotics while pregnant may increase the risk of birth defects, but leaving a fever over 101 untreated during pregnancy can also be damaging to the baby. So if you are pregnant and find yourself fighting a strep infection what should you do?

A couple weeks ago, my 14 month old daughter came down with a bordline high fever which she had, with no other symptoms, for three days. It did respond quickly to baby Tylenol, so I was not too concerned, but we never did figure out exactly what caused it. She was very tired, not too interested in eating, although she was otherwise in a cheerful mood. A couple days after the fever broke, she started exibiting signs of a common cold, but looking back in it I’m beginning to wonder if she had a mild strep infection. She had a sore throat, raspy cough, runny nose, didn’t sleep well, etc. and wanted me to hold her all the time. Around the same time I developed a mildly sore throat along with my son (who had a low fever for a day), and discovered that both he and I had the white patches in our throats. We healed quickly on our own though I never sought help from a doctor. I do have a lot of faith in our immune systems to take care of our bodies if we treat them well.

My husband cuddling with Daphney while she rested during her fever

Sometimes, however, our bodies have difficulty recovering from infection, and we should always do our part in supporting our immune systems so they can do their job effectively and quickly. For Daphney, I treated her by making sure she nursed and drank lots of water, ate citrus foods, and got plenty of rest. She recovered fully in a week or so. A pregnant women, however, requires a little more precaution as the developing baby is weaker and more susceptible to consequences of illness than an older child.

Allowing the immune system to conquer the bacterial infection on it’s own is good for your body, but it is important that you do not allow yourself to have a high fever while pregnant. Thus your best bet is, if you can, to avoid getting antibiotics at least until your body has had the opportunity of a couple days to fight the infection, and work on keeping the fever below 101.

Natural remedies and treatments for strep infection, fever, and strengthening your immune system include (but are not limited to):

1. Increase your water intake
2. Stay home and rest as long as you have a fever
3. Eat garlic and onions, or take garlic supplements
4. Eat lots of citris foods. Eating fruits and veggies instead of meat and grains will allow your body to focus its energy on fighting the infection instead of digesting food. Plus fruits and veggies are highest in vitamins and minerals that your body could use right now.
5. Licorice root, fenugreek, cinnamon & ginger, or sage tea
6. Hot liquids
7. Blackberries
8. Zinc, echinacea, astragalus, and vitamin c supplements
9. Lukewarm baths may lower a high temperature, along with cold wash cloths applied to the forehead

For excellent advise on treating common illnesses naturally, PLEASE invest in these two books: The Naturally Healthy Pregnancy, and Mommy Diagnostics, both by Shonda Parker.

In some of my childbirth classes and prenatal visits with my doula clients, we do a little birth art. Expressing your thoughts and feelings through art is useful in several ways, one of which is to learn more about yourself and how you can become the kind of person you want to be.

It is easy, when pregnant, to consume oneself with thoughts about “D-Day” and save thoughts about parenting for later. Yet it is important for you to think about what will happen when you take your new baby home from the hospital or your midwife leaves your house.

One of the topics I give for birth art subject matter is: how do you see yourself as a mother, and what kind of mom do you want to be? Provided that you love your child(ren), I don’t believe there is a wrong answer. All mothers are different, unique, and special, but I would be willing to bet that you have an image in your mind of what makes a good mom.

Keep that image in your mind and then take the next step: what do you see in yourself that will make you a good mom? What characteristics, skills, experiences, and values do you have that will bring you closer to your image of a good mom? I suggest you take some time to think about this one. It is easy to place high esteem on others and only see the faults in ourselves, but we need to see the value in ourselves so that we will be healthy as individuals and be able to utilize those characteristics as we train, lead, and love our little ones.

The third step is to learn from your image. What areas do you need to grow in as a woman, and as a mother? Some things we can only learn and grow in over time, as we meet challenges and reach goals, but to be aware of these weaknesses and want to grow through them, before our children are born, and ideally before they are conceived, will help to keep your goals in mind. This is very similar to labor: remembering that you are having a baby will help you over the physical, mental, and emotional hurdles common to birth.

I am certainly not one to be speaking from years of experience. My oldest child is but three years old. But even now I can tell you that having that image of who I want to be in my mind has helped me to grow closer to my goal. And with that in my heart, I will rise to every new stage of parenthood.

I just found out about a new documentary coming out which will highlight the dangers of widespread formula feeding, as evidence has shown in the United States. I look forward to watching it when it is released, but I’m not sure of the date yet. Here is the documentary’s website.

About eight years ago I discovered who I was. Little did I realize how long it can take to become who you are. Truth be told, i never intended to become a doula, as admirable a cause as that may be. No, I got hooked on home birth and midwifery, and they have had my heart ever since.

I planned to become an apprentice or student right away, but try as I might, it just wasn’t meant to be. I worried for a while that I would never become a midwife, but confirmation through a group prayer meeting assured me otherwise, that I just needed to be patient and wait.

Waiting is, of course, the last thing you want to do when all you want to do is jump in, which is where my doula career began. And for seven years now I have been attending births in hospitals and women’s homes, primarily in a support role.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love helping pregnant women any way I can, but I know in my very being that midwifery is where I belong. So, for the past several years I have also been studying every midwifery textbook I have the spare cash to buy, and building up my store of tools and supplies for whenever that day comes.

As a mother of young children my time is best spent with them, which I feel is one of the reasons I should not be a midwife yet. As highly as I have spoken of my calling to midwifery, my children are truly my first priority, and I am prepared to continue dreaming about midwifery for several more years if need be.

I don’t usually get this personal on my blog. Actually, the reason I was inspired to write about this is because I just received another box of midwifery tools in the mail. Even this brings a smile to my face because, however many more years I have to wait, I am already a midwife at heart.

-> A mother’s story of saving her baby from a heart attack by carrying her in a wrap. A MUST READ!

Hospitals to crack down on induced labors

Medical risks of epidurals

Taye Diggs on Jimmy Kimmel talking about home birth

Why Babies Should Not Sleep Alone

Dr. Sear’s research on co-sleeping

Merck admits Gardasil protects against basically nothing

Benefits of a natural approach to the third stage of labor

Pre and Perinatal Psychology video, part one

Bishop Scores and what they mean

The Labor Market, an article by TIME

Breaking water does not speed labor

Diagnosing Tongue-Tie

An OBGYN’s thoughts on long labors

Concerned about the upcoming flu season? Debating whether or not to get your kids vaccinated? Thinking about the inevitable doctors, and possibly, ER visits? And what about your baby?

Well now it’s time to get excited because there is something cheap, easy, and safe that you can do to prevent sickness! It’s the gift of nutritional food. Replacing foods that weaken your immune system with foods that strengthen your body will go a long way to preventing you and your family from catching viruses. Plus, if you do get sick, healthy eating can lesson the effects of viruses, and eliminate them much faster than anitbiotics (without all the risks)!

Creamy Carrot Soup

I highly recommend the following three books. Any one of them will get you started on your way to a healthier family through the foods you eat:

The Naturally Healthy Pregnancy by Shonda Parker

Disease-Proof Your Child by Dr. Joel Fuhrman

Nutrition for a Healthy Pregnancy by Elizabeth Somer

I bet you can think of at least one woman you know who had a difficult birth because of a baby in an awkward position and she didn’t even know that’s what the hangup was. Her labor was probably long, she may have had back labor, she either took a long time to dilate or couldn’t push her baby down very well once she did dilate, and may have had a forceps or vaccum extraction birth, or was given a cesarean section. Maybe you had a birth like this yourself.

Oftentimes, women with labors like this are diagnosed with “failure to progress” or “baby too big to fit syndrome” (also known as CPD). They are led to believe that they will never be able to have a normal birth because their pelvises are not “normal” or because they have a history of big babies or whatever. In reality, very few women are unable to deliver their babies vaginally because of a tight fit. There are very simple ways in which to avoid this situation or to overcome it if it should start to happen in labor.

In order for you to understand what is happening, I will first describe how the baby normally maneuvers through his mother’s pelvis to be born. Usually the baby is born head first, with his forehead facing the mother’s tailbone. This is ideal because it allows the largest part of the baby’s head (the back of his head) to move under the mother’s pubic bone and slowely open her cervix with minimal stress on either the mother’s bones or the baby’s bones. Here is what it looks like for a baby being born in a perfect position, medically termed “anterior”.

Sometimes, for reasons I will get into, a baby enters into the pelvis in a less than ideal position. Sometimes posterior, with his forehead facing mom’s pubic bone, sometimes facing side ways, or possibly even angled like this. In a normal labor a baby’s head will turn into a few different positions so that it can “corkscrew” it’s way out of the pelvis, it may enter at a posterior position and end at an anterior position, and as long as progress is being made and mom is comfortable this is fine. But if the baby doesn’t want to turn his head he may have a hard time maneuvering the pelvis, or if the mother has bad posture during pregnancy or is in a less than ideal position during labor it may prevent her baby from being able to turn into a good position for birth, and she may have a long difficult labor.

So how does your position during pregnancy affect your baby’s position, and what can you do to encourage him or her to adopt a good position for birth? The way you sit and stand during pregnancy affects what part of your pelvis has the most room, and as your baby gets bigger, he will curl up wherever there is the most room. For example, spending a lot of time in a lazy-boy will cause the weight of your baby’s head to sink toward your spine, resulting in a posterior position. Slouching lessons the amount of space in your abdomen for your baby to have options and he could easily end up lying sideways in your uterus, or with his head at an uncomfortable angle in your pelvis.

Spinningbabies.com has some wonderful tips for encouraging your baby to turn head down and face backwards by the time your labor starts. And if for some reason labor starts with baby in an awkward position, these same tips can help to turn him in labor to make pushing more effective and less difficult for you.

These tips include:

1. Use good maternal positioning – Rest Smart
2. Move symmetrically, don’t twist to view a computer, lift or lean to hold a child. Balance by shifting to the other side when you do favor a side.
3. Shift with the Rebozo – you need a friend to help with the Rebozo scarf
4. At least one forward leaning inversion every day – see the one I mean
5. Pelvic exercises – also known as kegals
6. Drink plenty of fresh, clean water and eat nutritious foods that nourish your muscles and ligaments. Have the required amount of Vitamin D, E, C, and minerals such as Selenium, Magnesium, Calcium and Iodine. Fatty acids and Omega oils help, too, by helping your hormones.
7. Learn how balance, gravity, and movement affect your baby’s position

Starting early in pregnancy, or as soon as you read this, will increase your chances of having your baby in a favorable position for an easier birth. If you are unsure of where to start, call your doula or another person who understands fetal positioning to help you get started. For more information on how fetal positioning affects birth, I highly recommend this book by Penny Simpkin.

If you are living in the Oxford Hills area in Maine and expecting a baby in 2010, please contact Birthwise Midwifery School for your doula services. I’ve decided to take the year off from attending births for this coming year so that I can devote more time to my growing family (this of course does not apply to close friends or family who may be expecting). This was not an easy decision to make, but I believe it is for the best.

Birth a Miracle Services will still be offering childbirth preparation classes, birth counseling sessions, the Babymoon Package at King’s Hill Inn, doula teas, and of course, adding resources to this blog.

I highly recommend the Birthwise Doula Program because it is offered by the school’s midwifery students who are very passionate about serving women during birth. Their service is low cost – only $50 for two prenatal visits, continuous labor support, and one postpartum visit in your home. They also offer a postpartum doula service for $10 an hour, for a minimum of 4 hours. Each of the midwifery students has completed a doula training program, usually DONA or ALACE, and have attended home and/or hospital births.

To learn more about the Birthwise Doula Program, here is their contact information:

Birthwise Midwifery School   24 S. High Street   Bridgton, ME 042009   (207) 647-5968    clinicaldirector@birthwisemidwifery.edu   www.birthwisemidwifery.edu

When I became pregnant with my first child I knew exactly how I was going to give birth. He would be born at home, possibly in a birth tub, surrounded by my trusted midwives and my family. But it was not to be.

Five weeks before my due date I developed mild hypertension, and I was having trouble raising my iron level. Although my liver was showing no signs of developing preeclampsia, my midwife was still very concerned, so at 38 weeks pregnant, I found myself having to decide what hospital I would birth at, and who would catch my baby. (More on my first birth story here)

A lot of people think that stories like mine are no big deal. Most babies are born in the hospital anyway, right? Thankfully I still had a couple of weeks left to process what was happening, to mourn the loss of my ideal birth, and to decide what my next best choice would be, but many women are not that lucky.

I recently had a conversation with a previous client of mine whose plans to have a water birth at home turned into a cesarean hospital birth during the course of her labor. She had no time to learn about cesareans, to decide who would help her to give birth, or to coem to terms with the change emotionally. And as predicted, well-intentioned family and friends made it sound like it was no big deal. Her baby was healthy, right? She recovered from the surgery right? It’s only birth after all, you have a whole life left of parenting!

Comments like these not only prevent women from heailng from difficult births, they prolong the damage. When we pass off their births we make women feel guilty for not being able to “get over it” or “move on”. Telling a woman who had an unexpected cesarean, a home birth transfer, or a difficult vaginal birth that she should just be greatful for her baby is the equivalent of telling her she is mentally unhealthy and a bad mom to boot.

Courtesy of http://birthlove.cyclzone.com/pages/csec_vbac/meghan.html

 Of course, comments like these come from well-meaning people, they just don’t know what else to say. So here’s a message for you, if you know someone who lost something at their birth, or if you are that women: It’s okay to grieve! Cry, yell, cuss, complain, speak against it, write or draw out your thoughts and feelings, tell someone who will listen to you. They can’t fix it, but it needs to be acknowledged that birth is important to women and babies.

Although not so for some women, the majority feel that birth is one of the deepest and most meaningful expressions of their femininity. Having one’s baby cut from their womb, or pulled from out of them (whether necessary or not) leaves them feeling incomplete and wounded. These are normal feelings not to be ignored, surpressed, or underestimated. This rite of passage called birth must be acknowledged for what it is: a highly physical, emotional, spiritual, and yes, sexual event.

You cannot move on or be truly greatful until you have allowed yourself to admit and mourn the loss of your birth. And healing will come. That birth experience will never be better, but you will no longer feel guilty for admitting that.

And perhaps if you have another child your next birth will go differently. After my son was born I went through a lot of emotional work so that my next pregnancy and birth would be different. I am proud of myself for that, and my daughter was born at home as planned.

Please read this woman’s story about healing from a difficult birth.  She describes it much better than I ever could.

For the longest time I have been under the impression that the United States’ infant mortality rate is on a downward slide, already much worse than most all other developed countries. The NYT recently reported it as being number 29 on the list.

Most of the top countries attribute their success in few babies dying to the high use of midwives and home birth with good access to OB’s. But my whole belief in this just got turned on it’s head. I recently found a reference to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) who discourages comparison of world-wide infant mortality rates because they are all registered differently.

Some countries count any baby born over 1 pound, others count babies over 12 inches long, others register babies born after 26 weeks of pregnancy, and in the US we count any baby born alive after 22 weeks, I believe. That would mean we would have more babies dying just because of the way we count live births.

Half of infant deaths are due to preterm birth, and a report by U.S. News and World Report in 2006 showed that once you adjust for birth weight our babies the US infant mortality rate is comparable to Norway’s, which we all know is one of the lowest. The high preterm birth rate is probably due in part to higher use of fertility drugs in this country than in other countries.

As of this writing, a healthcare bill is being pushed through Congress which would presumably take effect in 2013. The purpose of H.R.3200 – America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 is essentially to broaden healthcare coverage to those who are not currently insured. It sounds good at first, but the huge debate cross country over this issue has been for good reason. OpenCongress summarizes that this bill includes: “a new government-run insurance plan (a.k.a. a public option) to compete with the private companies, a requirement that all Americans have health insurance, a prohibition on denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions and, to pay for it all, a surtax on households with an income above $350,000″.

The consequences of allowing the government to have such large scale control over our healthcare would be devastating to our economy, and some countries with national healthcare plans such as this are even backtracking to an open-market system. Yet some well-known natural birth advocates and maternity care providers are pushing hard for a system like this to be put in place in the United States. They argue that countries like Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden have some of the best outcomes world-wide in maternity care because of the benefits of a national healthcare system; primarily, close working relationships between doctors and alternative healthcare providers, and an established role for home birth and midwives. So the question is, do the presumed benefits of a national healthcare plan outweigh the large-scale consequences?

The answer lies in taking a much closer look at the methods of comparing the United States to countries with national healthcare plans. Using infant and maternal mortality rates, countries are compared to each other to determine who is offering the best healthcare. As I just showed, comparing global infant mortality rates is a highly inaccurate way of comparing healthcare systems, and when you take a closer look at the numbers, the United States is doing far better than many care to admit.

Of course, the countries commonly referred to when discussing who offers the best maternity care are those which have national healthcare plans, but they do have certain features about their maternity care which probably would have a beneficial effect on our own, namely, the high value they place on well-trained home birth midwives, and access to home birth for every healthy woman. And while I look forward to the day when home birth is valued by more Americans, we can be assured that passing this healthcare bill or any comparable bill, will not improve our access to or quality of healthcare, it will not create better access to home birth for our women, and it will absolutely not improve the maternity care our women are receiving.

So, after spending all this time talking about the United States’ infant mortality rate being worse than most other developed countries, I now have to backstep. Something hadn’t felt quite right about it, and I realize now that using a biased organization like the World Health Organiztion for such an important resource is really not a good idea. I will not defend our current infant mortality rate, which should of course be improved, but we can no longer use the reasoning that countries with higher home birth rates have lower rates of death, and we absolutely cannot argue that countries with national healthcare plans offer the best maternity care, because it is just not true.

Instead, we should refer to accurate studies which show the safety of home birth in comparison to hospital birth, and make efforts to improve our current maternity care system based on a free market. More on this in my book, Inspired Birth.