Su Barber - Restoring Motherhood

This simple shift helped me avoid unnecessary arguments and miscommunications with my child. 🙌🏻

👉🏻 It's so easy to react when our kids:

😤 push back against our limits
😤 ignore our requests
😤 argue about everything

But children don't become more agreeable when we become defensive or agitated by their reactions.

If we can practice ⤵️

🔆 acknowledging our anger
🔆 letting go of assumptions
🔆 choosing to be curious
🔆 adjusting our tone

- we can create the emotional safety our kids depend on and need to thrive. Not sure what this looks like when you're trying to keep your cool while juggling a million tasks?

✨ Visit the 🔗 in my bio to get your Conscious Communication Cards. bit.ly/CommunicationCardsHere

💬💙

An exciting announcement. On 19 October, parliament will hold the first ever debate on birth trauma in its 222-year history. It has been initiated by Theo Clarke, MP, who has talked publicly about her own traumatic birth experience.

It would be wonderful to see people who have experienced birth trauma attend the debate to support Theo and other MPs who will be sharing their experiences. It would be a real boost to those MPs to see a big group of us sitting in the public gallery to hear them speak.

You don't need to book a ticket to attend - you can just join the queue for the public gallery on the day, which will be at the Cromwell Green entrance. Some of the BTA committee and supporters are definitely going to be there, so please do join us.

We're not sure yet what time it will start, but there are two items of business that start at 10.10 - first will be questions to the Attorney General, then Penny Mordaunt will be answering business questions. Once that's over, the birth trauma debate will begin. https://whatson.parliament.uk/commons/2023-10-19/

Birthrights Home Page - Birthrights Birthrights is the UK charity that champions respectful care during pregnancy and childbirth by protecting human rights. Donate Now New report: Systemic Racism, not Broken Bodies Evidence repeatedly shows that Black, Asian and mixed ethnicity women and birthing people are more likely to die, experie...

Market Drayton group,

👣 Little Footprints 👣

Local face to face support group for parents who have experienced stillbirth, Neonatal death or death in infancy.
It doesn't matter if it was recently or a long time ago, all are welcome.

First Tuesday of every month, commencing 6th September 2022.
The Zone, Linden Way, Market Drayton, Shropshire, TF9 1QT.
For more information please drop me a message ❤️

✨What if we told women the truth about birth✨

We’d have to tell them that contractions will probably be more than “surges” or “sensations.”

That they’ll probably rock your f✨cking world and leave you begging for salvation as you clutch the edge of the tub or the hospital linens

That your gentle breathing exercises and your Spotify soundtrack will be left in the dust as you sweat and pant and sway and swear your way through it

That you’ll trip harder than any mushroom you ever did in college and vomit with the same ferocity and travel to places deep within yourself that you didn’t know existed. That you’ll float above your body and simultaneously be trapped in it with an intensity you’ve never tasted

And in that intensity, in the sweating and the swearing and the swaying and the vomiting and the endless hours of contractions crashing down upon you
You’ll find your strength
You’ll find a resilience you’ve never known
You’ll find the power you need for the journey of motherhood ahead

In the messy humanity of it all
You’ll find that you are holy
A portal to the divine
Capable of indescribable miracles
A vessel of sacred life

What if we told women the truth about birth?
We’d have to tell them they are capable of anything
Worthy of being treated like goddesses
Made to walk through the flames
Surf the tidal waves
Dive into the underworld
And come out alive

Not unscathed
Not unchanged
But whole
And healed
And ready to take on the world

If we told women the truth about birth
We’d have to admit that we’ve lied about everything else
And that they are more powerful
More fierce
More capable
More beautiful
Than we’ve ever let on.

If we told the truth about birth?
We’d shatter the world.”

~ Words and Art by Catie Atkinson
Spirit Y Sol
www.linktr.ee/spiritysol

Just such a lovely day spent at The Quarry at The Living Well Festival this Sunday. Rebecca Dove-Thomas and I created a really shady, pleasant nook for hot and bothered mothers and fathers and restless children to come and be for a while. It was just lovely to see so many of the you there, that I have seen for ages. It has been tough times and it is such a joy to be able to be among lovely people again # # # The pics make it look very serene, which it was mostly, but their was some great play and chats that were had too for hours! We started a book of Mother Wisdom to be shared onwards will start sharing them soon xx

Mother’s Nest

Su Barber of Restoring Motherhood and Rebecca Dove from Dove Homeopathy Practice are excited to be offering a resting space at the Living Well Festival this Sunday, (10th July) in the Quarry, for Mothers and others, who need some shade, water, a place to talk, a place to play, and a chance to relax, for free for a while. Find out more about us, wander in and stay awhile…
We really want to find out more about you and what Mothers need from us and the wider community…it is interesting times and we need to work together.
Come and say hello x

Guidelines in Canada (specifically British Columbia), United Kingdom and Australia are updating their guidelines to teach parents how to bedshare and cosleep as safely as possible because it is a biologically normal behavior for baby-parent dyads. Our modern bedrooms are not built for infant sleep safety which is why we need to know these guidelines. Check my highlight “Safe Sleep” on Instagram for links to these sources. 💜🫶🧠🫶💜

The art of encouragement in the face of adversity and apathy, a great Blog about breastfeeding support here, written a few years ago. As I and a colleague both said recently things have not got better over the last decade, they have got worse...seriously worse...

Breastfeeding Celebration Week? - The Birth Hub This post was most recently updated on June 18th, 2018 So the Department of Health have, at the eleventh hour decided we WILL be having a Breastfeeding Week this year. Apparently, in the 4th week of June, there will be a series of blogs by Viv Bennett, Chief Nurse and Director of Maternity and Early...

This is what we have been talking about for years, put really well by ...it's the invisible wound and any wound this big will take six weeks to heal...so no pressure to be up and out and doing everything at all... "8.5 inches.

That’s the number you’ll hear the most.

Give or take - the placenta leaves a wound THIS big inside of your body.

Add that to your vaginal healing or your c-section scar and there is just no question that women need more TIME to heal. That we need more grace for bodies that aren’t ready to do the things we (or others) may think they can do. That “lying in,” saying “no,” accepting help, and advocating for ourselves is SO necessary.

Please, if you can, take it easy. Go slow. Acknowledge the reality that you have a wound the size of a plate in your uterus - and if that was on the outside? No one would expect you to be doing what you’re probably doing."

Credit

This can feel very true around anniversaries of births, be gentle with yourselves x

💛 Shared from:

Each and every day, all day

Inquiry into racial injustice in maternity care - Birthrights Birthrights, UK charity for human rights in pregnancy and childbirth, releases Systemic Racism, Not Broken Bodies, after year-long inquiry.

Another Wednesday morning, a great place to be and connect x

https://www.patreon.com/posts/66170170
connection to a recent converstation with Rebecca Dove during last week's Maternal Mental Health Week x

a reminder of the weekly droup I run Welcome to Motherhood- all welcome x

Today is International Day of the Midwife.

Literature from around the world shows that women who have midwife-led care have better outcomes, a higher chance of a live, healthy baby, less unwanted intervention and are more satisfied with their experience.

There are no known downsides to midwifery-led care.

Midwives can make a huge difference but, as the World Health Organization points out, socio-cultural, economic and professional barriers must be overcome to allow midwives to practice to their full potential.

In honour of the day, we have updated our 'midwifery practise wisdom and reflection' information hub. This treasure trove contains links to many articles and blog posts about midwifery practise.

Several of them are the result of my sitting down (as a researcher and colleague) with groups of midwives to record their thoughts and knowledge on different topics.

I hope you enjoy the articles and posts. You can find them at https://www.sarawickham.com/topic-resources/midwifery-practice-wisdom-and-reflection/

And to all the midwives out there who strive to offer amazing care to women and families despite often working under horrendous constraints and awful conditions, I send a huge hug.

This week is "Maternal Mental Health Week" , a raising awareness of the low level of health that many Mothers reach over the pregnancy, birth and during the postnatal period.
I, and my dear friend Rebecca Dove, Dove Homeopathy Practice ,first met at another friend's wonderful gatherings called "Nurture Network". I went to my first gathering 3 months after the birth of my first child. It was hard to drive and stay a couple of hours away from him, but I so needed that nurturing interaction.
Later after my second child I set up, with two more wonderful mothers, a group to support people through this time. We started Monday Morning Mothers & Co over a decade ago, because we had all experienced the postnatal time, in our different ways, as a soul-shocking, mind melting, weird, unexpected, gruelling and life altering time. We also experienced the joy and new love in our lives too.
But...it was not easy and none of us blossomed into the Earth Mothers we thought we had the credentials to be. This is definitely a time full of shock and awe, especially with the first child, when your metal is tested and in our culture supremely tested…

Rebecca Dove and I will be sharing some of our hard won thoughts on this aspect of Mothering, via our experiences over this week, not from a place of universal knowledge but a place of constantly learning and being stretched all ways in our growth as our children stretch us constantly to rethink what we thought we knew about the world and keep showing us our patterns of behaviour!
I hope you are feeling ok this week and every week, and just ok is plenty good enough sometimes!

Birth trauma research is a really important topic that we need to talk about more.

It is clear from a number of sources that traumatic birth experiences (which are experienced differently from person to person, of course) can significantly affect a mother's experiences, well-being and mental health.

The most recent study that I have written about is an important discussion paper on the topic of developing a woman-centered, inclusive definition of traumatic childbirth experiences.

Published in Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care, Leinweber et al (2022) set out the problem:

“Many women experience giving birth as traumatic.

Although women's subjective experiences of trauma are considered the most important, currently there is no clear inclusive definition of a traumatic birth to help guide practice, education, and research.”

So Leinweber et al (2022) set out, “To formulate a woman-centered, inclusive definition of a traumatic childbirth experience.”

Their final definition was: “A traumatic childbirth experience refers to a woman's experience of interactions and/or events directly related to childbirth that caused overwhelming distressing emotions and reactions; leading to short and/ or long-term negative impacts on a woman's health and wellbeing.” (Leinweber et al 2022)

I discuss more about this and other research on birth trauma in my blog post today.

You can read it at https://www.sarawickham.com/research-updates/birth-trauma-research/

As always, there’s a link in my stories today, or just go to www.sarawickham.com and search for “birth trauma”.

The powerful initiation that is birth, the threshold of life , always massive, however it happens....

“Giving birth is priestess work; it requires a woman to pass through a painful and dangerous initiation in which she journeys to the threshold between worlds and risks her own life to help another soul cross over.”

~ Jalaja Bonheim, Ph.D.
www.jalajabonheim.com

Art by Iréne Lundholm, from the book “Kvinnfolksgöra”