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BRB

Today I had the honor of preparing a placenta for encapsulation. These organs never cease to amaze me. They are truly stunning. These images are being shared with the permission of the mother*

Pahahahaha true story.

Your body grew an entire human being.

You are more than enough.

You are magic.

Respect your body. Respect means caring for it, appreciating it, seeing it, recognizing the work it does, feeding it. You may not be happy with your body, you can have disappointments, you can struggle to love it. But to respect it you have to ask where those thoughts come from and are those values more important than the value your body brings?

We're all in different places in our journey and I won't shame anyone struggling to love or respect their bodies. I hope though that we can each work on living the understanding that we are worthy just the way we are.

I am enough.

You are enough.

Artist Credit: Artist unknown! Would love to credit but my searches turned up nothing. Do you know the artist behind this? Please link if so and we'll edit to reflect the credit. Thanks!

Child birth education classes available for individuals or small groups! DM me for the deets 🙌🏼

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Join Rachel Hodill and make a difference in these times ✊ Lift Restrictions On Doulas At Allegheny Health Network. 100 signatures are still needed!

Two weeks of memories to supplement a lifetime of loss. I hope we can all become more compassionate and learn to sit with the uncomfortableness of someone else’s grief. Maybe then we can begin to offer support to those experiencing the unimaginable.

Holding & Caring for Stillborn Babies Is OK There are many healthy ways to grieve pregnancy and infant loss, even including walking stillborn babies and taking them home.

I had two wonderful hospital births. I really truly loved them and at the time, the hospital was the best place for me to give birth because I felt safe (and my husband was such a strong advocate for my wishes). However, IF* we ever bring another baby into this world, it’ll be from our own home ❤️

In today’s peer-reviewed Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health (JMWH), a landmark study** confirms that among low-risk women, planned home births result in lower rates of interventions without an increase in adverse outcomes for mothers and babies.

This study, which examines nearly 17,000 courses of midwife-led care, is the largest analysis of planned home birth in the U.S. ever published.

(Read study here- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jmwh.12172 )

The results of this study, and those of its companion article about the development of the MANA Stats registry, confirm the safety and overwhelmingly positive health benefits for low-risk mothers and babies who choose to birth at home with a midwife.

At every step of the way, midwives are providing excellent care. This study enables families, providers and policymakers to have a transparent look at the risks and benefits of planned home birth as well as the health benefits of normal physiologic birth.

Of particular note is a cesarean rate of 5.2%, a remarkably low rate when compared to the U.S. national average of 31% for full-term pregnancies. ***THIS IS HUGE!***😮

When we consider the well-known health consequences of a cesarean -- not to mention the exponentially higher costs -- this study brings a fresh reminder of the benefits of midwife-led care outside of our overburdened hospital system.

Home birth mothers had much lower rates of interventions in labor. While some interventions are necessary for the safety and health of the mother or baby, many are overused, are lacking scientific evidence of benefit, and even carry their own risks.

Cautious and judicious use of intervention results in healthier outcomes and easier recovery, and this is an area in which midwives excel.

Women who planned a home birth had fewer episiotomies, pitocin for labor augmentation, and epidurals.

Most importantly, their babies were born healthy and safe. 97% of babies were carried to full-term, they weighed an average of eight pounds at birth, and nearly 98% were being breastfed at the six-week postpartum visit with their midwife.

Only 1% of babies required transfer to the hospital after birth, most for non-urgent conditions.

Babies born to low-risk mothers had no higher risk of death in labor or the first few weeks of life than those in comparable studies of similarly low-risk pregnancies.

Article shared from - https://mana.org/blog/home-birth-safety-outcomes
📸 Ashton Janae Huseman