To Be or Not To Be a Midwife
Posted by doularama | Filed under Uncategorized
Often, after attending a homebirth, I want to become a midwife. I am fortunate to be able to attend them as often as I do. Recently, I made my final decision, for now. I will do some self study work in case, when my children are older, I really want to delve in. Still, I can’t imagine that I would want to do it more than part-time and I would only attend homebirths.
It has struck me lately how I can easily predict how progressed a woman’s labor is and have always been right, but only when she is laboring at home. In the hospital, I am always wrong, every single time. In the hospital, my clients are always struggling, despite the fabulous support I provide, a little more a little earlier on. They’ve left their comfortable homes, taken off their familiar clothes, limited their mobility and often agreed to even more invasive procedures than those. I really should give myself a break. It’s no wonder they seem to be in hot and heavy labor when things are just beginning.
I realized that I do not want to be a midwife because, even at a homebirth, some time I may have to actually deliver a baby. I don’t want to deliver babies. I just want to catch them. I just want to be there with the woman throughout her prenatal journey and watch her as she labors in her uninhibited, instinctual mammalian glory. I don’t want to have to use sutures or syringes afterward either.
Oh, here’s a big one: I don’t drive. Have you seen how much stuff homebirth midwives lug around? It looks like they’re moving to Europe. Most of it doesn’t get used, but if you need it, you want it to be there. I think that many people picture homebirths happening with a long-haired woman who walks in wearing Birkenstocks and carrying a satchel of herbs. I would probably be wearing more fashionable footwear and would need my driver to bring the luggage in for me. Sounds good, actually.
Still, I want to soak in lots of information. I am a midwife at heart and would like to be a midwife in head. Being a midwife in practice isn’t really necessary. That’s my decision right now and I look forward to going back and forth on that one.
Tags: home birth, Homebirth, midwife, midwifery
Labor-Inducing Cookie Recipe
Posted by doularama | Filed under Recommendations
I loved being pregnant and was never in a hurry to be done with it. Many women, however, are eager for labor to begin and so it is easy to find advice on how to induce labor. There are lots of things to try, some safer than others. Ultimately, they won’t work unless your baby is really ready to come out. Spicy food is supposed to induce labor, probably because of the way it will stimulate your bowels. If you’re not prone to heartburn, I say this is a good excuse to eat a plate of cookies. Alas, I do miss the days of pregnancy!
2 ½ C flour
1 ½ t baking soda
¾ t cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
½ t ground cloves
½ t salt
½ t cayenne pepper
8 T butter
½ C sugar
1 C brown sugar
1/3 C molasses
¼ C egg whites
Preheat oven to 350°. Combine flour, baking soda and spices and set
aside. Cream the butter and sugars together. Add the molasses to the creamed
butter, then add the egg whites until combined. Add the dry ingredients
slowly. Once incorporated, roll dough into 1 inch balls and place onto
baking tray. Bake 8-10 minutes. Recipe by Gale Gand.
Cool. Eat. Hope for a baby.
Tags: childbirth, cookie recipe, Gale Gand, inducing labor, labor
Breastfeeding in 1914
Posted by doularama | Filed under News
This poster was part of an early 20th century campaign that was started to reduce the rate of infant mortality. Many babies were dying and something had to be done. The statements made were scary, but true.
Today, just one hundred years later, we find ourselves once again campaigning to bring back breastfeeding. This time, however, not so many babies are dying. It’s not so scary. We’ve gone from, ”Mother’s milk is the only safe food for a baby during the first six months of its life.” to “Breast is Best.”
Tags: board of health, breast is best, Breastfeeding, department of health
Paper or Oshibori?
Posted by doularama | Filed under Parenting, Recommendations
The day my daughter turned six-months-old, she had her first bit of solid food. It wasn’t very solid, but it was officially her first taste of table food. If I had let her, she would have eaten the whole sweet potato. Anyway, at that point I was no longer just dealing with spit-up and poop messes, but with a whole new world of food everywhere. I was prepared, though, with a set of rags for the floor and towels for the table and my very special microfiber towels for my baby’s face and hands.
I bought the microfiber towels at an auto store and, five years later, we’re still using them. They’re soft, absorbent, long-lasting and inexpensive. While we do have a stack of paper napkins at the center of the table, they are only for guests. My children ask for the rag when they need it, I am a neat eater and my husband just doesn’t seem to care much about food on his face and hands.
My children don’t need frequent reminders not to waste paper. They have seen the reason to conserve and they won’t soon forget it. Last year, while vacationing in the Adirondack Mountains, we decided to go for a hike. Really, it was my husband and daughter who decided and I just went along hoping I wouldn’t get any dirt on my boots. We picked up a pamphlet with some directions for area hikes and selected one of the more family-friendly ones, my children being young and me being a priss.
When we got to the site, we found that the directions were somewhat confusing and, after a bit of going back and forth, we decided to go this way rather than that way and off we were on what was obviously the right trail. Well, it would have been the right trail had we intended to trespass on the property of I-don’t-know-what paper company, which is exactly what we were doing.
We’ve gone on nice hikes in the lush “forests” of Van Cortlandt Park near our home in the Bronx and here we were in the wild Adirondacks surrounded by smelly wasteland and oily puddles. It wasn’t a lovely hike, but it was useful in our household as the waste-not lesson goes easily taught with a simple, “Remember the forest in the Adirondacks?”
About a year ago I discovered that school children in Japan have, packed with their bento boxes, moist towels called oshibori. You can just imagine the variety of whimsical cases they sell for them. I remember being given warm, moist towels on airplanes and in restaurants as a child. Those days are gone, but the idea of the oshibori lives on in my family. When packing lunch for one of our outings now, we always include at least one oshibori rather than paper napkins. Not only are we conserving paper, but a wet washcloth is much more handy than a dry napkin even for a neat eater like me.
Tags: adirondack mountains, oshibori, recycling
