Messages from the Universe

There have been a lot of "things" going on in my life over the past year... Deciding to live our dream and move 6,000 miles away from everything familiar, making that move within 5 months, living in a one bedroom apartment with 2 kids and no oven for almost 5 months while we figured out where to settled down, navigating new bureaucracies and systems - including a health care system that is more foreign to me than anything else, and finally finding a beautiful community and a home - all while being pregnant!

So far, my baby's have been born before that magical "40 week" date, and this time seems to be no different, but the stress has actually been moving my pregnancy along even faster than it's ever been for me. My birthing choices have lead me to homebirth as the best option for me and my family - but safety in homebirthing practices preclude pre-term labor - so if I want to have my baby at home, we have to hang on for at least 3 more weeks! (Bringing us to 37!)

My adventures in bedrest over the past week have actually been enlightening, and I learned something that competely came out of left field, but is so relevant in pregnancy and birth that I had to share it with you.

One of the things I've decided to do to pass the time is to knit a baby blanket, this is my first patterned knitting project - for the knitters out there: until now I've basically been making garter stitch scarves. For you non-knitters, that means I've only been doing one stitch! So for this pattern I had to learn to purl. The pattern goes, knit 4 purl 8... knitting 4 - no problem, but then I got to my first purl and by the end of the row, my string was tangled, the thumb on my left hand was cramping and I was ready to call it a day! Instead of throwing the "blanket" it, I decided to try something else. I went through my yarn stash and found a worsted-weight cotton yarn, and some size 7 needles. I casted on a far amount and just went at it in stockinette stitch (that's where you knit 1 row, and purl the next, it's the one that gives you those neat little "v"s on one side of the fabric!) The first row of purling was just as much of a disaster as the blanket, but after 4 more rows, I was purling like a pro! I made myself a nice little square, bound off and now my baby also has a soft little cotton washcloth!

But that's not the point. The point is that when I first tried that pattern, my hands felt completely awkward, I was in pain, and felt completely discouraged. My truth at that moment was, "I cannot purl. My hands won't do it, I'm not coordinated enough, and there's just no point, because this is one of those (few!) things that I'm just not good at." Two hours later, I was a master purler and the woman who "couldn't do it" didn't exist anymore. My confidence skyrocketted, my pain was gone, and now I've done 12 more rows of the blanket! It looks great!

What does this have to do with birth? Many of us start off our pregnancies, or journey into pregnancy with some fear. Fear around conceiving, miscarraige, morning sickness, pre-natal complications, diagnostic tests and screenings, labor pain, birth, becoming a parent... They may stem from your own previous experiences, second hand stories from you mom or grandmother or friends, books, media - or even straight from your care provider! You may be thinking, "I can't do this! My body just isn't made for it, not every woman can give birth, that's why there are drugs and cesareans," and the internal chatter can go on and on...

But here's the real TRUTH! Pregnancy, labor and birth are just as much a muscular interaction as knitting is, or learning to swim or an exercize or dance routine, or training for a marathon or riding a bicycle. The "pain" associated with childbirth is a muscular pain, not an injury pain like dental work or a broken leg. And just like you wouldn't run a marathon without training - just like you wouldn't take a narcotic towards the end of your aerobics workout to stop the burn - you can train your uterus, you can move with the burn of contractions and work to relieve the intensity. And as you experience these changes in your body, you feel powerful, capable, fearless! (And by the way, feeling a little invincible doesn't hurt when raising kids either!)

The cesarean rate in the US is over 30%. That statistic states that 1 out of every 3 women in NJ is incapable of birthing her baby... how's that for confidence?! If you're not ready to throw the knitted blanket in - if you know you don't want to be in that 30%, but don't know how - I'm here to tell you that you can! And fighting those statistics is as simple as getting the support and information you need to purl that next row! That's what being your Virtual Doula is all about.

Visit me at www.wholebodybirth.com for more information and to find the balanced, evidence-based answers to all concerns, from pre-conception to postpartum!

In service and with love,
~Ayelet

An Answer to Postpartum Depression

I read this article today about a study done in Canada to see if allowing new moms to get more sleep in the hospital would have a positive impact on staaving off PPD.

I wanted to share my thoughts:

It does make absolute sense that getting as much sleep as possible in the post-partum period would stave off ppd. However, I have to disagree on the method. It seems like just another medical "band-aid" to me as opposed to actually looking at the core of the problem and curing that.

In times gone by, a birthing mother's community supported her completely through her birth. There weren't such things as "hired" doulas b/c your mother, aunt, neighbor, sister... was with you and supported you as a doula does now. After the birth, the women of the community would care for the new mother with everything from housework to cooking to laundry to caring for older siblings for at least 6 weeks. Mom and baby did nothing but lie in bed, nurse and sleep.

The reason new mommas don't get enough sleep after birth is because they aren't supported in the same way as we once were.

In my opinion, it is a sad commentary to say that the only way we can re-create that support is by increasing our stay in the hospital - where the nurses are caring for several babies at a time, many are left to cry in their cribs - esp if mom has opted to exclusively breast-feed, and mom is just further from her natural environment, rather than supported in it.

I'm not saying it's an easy fix, and I'm not arguing that we need more sleep! I am saying that the true answer is not having your baby cared for by others - it's educating women and families on the importance of postpartum support. And creating support systems within communities and families to aid new mothers in transitioning to life with a newborn (even if the new baby is not the first).

After Odeliya's birth, my midwife came for the first pp visit the next day. She sat Yoram down and explained to him that I am considered "postpartum" for the next 6 weeks and whatever he has to do to make sure that my job is sleeping and caring for baby - he needs to do it. The risks are not just PPD, also hemmorage, uterine prolapse, and prolonged healing that can occur if mom is expected to go back to her "normal" routine within those first 6 weeks.

If you are at risk for PPD and want to know how to make sure that you have the support you need to be cared for after your birth, email me to set up an intake appointment to assess your needs and set up a plan so that you are looking forward to having your baby - instead of dreading it!

Love,
Ayelet

News from Whole Body Birth!

Hi all!

We're in the process of some major changes both for Whole Body Birth, and on a personal level, and I thought this might be the best way to share it all with you.

On the business side:

• I had a new logo and header designed for the business that really conveys the essence of what Whole Body Birth is all about!
• I also hired a web designer to fully redesign the site and bring all the functionality that I want you to be able to receive from www.wholebodybirth.com!
  
• My exceptional VA, Jacki, is redesigning my newsletter so that I can share relevant articles and information with you twice a month, and also have a format that includes a Reader's Highlights section - where I can feature your stories as well! The first issue will include two stories of courage and perseverence from two incredible women who were willing to trust their intuition and save their babies!
  

On a personal note, we found a lovely home in the northern region of the country, the Golan region, in an absolutely wonderful neighborhood and are in the process of moving in over the next week and a half or so!
And with around 10-12 weeks left until my baby is due, I am finally able to start the process of finding a homebirth midwife, and making the appropriate arrangements for a successful home birth.

With so much going on, and so much in-progress, I wanted to make sure you had a way of knowing how I can support you right now, even though my site is not yet updated!

• As I write this, I am building a resource list, and a network of professionals that can support you from pre-conception through kindergarten! They include: fertility experts, nutritionists, fitness and yoga experts, midwives, doulas, OB/GYNs for both normal and high risk pregnancies, peri-natalogists, NICU nurses, lactation specialists, parenting experts, experts and advisors in special needs children.... If you can immagine you'll need someone, they'll be accessible here! And you can be sure that if they are in my network they are vetted for mother-centered care. They are trustworthy, and informative, and have a balanced and evidence-based practice!
• While I am developing an incredible system to mentor women and couples through conception through birth, I will be hand-tailoring private mentoring packages to each individual woman and couple. For information about that and to set up your Initial Interview, email info@wholebodybeauty.com and put "Initial Interview" in the subject line.

Watch your inboxes for the next issue of Whole Body Birth online ezine to see some other very exciting announcements (like the HUGE world Telesummit coming this September!!)!
And if you're not already signed up to receive the e-zine, you can sign up right on our homepage at www.wholebodybirth.com

I can't wait to hear from you!!

In service and with love,
~Ayelet

We are all individuals! (I'm not)

It's a quote from a Monty Python movie... I do hope you're laughing!

Anyway, the point is that each and every one of us was created as an individual entity and although we are all connected at our source, our bodies and experiences contribute to the uniqueness of our personal journey.

This goes for every aspect of fertility, pregnancy, birth and post-partum as well.

The realization I had today was about gestation times. When you go to your first prenatal appointment, your care provider will ask you for the date of your last menstrual period (LMP) then they do some fancy math and arrive at a due date for you which they attempt to confirm in an ultrasound. If you're lucky, you're care provider may ask you if you know when you conceived or when you ovulated. But most often, your due date is determined as 40 weeks from your LMP.

Who cares? When does this become a problem?

It becomes a problem towards the end of pregnancy: anxiety over going past your due date, impatience, decisions about inductions, etc...

But we all actually gestate on our own individual schedule. And especially if you conceived on any day other than day 14 of that cycle, you will have an inaccurate due date.

So I've developed a theory about my own body over the past three pregnancies, and I am sharing it with you for the sake of showing how each and every woman, and each pregnancy is different.

So after experiencing life in the 3rd trimester 3 times now, I have some insight into the uniqueness of my body's gestational trends.

My babies were both born early - and even Tani who should probably not have been forced to be born at 36 weeks, would not have gone much past 37. And Odeliya was born at 38 wks. Well, here I am at 28wks and just 4 weeks ago I said to my husband that I could see actually making it to 40 wks this time, no big deal.

Then the minute I hit 26 weeks my body went into 3rd trimester mode - 2 weeks early! And since then i've been miserable. Tired, peeing every minute, lots of BH ctrx, low back pain, sciatica, reflux from everything... the works. I think our bodies are only designed to tolerate that for so long!

So my theory is that I just don't gestate for 40 weeks. I make babies that are ready to be born by 38 weeks, b/c my body goes into 3rd-trimester-mode at 26 weeks. And you know what? That's ok. I'm cool with that. It's all good!

Of course, they say 3rd babies will throw you for a loop every time, but we'll see!

I hope this inspires some of you to question your due dates if it is leading to external problems!

Ok, gotto go do some pelvic tilts to get this baby off my sciatic nerve!!

Love to you!
~Ayelet

How to make an "Informed Choice"

What does it mean to truly make an informed choice?

It gets very complicated when applied to pregnancy, birth and parenting, because if we are truly thinking, empowered women then we should be constantly questioning the sources of our information, and the biases they may have.

So attention empowered, enlightened, intelligent women! Here's an example of making an informed choice that is clear and will help you to determine what information you need about your pregnancy and childbirth choices to ensure that they are truly informed choices.

Imagine that you have a really bad cold. You head is fuzzy, you're congested, you haven't slept in 2 days, and your energy levels are pretty darn low.
It's 5pm on day 3 of this cold and you just have to get some sleep! So you go to your bathroom cabinet and open the door. You've tried the saline drops, you've upped your Vit C and Zinc intake, but tonight, the most important thing in your consciousness is just breathing so you can get to sleep. So you reach for the Benedryl.
Now, you know quite well that if you take the antihistamine which will dry you out and let you sleep, you are going to be a basketcase in the morning. It just makes you groggy for 24 hours and you know that.
So now you have to make a choice. You can choose to take the antihistamine and rearrange your schedule tomorrow so that you can take it easy and sleep off the drug, or you can choose to suffer with your congestion for one more night in the hopes that it starts clearing up tomorrow.

If you open your cabinet and grab the drugs and take them because they're OTC, and everyone takes it, without a second thought - and then in the morning you get up and drive to work and get into a fender-bender b/c your strangely and unexpectedly groggy - whose fault is that?
Was it the fault of the antihistamine? Or was it the result of an uninformed choice?!

It is just that simple with choices about your prenatal care, birthing and parenting. If you know all the risks and benefits associated with the choices you make, then you can make choices with confidence, because aside from truly being aware of all your options, you will also be able to make accommodations for any unwanted outcomes!

It is extremely important to note that this goes for making choices about having interventions as well as making choices to avoid them!

If you're wondering how you can get your hands on all that information about risks and benefits of each choice you make, the answers are now in ONE PLACE!! The Whole Body Birth & Baby Inner Circle is coming this week and you can be a part of it! Sign up for updates at www.wholebodybirth.com and be the first to get all the details!! BONUS: You'll also get a copy of the new Report: "The #1 Mistake Couples Make in Pregnancy and How YOU Can Avoid It!"

Love to each and every one of you and blessings on your journey!

Love,
Ayelet

Home is where the infections aren't

I saw an interesting comment recently on a forum about the danger of checking your own cervical dilation. The poster said, "I wouldn't do it yourself just as a precaution for introducing infection and bacteria. Even with the cleanest of hands I would still just let the dr. do it."

When I saw that I realized that there is a misconception in there, and felt the need to enumerate.

Here's the truth: We are always safer from infections in our own home than anywhere else! In the Netherlands the majority of births take place at home attended by midwives. They have the absolute lowest infant and mother mortality rates in the world. A study was done which I can't find now, but I will post it when I do!) comparing rates of infection post-partum in hospital births vs. home births and the hospital group contracted higher rates of infection.

That might seem odd to you, because we think of hospitals as sterile environments, but the fact is that there are sick people in hospitals! And not only that, but the rising rate of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is also increasing the rates of infection in hospitals. This is not to say that hospital staff don't take appropriate precautions to prevent infection, they do. And the difference in the two groups in the study were not very high, if I remember correctly. But it is interesting to note that there in enough foreign bacteria floating around in a hospital environment that there was a difference at all, despite hygienic practice. Especially when most of us might have expected the opposite results, that infection would be lower in a hospital environment.

What's different at home? Aren't there germs at home too? Your toddler has a cold, and your cousin who has the flu just visited, and you were outside working in the garden - so how does that factor into the lower infection rate at home?

Assuming that you have good hygiene practices (like washing your hands when you come in from outdoors, opening windows after your flu cousin leaves...!) the germs in your house are germs that your body (and your baby) are used to. You have developed antibodies to resist infection from the micro-organisms that exist in the space that you live. When you go to a hospital or even your doctor's office, you are exposing yourself to the germs that other people are carrying. Especially in a hospital, which are where people go when they are ill (and carrying all sorts of infections!)

True story: My grandfather passed away a little over two years ago. He was 92 and had never had chicken pox. I was at the end of my pregnancy w/ my daughter at the time. I went to visit him in the cardiac ICU unit where he was being treated. A few weeks later, I called my uncle to arrange to go when no one else would be able to, so that he would have someone there with him. He told me I couldn't go. My grandfather was on quarantine due to a rash that the dr's couldn't or wouldn't identify. I didn't get to see my grandfather again before he passed on, because even after the "rash" had cleared, they would't let me in with a newborn. Later I found out that the unknown "rash" was chicken pox! He had contracted in in the most restricted unit of the hospital!

The purpose of this post is not to advocate homebirth (although I personally choose it for myself, and recommend looking into it if you are a healthy low-risk pregnant woman with no history of complications). The purpose is to dispell the myth that hospitals and doctor's offices are a "safer" environment than your home.

Comments and questions welcome! And if anyone has a copy or a link to that study from the Netherlands, please send it my way!!

Blessings on your journey!
~Ayelet

Happy Birthday to me!!

Hi all! My birthday is coming up on Sunday April 5th! I love birthdays! Especially mine... :-)

This year, I'd like to give a gift to all of you.

I am teaching a FREE teleclass that will guide you through the facts about all the prenatal tests and screenings that are offered to pregnant women. And I'm doing on my birthday. Everyone who registers will not only get the information live, and have an opportunity to ask questions on the call, but you will also get an mp3 recording of the call the next day (great for those of you who may not be able to make it live) and a free pdf report including all the information we are going to cover on the call!

That means that if you are pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or might want to have a family some day - this is information that will be valuable to you now and in the future.

Join me on Sunday night, Apr 5th, invite your husbands, partners and friends to join and let's have a 'virtual' birthday party while also sharing valuable information about your health and the health of you future children!

Register here!
(p.s. those of you on the call will also get a sneek peak at my new "Members Only" site that will be launching on March 30th! There are some very exciting things that will be provided exclusively for members - including live expert interviews, parent spotlights and more! So you won't want to miss that!)