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023 Birth Doesn't Have to be That Way

Are you pregnant and looking for natural solutions and the answers that mainstream prenatal care providers simply don't have the time to discuss with you? 

Sarah Keen interviews midwives, doulas, hypnobirthers, and many more on a quest to understand how we can improve our pregnancies and our births. How? By knowing more, thinking more, questioning more, and trusting our bodies' amazing innate ability to carry and birth a baby!

Alternative Health

Health

Kids & Family

Parenting

Health & Fitness

Dr Stephanie Barto is a crazy busy women. She's a mum of 2, with a third baby on the way, she's a prenatal and paediatric chiropractor and business owner.  In this episode we discuss the importance of self care throughout pregnancy and into motherhood. Stephanie & myself also veer off into the extremely important discussion of expectations. The people around you (and their views on pregnancy/birth) can make or break your outcomes, so choose them wisely! Please support the hosting of the show by donating at https://ko-fi.com/purenaturalpregnancy

021 Look After Your Body and Health in Pregnancy

  Feng Shui Mommy – the book – was sent to me by Bailey’s PR team as a fit for the show. I’ll be honest, when I first looked into it, my thoughts were: “WTF!? Feng Shui is some Chinese home organisation thing, right?” How does Feng Shui Mommy even fit into a book title?! I took a look around Bailey’s website so I could get a feel for her before having her on the show. I’m happy for a good dose of hippy but I’m not an all-out-woo kinda girl. I just couldn’t see how the concepts of house & pregnancy could possibly be linked. Herein lies the genius. FENG SHUI PRINCIPLES Bailey Gaddis is a doula, a hypnobirthing coach and, in a past life, was also a home organiser. But Feng Shui Mommy isn’t about organising your house. It’s about organising your energy. That’s what Bailey does so well in this book, and it’s the reason I wanted to chat to her on the show. She’s all about the energy. Where feng shui in the home focuses more on your outer world, she relates these principles to your inner world. Pregnancy is such a gorgeous time to connect with your baby, but a lot of us really don’t have the balance in mind, body & spirit. Feng shui mommy is about creating your own perspective of birth rather than listening to the fear-based culture that exists. CREATING YOUR BIRTH COMMUNITY If you were able to create a group of people who were supportive of you and your dreams, how much better would that be? Imagine surrounding yourself with people who think like you, who make you feel good, and who can transform the ‘normal’ version of birth. That’s one of the things we talked about, plus a lot more too. We chatted about the 4th trimester, which is something a lot of people don’t seem to think even exists(!) We spoke about the energetic blockages to birth (mothers of pregnant mums, we’re looking your way). And most importantly, we had a good natter about how to clear the negative energy around you. LEARN MORE Find out more about Bailey here on Facebook and you can buy Feng Shui Mommy in bookshops all over the place! ( And you should – it’s great! )    Please support the hosting of the show by donating at https://ko-fi.com/purenaturalpregnancy

020 Feng Shui Mommy - Bailey Gaddis

This episode is a MUST LISTEN for anyone in the UK. The face of birth is changing - midwives are currently regulated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (an oxymoron in itself!), who are proving themselves to be unfit for purpose.  Rather than being responsible for assisting the wants of the women they are providing care for - which has always been the duty of a midwife - under the new regulations, midwives are instead going to have their practice ruled by what their employer (the NHS trust or the private company who they work for) wants them to do. Why does this matter? Well, if you want to give birth outside of the "norm" for that employer then you may be told you're not allowed.  For years, I've seen memes that pronounce "You're not allowed to tell me I'm not allowed" and "My body, my baby, my birth".  Under the current changes, this has the potential to all change. Listen to Katherine explain the situation much better than I can! It really is an eye opening episode.

019 Midwifery Care for Women is Changing (and not for the better!)

Feeling like a failure after my caesarean This is an off-the-cuff episode that I recorded whilst sitting in a hotel room early in the morning. The weekend away was a planned bit of relaxation for myself and my beautiful friend MaryAnne (from the You're Doing Great Mom podcast). We had a few glasses of wine in the bar in the evening and got talking about my first birth with George, which was a planned home birth that turned into an emergency caesarean at 33 weeks. Although MaryAnne knew bits and bobs about my birth, she didn't know the full depth of it. She had no idea that I felt like a failure after my caesarean. I told my family that I felt like a failure, that my body let me down, and most of all that I didn't deserve to have children. My feelings were invalidated and dismissed, because I had a "healthy baby". That's not how it should be. Clearly this had been on my mind all night, because I woke up with the urge to record a heartfelt episode to go in depth into the birth trauma and associated feelings that led to me having PTSD. Challenging core beliefs "As a chiropractor, one of my greatest fundamental beliefs is that the body is just perfectly designed, and here I was with a body that wasn't perfectly designed… that had failed me… that had made it so that I couldn’t have a baby naturally. It really challenged every single belief that I have" I really struggled with coming to terms with what happened, and how I felt about it. Not just the birth, but the initial feelings toward my beautiful baby. As pregnant mums, I think we all sit and visualise how our lives will be, and what kind of parents we'll be too. Nobody sits and thinks to themselves, "I think I'll get separated from my baby and not even coo over a photo of him". But that's the reality for many of us. It wasn't this overwhelming surge of love and affection that I thought it'd be. I was scared. Petrified in fact. It wasn't how birth was meant to be. It wasn't how my birth was meant to be. Letting go of the stigma There's SO much stigma surrounding mental health anyway, but although people talk about PND, I'd never even thought that you could get PTSD unless you were a soldier or the victim of a horrific crime. I believe that it's so important to share stories of birth trauma, PTSD, PND and any other mental health issues surrounding birth & pregnancy. While I'm totally in support of positive birth, sometimes things aren't rosy, and we need to validate that. Feeling like a failure after my caesarean, I've since discovered, is not uncommon. I wish I'd known at the time. So, if you can think of anyone who could benefit from knowing they're not alone in how they're feeling, please share this with them. PS -  Here's where MaryAnne and I chatted for You're Doing Great Mom  Download Episode for Later! Please support the hosting of the show by donating at https://ko-fi.com/purenaturalpregnancy 

023 Birth Doesn't Have to be That Way

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