Wild Blooms Birth Support & Postpartum Goods

This is an excellent answer to a question that gets asked often.

Love this image taken at Roots, one of my favorite birth centers in my hometown of Minneapolis. All that relaxed excitement immediately after giving birth. ❤️

What’s the difference between a midwife and a doula?

A midwife is a health professional who provides holistic medical care during prenatal visits as well as throughout labor, birth, and postpartum recovery. Midwives can also be your primary provider for annual exams, contraception, and general health.

A birth doula is an individual who assists a birthing person during pregnancy and labor. Doulas also provide support to the family after childbirth.

At Roots, we LOVE doulas! Their role is essential as they provide emotional, physical, and informational support to clients, while midwives perform the clinical tasks of monitoring the health and safety of the birthing parent and the baby.

Midwives and doulas make a great team where everyone has a job to support the end goal of a healthy and happy family.

📸: Gather Birth Cooperative: Birth Support , Birth Photography,...

YES. The best outcomes take place where there is fluidity and respect between providers and patients. This is especially true in a transfer situation.

Dear Maternity Care Providers Who Work in a Hospital: ________________________________________________

Stop being critical of, condescending to, and judgmental towards people who come into your hospital to receive care after transferring from a home birthing environment. You’re not convincing anybody that hospital birth is the best choice by being hostile and terrible to the people who show up in an emergent situation from a home birth. What you’re doing is you’re teaching people that it’s not safe to seek care.

Your inability to receive home birth transfers with compassion and integrity is reflective of your unwillingness to practice humanity-centered and trauma-informed care. You’re taking a person who is probably at the cliff’s edge of the most traumatic and vulnerable experience of their life, and you’re kicking them when they’re down.

You’re not changing anything, you’re making home birth more dangerous. People aren’t going to stop birthing at home because the doctor, upon transfer, shamed them for making the choice to birth outside of the system. No, what they’re going to do is stop seeking care.

Stop treating the people who show up from home births as train wrecks. They’re not train wrecks, they’re responsible. Birth happens anywhere. And everywhere. Everybody deserves the opportunity to choose how they would like to enter in to parenthood; how they would like to birth.

Now that choice may not reflect your professional opinion or what you would choose for yourself. But medicine has no place for personal opinions and personal views to influence the care you provide. The hippocratic oath eludes to the idea of “do no harm” over its many paragraphs outlining morality in medicine.

That doesn’t just mean do no harm physically, to someone’s sick, injured, or dying body. No, people are far more complex than bodies. Do no harm means: do no harm to their psyche, their spirit, their emotional experience. Birth is meant to be a rite of passage, a critical juncture between ‘life before’ and ‘life after.’ A point of profound transformation, regardless of how they arrive at the gateway. Birth is sacred and holy, in all of the messy ways it shows up.

It doesn’t quite matter what circumstances led to the transfer, it doesn’t really matter what happened until the point they show up at your emergency room or on your maternity care floor. What matters is how you’re receiving them. What matters is that you’re able to give them compassionate, kind, competent care despite how they’ve chosen to give birth.

When you do anything less that that, you’re bullying. Stop it. There’s no place for bullies in medicine.

As someone who has supported many families in their journey of birthing at home, the one thing I can tell you is that those families care deeply about the safety and well-being of their child. They are willing to go completely against status quo, to be the lone wolf, the outcast in order to achieve and offer their child the birth experience that they think is best.

Home birthers aren’t crazy. Home birthers aren’t irresponsible. Home birthers aren’t science deniers, or new age lunatics. Home birthers are people. People that you agreed to support, care for, and protect when you set foot on this path.

When you’re compounding their trauma by indulging in your own ego-centered perspective on how they’re chosen to live their life and birth their children you’re not serving anyone, you’re causing harm.

Please, stop it, now!

When somebody walks into your hospital or arrives in an ambulance in a state of crisis after birthing or attempting to birth their child at home, look upon them with a warm, open heart and kindness in your eyes, and help them navigate through the trickiest waters they’ve ever found themselves swimming, or nearly drowning, in. See them to the other side.

And if you can’t do that, choose to practice medicine on another floor. Or take a sabbatical and sit with the people. Listen to their stories. Find your humanity, and then return to serving with a humbled heart.

(Photo: an exhausted mom (me) who transferred to birth at the hospital after receiving alternative care her whole pregnancy. This is the face of a mother in a shock and trauma response, trying to care for her premature infant, while being faced with intense hostility from hospital staff including blatant bullying, neglectful care, and a report to the State Child Protective Services)

Terrific news for western ND!

We've added a new Traditional Birth Attendant (aka midwife) to our group!

Jade is a traditionally trained birth attendant serving women in Western ND. She primarily serves women in Williston and Dickinson and their surrounding areas; she is not currently attending in Bismarck.

We have limited availability for clients beginning in late-August. Inquire within: [email protected]

The supplementing cycle can secretly sabotage your breastfeeding efforts. It is important to understand baby’s hunger cues to determine whether or not they are getting enough. More often than not, Mama is just right for baby.

Have you heard of the supplementing cycle?
Share your experience! Were you able to go from supplementing to exclusively nursing? What helped? What kept you from reaching your breastfeeding goals?
We believe that combo-feeding is breastfeeding and that some families do need to supplement. We are still here to help!
Are you concerned that you aren’t making enough? Contact an Leader near you for free, personalized support. Find them at lllusa.org
Find more info at: https://lllusa.org/is-my-baby-getting-enough-milk/
[Image: Close up photo of newborn baby legs. Text: The Supplementing Cycle. Many families begin to supplement because they are worried that they are not producing enough to breastfeed exclusively. If you wish to continue nursing, it is important to be aware of and avoid the supplementing cycle. Text positioned around a circle with arrows going from Feel like you aren't producing enough to Supplement with formula to Baby feels overfull and sleeps more to Baby nurses less to Body produces less milk back to Feel like you aren't producing enough.]

As the first round of COVID-19 vaccinations took place yesterday, many of you have reached out to ask my thoughts, so I wanted to take a moment to share what I know so far.⁠
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There is a tremendous amount unknown about the virus, the cure, and even prevention. With a vaccine coming to market so quickly, there are inevitably uncertainties, including about safety and efficacy. As with all pharmaceuticals -- adverse effects often don’t come to light until post-market surveillance of many users over a length of time. Without being able to rely on years of clinical studies and longitudinal outcomes tracking there’s a lot we just don’t know at this time. Whether to receive this vaccine is a matter for deep personal consideration and decision-making, weighing personal concern and lifestyle, risks, and a very real and very serious global pandemic. Therefore, as with all vaccines, I do not share what I will do, or what I think you should do.⁠
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For pregnant and breastfeeding mamas, however, the guidance is more clear.⁠
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According to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), “there are no data as yet on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy, either from human or animal studies. Given the lack of evidence, JCVI favours a precautionary approach, and does not currently advise COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy.”⁠
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For breastfeeding mamas, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG) says that, “women who are breastfeeding are also currently advised not to have the vaccine”. Mamas at high risk - including frontline workers - are encouraged to consider the vaccine when they are done breastfeeding.⁠

ACOG recommends they not be withheld from pregnant or BF’ing women who meet criteria for vaccination based on benefits outweighing risks.

FDA cautions pregnant and breastfeeding moms against getting the vaccine due to lack of data.

As data evolves, I’ll update you.⁠ACOG recommends they not be withheld from pregnant or BF’ing women who meet criteria for vaccination based on benefits outweighing risks.

Both of these statements have been supported by the FDA that cautions pregnant and breastfeeding moms against getting the vaccine due to lack of data. As data evolves, I’ll update you.⁠
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PS. This post is meant for your information and support - vaccine infighting, trolling, etc., will not be tolerated and any such posts - and those who post them - will be removed from this page. Please be respectful - these are scary and uncertain times, with tough decisions to make. This page is about education, community, and caring.

There are silver linings to everything!

Pandemic hospital restrictions reduce visitors, increase breastfeeding success INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — There's a possible bright side to the COVID-19 restrictions in hospitals. Some doctors are seeing more success when it comes to new moms breastfeeding. Doctors at IU Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis said without as many hospital visitors, they're noticing moms having

From the time we’re little, we’re imprinted with an idea of what birth is like. We hear our mom telling our birth story. We hear friends and family recounting birth stories. We see mamas yelling and screaming in anger and in pain in movies. And when we’re pregnant, it’s as if we’re wearing an invisible invitation that says “please, please tell me your worst birth story!”. Then on top of it, if you’re a ‘natural mama’ you’ve educated yourself about modern obstetrics and some pretty raw statistics - important to know - but scary.⁠
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So it’s no wonder that so many women go into pregnancy and labor afraid - afraid of what they’ve heard, what they’ve seen on the TV, and what’s going to happen to them. But this fear is not yours, mama, and it is not your baby’s either. It belongs to a culture that has taken this sacred life experience and intentionally marketed it back to us as a medicalized, controlled, scary procedure that only they can save you from. Of course, yes, sometimes s**t happens - I’m not ignoring that - and I became an MD to add western medicine to my toolkit - but that’s not all that birth is about. In fact, that’s mostly not how birth goes when natural birth physiology is supported in healthy women.⁠
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It’s also natural to have some fear about the unknown. But getting stuck in fear about old stories, stories that aren’t your own, and beliefs about birth that are medically manufactured is actually counterproductive to birth physiology: fear stops labor. It antagonizes oxytocin which is necessary for birth.⁠
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Fear doesn’t have to be a part of your birth. At the 🌟link below you will find a journaling exercise I created to help you unpack hidden birth beliefs and allow your birth story to be written on a blank slate, free from fear. Please share it with any woman in your life - pregnant or not - who wants to see birth in a whole new way.⁠
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xx, Aviva⁠

https://avivaromm.com/deserve-birth-support-resources/?fbclid=IwAR1pOdbMI6txqFIrBaHQ0D8uRdIGBnINJ-lcl8G0lOc8oHzu5YnXPa5A3nY
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Amen.

This is so true.

It’s said that during labor, a woman leaves her body, traveling to the stars to find her baby’s soul to bring back to earth. It’s almost true. Much like in sleep or meditation, in unhindered labor, our brain does go into an altered state due to a ‘theta wave’ pattern, a deep, dream-like state, starting around 8 cm dilation, or earlier.

The mind quiets, intuition and body-knowing take over. We go into a timeless, primal place where we can hear our ancestors say ‘we’ve been there, you’ve got this.’ It’s a transcendent state, not unlike or**sm, but deeply focused on birth. The world seems to disappear. The energy of birth takes over. You are in ‘flow.’ Your body knows what to do.

This powerful state facilitates intuitive birthing.

My midwife mentors taught me to create the space that facilitates this state. Powerful tools that induce and support the theta state include:
🌙 Meditation
🌙 Visualization
🌙 Breathwork
🌙 Music
🌙 Sound, Prayer, Chanting
🌙 Slow dance/movement

These elicit calm, reduce heart rate and blood pressure, release fear, and relax your muscles facilitatating dilation and birth. This is opposite to the nervous system’s fight or flight state which leads to anxiety, fear, tensed muscles (including pelvic floor muscles), and in most mammals, inhibits or stops labor & birth.

Modern obstetric practices, with constant interruptions, harsh lights, loud noises, and restrictions on how a woman births, impedes theta state, interfering with our ability to enter trance state, and it’s fear-mongering approach to birth puts most women into a subtle but chronic fight or flight state - studies showing that it can be enough to inhibit labor progress.

Over many decades I’ve learned many techniques to help women access their primal birthing state, and innate birthing potential - I would love to share these with you - now for free, and soon, in a new online community. I can’t wait to share To access the classes, click here: https://m.facebook.com/groups/ideservebirthsupport/

Did you experience an altered state in labor? How did it feel? Please know if you didn’t, that’s okay. This is a no-judgment zone - all experiences, stories, and paths welcome.

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