Lethbridge, Canada - Birth, Breastfeeding and Bonding Conference

The doulas of Lethbridge have out done themselves with a conference this past weekend that was outstanding in content, organization, good will and nourishment for body, mind and soul. I attend a lot of conferences and usually find that I would do things differently if I were in charge, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big ways. But this conference was so good that I could not find one single thing that I would have changed - well, okay - maybe the room venue - but just so we could hold more people. They will have to find a bigger hotel ballroom for their 2011 conference because when the word spreads about how good this one was, everyone will want to attend. There was so much going on that I didn't even find out how many nursing mothers showed up at the nursing challenge.


One of the unexpected highlights of the conference was a performance by a local musical family - mother and father and 9 children, seven of whom performed. They were so delightful. And then I was recruited along with other members of the audience to participate in a very cute skit. I'll make another post and put up a few photos. They made me put on a floppy hat, a huge dress and then stuffed a pillow under the dress. Viola!! I was suddenly pregnant and pretended to be an irritable birthing woman in a horse drawn cart. Two lovely women were the horses!! Can't wait to post the photos. What a delight in the midst of serious learning and processing!! Thank you Daleen Bybee, Andrea Johnson and all the volunteers and committee members that made this conference possible.

My flight into Calgary was highlighted by a divine appointment with Ruth Reed, a clinical social worker who stopped me during a work session on my computer to discuss the content of my lecture. Turns out she works for an agency in Edmonton that focuses on childhood trauma. I think I'll be going back to Edmonton in the Spring to present the information about infant brain development, the primary developmental period and waterbirth to not only doulas and midwives, but to social workers, too.

For me the real highlight was one of a serious nature and that was listening and interacting with Nils Bergman, MD, from Cape Town, South Africa. He is a quiet soul, but full of passion, knowledge, enthusiasm, and great concern. He helped us shift the paradigm into seeing the harm that incubators bring to the human brain. Babies need to land on the mother's chest and stay there in the habitat - the place where the infant brain fires the right neurotransmitters and wires itself for the capacity to love, feel safe, be nurtured and feel whole. The skin of the mother responds to the skin of the baby and the two begin a chemical conversation, just like the one that was going on in utero. We know this - every mother does, on an instinctual level, but our birthing and post partum practices continue to separate mothers and babies causing real physical and emotional harm. It is not that skin to skin is safe, it is that incubators are dangerous!! Incubators equate survival of the bodily functions, but not growth and development of the brain. If the brain gets hooked up properly, the rest of the functions for which we depend on incubators (such as lung, heart, kidneys, warmth) work better with more efficiency and expediency. And this does not just apply to underweight or at risk premature babies, but to every single newborn on the planet. What kind of human being do we want to create and what behaviors do we want to foster? It all starts in the minutes after birth.

Do we still get angry or experience hurt or disappointment? Yes. We are only human with human emotions. And with emotions we can change them as quickly as we can change our appearance or hair color. More on that later.
I was returning from a teaching trip in Vancouver, Washington at SW Washington Medical Center where they have instituted a waterbirth program and have expanded it to include the department of Family Practice Medicine. Three of the doctors who train residents joined us for the day with the intention of incorporating waterbirth into the training of Family Practice residents. So, I have to thank Dr's Cooper, Reid and Liu for their attention, suggestions and entheusiasm. I was greatly inspired and grateful for their participatation.

Overcoming adversity and accepting delays or what appear to be set backs in our lives. That was a topic of conversation on one of my flights today.
My answer to this woman was that we can chose in the moment to be in fear and see whatever it is as an obsticle or we can look at it a divine preparation time. Seeing everything through a heart of love - through G-d's heart - gives us the ability to not only live in the moment, but to accept these challenges as a tool for building compassion. I reminded her that the quickest way to heal a negative situation is to pray for the other person with love in our hearts. As difficult as that might sound it works amazingly quickly.

Do we still get angry or experience hurt or disappointment? Yes. We are only human with human emotions. And with emotions we can change them as quickly as we can change our appearance or hair color. More on that later.
I was returning from a teaching trip in Vancouver, Washington at SW Washington Medical Center where they have instituted a waterbirth program and have expanded it to include the department of Family Practice Medicine. Three of the doctors who train residents joined us for the day with the intention of incorporating waterbirth into the training of Family Practice residents. So, I have to thank Dr's Cooper, Reid and Liu for their attention, suggestions and entheusiasm. I was greatly inspired and grateful for their participatation.

2009 a year of travel and talk

It has been quite the year of travel and presenting workshops in all parts of North America. I sat down and counted my saved boarding passes a few weeks ago and realized that I had sat on 57 separate flights since January. I always look forward to the flights because I never know who I am going to be destined to meet and engage. I call my seat mates "divine appointments." This year I have had interesting appointments, to be sure. The conversation when we are cruising at 35,000 feet usually revolves around childbirth in the US. Most people are completely unaware of the state of maternity care in our country, but always in complete agreement that the birth process and immediate post partum care plays a role in shaping the relationship between mother and baby and future behaviors of the child.

I recall a woman from North Carolina crying in the middle of the night as we flew from San Diego to Charlotte, when she realized the impact that birth could possibly have played in the lives of the kindergarten children she has been teaching for the past 20 plus years. She recounted that she had home births, quite by chance, in the Chicago area in the 1970s with Gregory White. The depth of our conversation struck her on the heart level and that is what led to her tears. We prayed together in the darkened cabin with lightening flashes in the sky as our only illumination. There was also a business man from New York on a flight from Chicago to Atlanta who vowed to let every pregnant woman, and every woman thinking about having a baby, know that they needed to investigate their choices and consider a home birth or waterbirth.
The common thread that binds us all to this message is that people understand immediately that there is a connection between the way we are born and the way we develop in our psyches.

The impact of birthing practices on future health and well being becomes obvious to everyone when having quiet personal conversations.
The travel has taken me back to Oregon from my new home in Ft. Lauderdale, to California, Kansas, Ontario, Canada, North Carolina, Arizona, Illinois, Tennessee, Georgia, Bermuda, Washington, and different parts of Florida.
As the fall conferences begin, I look forward to my "divine appointments" and to meeting the wonderful, genuine women and men in each conference and workshop who desire to change the way we welcome babies into the world.