What is a doula? What is a midwife? Jo Hunter and Nadine Richardson founder of She Births® in conversation

S3, Ep 5: Jo Hunter, Midwives and Doulas

The She Births® Show is a place that will inspire your birth, evolve your parenting and help you live a life you love.

Nadine Richardson, founder of She Births®, hosts a collection of conversations with special guests about better births, a philosophy of connected parenting and conscious, healthy living.

Each season includes topics for not only parents and parents-to-be but fellow birth professionals. 

She Births® is a scientifically verified childbirth education program (BMJ, July 2016). It combines evidence-based and holistic methods to provide families with the knowledge and skills that empower a better birth and easier transition into parenthood.

Founded in Sydney in 2008 by Nadine Richardson, Director of The Birthing Institute, She Births® is available as a Weekend Course in Australia and as an interactive Online Program accessed by many all over the world. Download the She Births® app and enjoy our free resources. 

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www.shebirths.com

Health & Fitness

How intuition expands talent, creativity, confidence & happiness

I have been waiting a long time to record this podcast! To say I am excited about the Intuition Process for children is putting it mildly. 


I believe this program, with its teachings and the power and integrity of the organisation behind it, has the ability to change the world and, as my guests say, contribute to world peace. The documentary and the Australian research are also going to be amazingly powerful.


So, let me begin by asking you a few questions…
Do you believe in intuition? How often do you access it?
Are your children more intuitive than you?
Do you think it is important for them to harness their intuition?
Today, I have Mala Sundareshan, International Program Director of the Intuition Process, with me. Mala works for the global Art of Living non-profit organisation founded by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and is currently leading the teacher training and rollout of the Intuition Process worldwide.


I also have a dear friend and documentary filmmaker, Michael Collins. Michael is a four-time Emmy-nominated director and producer and the founder of Thoughtful Robot Productions. His films are highly impactful, have been screened globally over the last two decades, and have even changed laws!
Mala and Michael share their experiences and insights into following and teaching children aged 5 to 18 techniques to harness what seems like magic or superpowers. 
The Art of Living says the Intuition Process wakes up our latent intuitive potentials through specific techniques of brain activation and meditation. Allowing children to access, cultivate and maintain their inherent intuitive capacity.
“Intuition is the faculty of knowing or understanding something without the need for conscious reasoning or proof. As a culture, we have learned to follow our rational thinking as we go through our daily lives. We pay little attention to our inner voice, our gut feeling, that instinctual form that goes beyond our reasoning layers.
We were all born with a naturally intuitive ability to perceive beyond our senses. As we grow, our culture and education obstruct us from developing our capacity to access our inner potential, especially when we need them most.”


Today, we talk about:

 If intuition is an essential aspect of human experience?
 If intuition can be developed and honed over time?
  How intuition differs from coincidence 
  How intuition might change the education system? (Fingers crossed for this one!)
  What children are gaining from learning the process of intuition and how that unique expression occurs in each child.
  And the research into the mechanisms of intuition by Joel Pearson, world leading neuroscientist based at UNSW, Sydney, Australia.



This will create a revolution in not only Artificial Intelligence but Absolute Intelligence!


I hope you enjoy.
Nadine x


#intiution #shebirths #podcast #newepisode

Links
https://thoughtfulrobot.com
https://www.artofliving.org/au-en/intuition-process
https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/joel-pearson



S9 E4: Teaching children intuition will change the world

Hello, and thank you for joining me for today's podcast. 
Whether you're pregnant, you've got a baby in your arms or a child at school. Whether you are a birth worker or an allied health practitioner, you will find this conversation very interesting. 
I believe it is important to have conversations with people who think differently, especially those who are curious. People who speak their minds and research outside the mainstream narrative. 
Dr. Stuart Fischbein has been an obstetrician in America since 1986. After working in the standard medical model at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, California, he now practices community-based birthing. He works directly with home birthing midwives through www.birthinginstincts.com to offer hope for those women who prefer and respect a natural birthing environment and cannot find supportive practitioners for VBAC, twin and breech deliveries. He is an outspoken advocate of informed decision-making, the midwifery model of care and human rights in childbirth, receiving the 2016 “Most Audacious” award from HRIC. 
He has spoken internationally on breech and vaginal birth after cesarean section. He has appeared in many documentaries, including: “More Business of Being Born”, “Happy Healthy Child”, “Reducing Infant Mortality”, “Heads Up: The Disappearing Art of Vaginal Breech Delivery” and multiple YouTube videos discussing birth choices and respect for patient autonomy and decision making.
He has the goals of improving collaboration amongst the differing professions in the birthing world and the re-teaching of the core skills, such as breech and twin vaginal birth, that make the speciality of obstetrics unique.
One of the most challenging conversations I have during She Births is informing people that your body is your own and only you can decide what to do with it, even during pregnancy and birth. 
The second uncomfortable truth is that so-called evidence-based care is a term that gets bandied about a lot in search of status and prestige and power, but in truth, health care varies from practitioner to practitioner. From hospital to hospital. From country to country. 
In today's conversation, Dr Stu and I explore how the medico-industrial complex is more likely to be influencing the policy and therefore the suggestions, trickling down into advice and maybe even coercion that is given to us during pregnancy and birth. 
Different policies flow down to us as consumers from the private companies that own the hospital as to whether we are allowed to birth in water for example. An insurance company that covers an OB may be the determining factor as to whether you are offered a VBAC. 
We need to do our own research and choose. Just because someone says so, does not make it so for you. 
Right now we are living in an age of disinformation and misinformation, and as the powers that be seem to continually try to confuse us and divide us. We're going to have to come back to ourselves. 
We talk about

 the medico-industrial complex 

 How informed consent is not able to happen in our current model of healthcare

  Medical induction, the reality of due dates and the ARRIVE trial

  Natural breech births and other so called high risk mums being offered more choice

  The risks of multiple ultrasounds, the label of growth restriction and realising what ais happening redefining risks within maternal foetal medicine

  How continuous monitoring of labour and tracking the time of labour increases c-section rates


And finally my favourite part is seeing this system vs consumers as a Star Wars battle. We also lean into a vision that has hope.
I hope you enjoy today’s conversation with Dr. Stu - sending lots of love across the ethers to you and your family.
If you feel passionate like I do, and you want to help families have better births then reach out and join me in our upcoming training. Become a wise woman of birth and help others find their own way. I also will be holding a Wise Woman Retreat towards the end of the year. 



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S9 Ep3 What does a new model of healthcare look like? With Dr Stu.

What happens to your brain as a mother or father?
‘Intuition is the parental brain working’ with Neuroscientist Rocio Zunini


Welcome, dear listeners, to 2024. I am so happy that this season of the podcast has decided to be about intuition. It is one of my favourite topics, and I believe it is also one of our superpowers as mums. 
This season I will be exploring intuition and of course other topics with professionals and parents around the world. 
Today's podcast is with Rocio Zunini, a neuroscientist with a Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa and a mother of two.
She is the founder of Newborn Parents, which was born out of a fusion of her two passions: the brain and the relationship between parents and their infants. 
She educates parents and professionals about parental brain science so that they can take advantage of the profound brain changes that accompany matrescence and patrescence. 
She is also an advocate for nurturing infant sleep.
She firmly believes that when parents and professionals learn about the power of the parental brain, they can create a path for a lifelong nurturing relationship between families and their babies.


I couldn’t agree more! And birth is the big bang beginning of this relationship.


Today with Rocio we explore the parental brain and the amazing changes that occur across pregnancy, birth and postpartum…And I mean in my experience, when does matrescence ever end? Our children, if we maintain a relationship with them and want to have quality connection then we have to continue adapting and growing. They continue to keep us on our toes.


I'm hoping I might even convince Leroy to come on this season, even though as a philosopher, he doesn’t actually believe in intuition I think it would be fabulous to hear about quarter-life and his 21st birthday experience. Let me know if you would like to hear about that. For me I was so emotional I could hardly give the speech. 


Anyhoo! Today we discuss

 How the parental brain is highly dependent upon experience and environment

 How parents and infants synchronise, and children borrow our nervous systems

 How we can nurture, embrace and help this process of brain development

 Why it is so important to take care of the Information we are putting in, not just food

 Why we often feel anxious as new mums, and how to manage this

 Did you know that because the brain is more malleable, you can actually benefit more from yoga and mindfulness

 We also describe the brain networks that change during matrescence, which are: reward, protector, emotional and empathy systems

 The importance of joy and mutual delight!


I love how brain science reiterates so much of what we practice in our Soul Mama Circles, which start up again in February. 100% of mums say that they loved the process and found it priceless btw.


Also, the wisdom and importance of She Births to utilise both bottom-up and top-down approaches in education.
So I hope that there will be joy in your new year, whenever or wherever you are listening to this podcast.


I love hearing from you. Leave us a review, send us an email and let us know what you think and feel, please.
We have so many exciting things to share this year. My new one-day Masterclass is a hybrid learning program with an online course. It is a one-day live program plus Zoom workshops for Q&A; and allows me to include some of my new teachings about intuition, embodiment and matrescence.
Our new She Births® Guide and Educator training is launching again. We have a vision to reach so many more families, but we need your help. If you are passionate about helping restore the sacredness of birth in your community and helping others have beautiful births, then reach out.


Links
Rocio Website
www.newbornparents.net
Weekend and Masterclass dates:
https://shebirths.com/weekend-birthing-classes/events/
Soul Mama Circles
 https://shebirths.com/mothers-groups/
Guide and educator training 
 https://shebirths.com/birth-professionals/
Email 
support@shebirths.com




S9, Ep2 Intuition is the parental brain working with Neuroscientist Rocio Zunini

⁠SheBirths.com.au ⁠ | ⁠She Births® Online Courses⁠ | ⁠ She Births® Weekend Courses


Maiden to Mother Birth Story : The power of slowing down with Tayla & Jaime


Today's podcast is with Tayla and Jaime, a She Births® couple who gave birth on the south coast of NSW about 10 minutes before their midwife arrived.
We share a lot of laughs in this podcast and a lot of insights and truths. They are a really fun and playful couple. I was recently inspired by their rewilding of their relationship recently.
Tayla took pregnancy as a time for really slowing down. Which I believe is one of the most important things we can do, in resistance to our hyper productivity culture but also because it is a step towards being able to listen and receive all the wisdom and gifts from both our instinctual bodies and our intuitive higher self during pregnancy.
As we move into more being and less doing there is more stillness and therefore silence. We can tune in and listen to the way our bodies and all of Nature around us communicates with us continually 
I love how Tayla could feel the subtle moments when her maiden self was arising and dying throughout labour. And I love how much laughter these two bring to their life. Why can’t birth also be fun and playful?
We talk about

 The shadow and light sides of our maiden selves

 The victim and drama triangle we can get caught up into

 Making love to initiate labour

 Creating a birth altar that connects us with our red thread and the power of mother blessing ceremonies

  The different type of support we receive from dads and doulas, especially during pushing 

  My knowledge of the psychic imprint on a child at crowning from the atmosphere in the room


We also discuss the superpowers and gifts from birth such as intuition, intimacy and the awesome strength and competency as a mother all of which I am writing more about in my upcoming book.
As this is our final podcast episode for 2023 I want to thank you all for listening and engaging with my work here at She Births. 
It has been so nourishing to meet mums post partum who said they learnt and were so inspired by the birth stories we share here.
Also, by the openness and vulnerability I share too.
I look forward to a new year ahead and sharing some very new and exciting projects and offerings. 




S9, Ep1 Maiden to Mother Birth Story

SheBirths.com.au  | She Births® Online Courses |  She Births® Weekend Courses


What is a Private Midwife? Should you have one? What is relational based care? How to choose a provider for your beautiful birth... 


Today's podcast is with Liz Wilkes who is the Managing Director and Founder of My Midwives.
My Midwives was established in 2010 and has supported thousands of families. 
They are change agents in the maternity system offering true individualised care that we so often talk about at She Births.
My Midwives is the first midwifery practice in Australia to admit women to hospital with Medicare rebates and also the largest private midwifery practice.
They provide continuity of care through pregnancy, labour, birth and postpartum. 
Their care covers all the normal visits and aspects from booking into hospital, doing blood tests and scans etc.
They will remain a mothers primary care provider but work autonomously and collaboratively with a range of hospitals and practitioners. 
They have exceptional outcomes and their data will be published very soon.
Liz Wilkes was one of the first Medicare provider midwives in Australia and conducted the first Medicare rebated birth.
LISTEN ON APPLE  |  LISTEN ON SPOTIFY
Most women I know will make a phone call quickly after they pee on a stick and choose whatever care provider their latest friend or perhaps their GP tells them, without actually knowing that outcomes can vary greatly in different models of care. 
This podcast is designed to help you and any of your pregnant friends out there understand the different models of care and guide you in choosing the best place for you. 
Because finding out midway through pregnancy at a She Births course can sometimes feel really deflating and frustrating.
Today we talk about...
→ The spectrum of care
→ The importance of relational care
→ What research tells us is gold standard
→ How midwifery continuity is different to obstetric continuity
→ How Liz started My Midwives and what makes it so unique
→ How collaboration and advocacy are key to your better birth. How midwives, doulas, and hospitals interact well together to help avoid unnecessary inductions or other medical interventions.
→ Birthing on Country care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families
→ Freebirthing - what it is and isn't
→ Giving yourself permission to shop around and trusting what you feel is the best care for you
I hope you enjoy this very special episode.
Nadine xx 
She Births®
PS. Join me this month in Sydney for an in-person She Births® Weekend Course! Only TWO spaces left! 




LINKS
My Midwives : https://www.mymidwives.com.au/


Instagram My Midwives : https://www.instagram.com/mymidwives/


She Births® Holistic Pregnancy Guide : https://shebirths.com/pg

S3, Ep 5: Jo Hunter, Midwives and Doulas

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