RiverSouth Birth

Yes!

Close contact and early, exclusive breastfeeding helps a baby to thrive.

A woman with COVID-19 should be supported to
• breastfeed safely
• hold her newborn skin-to-skin
• share a room with her baby

This is a great resource for any birth work or expectant family right now:
https://evidencebasedbirth.com/covid19/

Coronavirus COVID-19 | Evidence Based Birth® Resource Page - Evidence Based Birth® Coronavirus COVID-19 | Evidence Based Birth® Resource Page A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM DR. REBECCA DEKKER Founder and CEO of Evidence Based Birth® Hi Everyone, It’s Rebecca, here. I know this is an uncertain time and many are feeling a range of emotions. Our goal remains the same: to provide you with...

"Try to remember, even in uncertain times such as these, that you are loved, and you are not alone, even if physically everyone seems so far away. And, the new life you brought into this world is the best hope for all of us."

Postpartum in a Pandemic — Better Beginnings In the current situation of COVID-19 racing through communities and spreading around the globe, fear, social distancing, and messaging urging people to stay home as much as possible means new parents are getting even fewer visitors and help than they usually do.  While fewer visito

❤️

MP3_InstantlyCalm.mp3 Shared with Dropbox

From Rebecca Decker of evidencebasedbirth.com

"Around the world, hospital visitation policies are becoming quite restrictive. It's important to remember that doulas and partners are not visitors, rather, they are members of the health care team and their presence is critical to having safe birth outcomes. However, I know that parents are becoming anxious about the possibility of their doulas being turned away from the hospital (and doulas are worried, too!). As far as resources go...
Birth Monopoly has an excellent article on this subject... I highly recommend absorbing the info there!
EBB Instructor Jolynne Polichette posted a letter template for care providers to sign about doula support
The American Association of Women's Health and Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses has issued a statement on this subject."
Links in comments.

Cancelling events for the foreseeable future. We are available for virtual classes and support if needed! Just send a message ❤️

Domesticity does not equal motherhood. ⁣
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I once sat in a class where teenage girls said they needed to learn how to cook, do laundry, and clean if they wanted to one day be good moms.⁣
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I stopped and told them that cooking, doing laundry, and cleaning are part of being an ADULT. Those are not the things that make up motherhood. ⁣
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But I get where they got that conclusion.⁣
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You always hear women say they aren’t good moms when they don’t make homemade lunches, prepare cupcakes for the bake sale, show up to the doctor with kids who have brushed hair, or get the laundry put away in a decent time. ⁣
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“I’m such a bad mom. I sent store-bought valentines to school with my kid.”⁣
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“Mom fail. I didn’t get the laundry done.”⁣
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“I’m a failure as a mom. I don’t make homemade bread/cookies/whatever.”⁣
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NO.⁣
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Your “success” as a mother is not defined by domestic duties. Domestic duties are part of being an adult.⁣
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While your children do need to be changed and fed, that’s not the summation of MOTHERHOOD. Anyone can change and feed children, including dads. You can hire someone to clean your house and feed your kids, and you’ll still be a mom. ⁣
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And if you weren’t a mom, you’d still have to clean your house, cook food, and do laundry. ⁣
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You’re not a bad mom because you didn’t do laundry in time. Let’s stop combining domestic duties with motherhood, because they just aren’t the same. Yes, moms do domestic things. And they raise children. These are two separate things. ⁣
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Your housekeeping is not your motherhood, and you’re giving away power when you combine the two and judge one against the other. ⁣
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You are a good mom because you love your child, and you try to help them learn the things they need to learn. You worry about your kids, you spend time with them, you plan for their future, and so much more.⁣
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You might be terrible at domestic duties (I don’t know) or you might be the best housekeeper in the world. But neither end of the spectrum -- or anything in between -- determines if you’re a good mom or not.⁣
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Housekeeping is NOT motherhood.⁣

©2020, Rebecca Brown Wright
https://www.rebeccabrownwright.com/housekeeping-is-not-motherhood/

🖐️ Hey there! This post went viral in 2020, and people had a LOT to say. I broke the many reactions down in this podcast episode. It's definitely worth a listen to help continue the conversation. Please listen and share with someone who needs to hear it. Check it out:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/housekeeping-is-not-motherhood/id1550464534?i=1000506535733

👉 Follow Pause and Connect by Rebecca Brown Wright for discussions on smashing cultural narratives, how to yell less, how to connect with your child, how to love yourself as a mom, and so much more.

Thank you Thrive Midwives LLC for this!

Update on coronavirus. It’s not sexy IG, but valuable. Most fatalities among 60+ yo people, particularly those who smoke or have chronic lung disease. No significant vulnerabilities for pregnant people or newborn’s born to an infected birth parent. Here’s a great link. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/925855?nlid=134210_429&src=WNL_mdplsfeat_200303_mscpedit_fmed&uac=2029BK&spon=34&impID=2299349&faf=1

Did you know?

Did you know that in Minnesota it is your right to have a Doula during your birth. Notice how it does not say anything about limiting your use of a Doula of your choosing during an epidural placement or cesarean?

Oh yes

LOVED this from Fourth Trimester Collective.

Here's a good cultural look at how babies sleep in other parts of the world. Plus a few other ways parents differ globally!

https://nypost.com/2020/01/21/american-parents-calm-the-eff-down-you-wont-smother-your-baby/?utm_campaign=meetedgar&utm_medium=social&utm_source=meetedgar.com

American parents: Calm the eff down, co-sleeping isn’t always dangerous Parents, relax. Your infant can sleep in your bed, your toddler can share your dinner and your 1-year-old can amuse herself just fine. “[American] parents nowadays think, ‘Oh, my God, my baby isn’t…

How To Put A Car Seat In A Shopping Cart Safely - Kid Sitting Safe If you want to know how to put a car seat in a shopping cart then you need to be aware of the dangers in doing this incorrectly: nearly 24,000 children

Love this imagery!

FEEDING ON DEMAND. Yep. I used cereal and blueberries to see the difference between expectations and reality of many breastfeeding moms.
📷 inspo from .ie
Were you told your baby should breastfeed every 2-3 hours? I was. Did you know that only came from figuring out how often feeding was needed for a baby to feed 8-12 times in a 24 hour period...
So yes we APPROXIMATELY would like babies to feed AT LEAST 8-12 times, but the way it all plays out in a 24 hour period is very different for each baby.
Reality: babies feed like the blueberries. Lots of feedings. Some small. Some big. Some close together. Some far apart.
Babies do not feed like clockwork where every cereal (ahem.. feed) is spaced equally apart and the same size. You can relax if your otherwise healthy baby goes longer than 3 hours between a feed. You don’t need to think “you can’t still be hungry” and delay a feed if they are showing signs they want to feed earlier than 2 hours.
Listen to your baby. Trust your instincts. Let go of the cookie cutter “ideal” and develop your own relationship that works for you and your baby.
Do you feed on demand? What works for you and your baby?

Super common question!

People often ask us in interviews, “What would you do if there were a cord around the baby’s neck? Isn’t that an emergency?”.
A: Babies are born with their cord around their neck, or a nuchal cord, about 30% of the time. When this happens, some of the time we have early warning signs (longer pushing stage, fetal heart tone patterns) and sometimes not. As midwives, we skillfully assist a baby to either be born with their cord around their neck by helping to flex them in a particular way or we resolve the nuchal cord entirely before the baby’s body is even born. Either way, a nuchal cord is not an emergency almost all of the time. In the most extreme cases, if a baby cannot be born through their cord and it cannot be resolved because it’s too tight, we are prepared to cut the cord and help the baby to be born with maneuvers that we’re highly skilled in (this is an incredibly rare situation!).
We’ve got you.
Post your nuchal cord questions below!
Photo credit: .birth

Love these!! Which one are you today?

Benefits to being upright in labor.
https://www.babycenter.com/2_how-an-upright-position-can-make-delivery-easier_10389740.bc

How an upright position can make delivery easier | Video | BabyCenter Learn how staying upright during labor can ease a baby's delivery.

What a fabulous visual! And a great explaination of why cervical checks don't really matter much.

“We think in pictures and we should be painting accurate pictures. The cervix nor the va**na bloom. The cervix is not a zip lock bag. The purpose of labor is NOT the creation of an opening or a hole... The purpose of labor contractions and retractions is to BUILD the fundus, which will, when it is ready, EJECT the baby, like a piston. Without a nice thick fundus there is no power to get baby out....the cervix does not dilate out....it dilates UP as a result of the effort to pull muscles up into the uterus to push muscles up to the fundus. The cervical dilation is secondary to that. The cervix is pulled up as a result of the building of the fundus. Assigning a number to cervical dilation is of little consequence and we make a huge mistake by interpreting progress or predicting time of birth to that number. Any experienced midwife or OB can tell you that the cervix can be manipulated and that a woman whose cervix is at 7 could have the baby in a few minutes or a few hours.
If more providers and educators knew the truth about birth physiology, we could make a huge difference for mothers. What is important is to keep her well supported for the purpose of the appropriate chemistry, to keep her well hydrated and nourished for muscle strength, and to believe in her. We should be supporting her so that her physiology and that of her baby are unhindered, so they can finish what they started.
We should not be measuring, poking, or interpreting her labor. THIS CHANGE in teaching about labor could make such a difference for women who are imagining what is happening in their bodies during labor. How much more strength might they have if they have an accurate picture?" -Carla Hartley

http://www.indybirthservices.com/blog/nova-birth-services

I tear up every time I hear the story at the end of this post. ❤️

Happy Winter holidays to you all ❤️

YES! If you are expecting a baby or know someone who is, please read this! The first couple of days and weeks are so sacred.

A picture really is worth 1000 words.

This is me, roughly 24 hours after giving birth to my eldest. I have no idea who took the picture, but you can probably already tell how I feel just by looking at it.

1 or 2 days. Is that too much to ask for?
1 or 2 days for a new mum to come to terms with the fact she had a tiny human emerge from her body. 1 or 2 days for her to finally have a shower and wash the sweat and blood from her body. 1 or 2 days for her to push through the pain of her sore ni***es as she learns to breastfeed. 1 or 2 days for her to try to have some sleep because she is absolutely exhausted.

Before being introduced to your new life as a mother, you have just gone through one of the most painful, exhausting, and mind blowing experiences in your life. Labour. Has everyone forgotten how tolling that can be on both your emotional and physical well being? The last thing you then want, is for everyone to be bombarding your room to play pass the parcel, before you have even had a chance to recover.

Learning to breastfeed is no private affair. You don’t just slip your ni**le out and your baby connects to it like a magnet. You get your whole b**b out, and slide your baby up and down waiting for them to latch on. The nurse comes in and helps you massage some colostrum out. Then you try the other side, so now you’ve got both b**bs out.

Your va**na or stomach is in a world of pain. More often than not, there’s been a cut somewhere. You struggle to get comfortable in that hard hospital bed, because no position feels ok. You can barely sit, stand, lie down, or walk. Honestly, my va**na still hurt for 2 or 3 weeks after that. The hospital doesn’t like you to leave until they know you have emptied your bowels without your va**na falling out too. When do you fit in trying to pass that painful lump when your room is full of visitors?

Everyone is so excited to have a photo with the new baby, the new mum doesn’t get a photo with her own damn baby! I had to ask for a photo with mine, other than that one photo, the only others I have are of her fresh out of my uterus, with us laying there naked and covered in blood. Thank you to the saintly midwife who was kind enough to grab my phone and capture the most precious photos that exist to me. From there on, it’s mostly selfies.

Everyone wants the bragging rights to say they saw the new baby within 24 hours. They simply must satisfy their need to hold this new baby. If you don’t allow them to come visit you in the hospital, you’re a selfish, delicate, drama queen. Then people come in with their comments of “now you only look 4 months pregnant instead of 9” or “you look tired” I’m sorry, but in what world is it ok for you to comment on a new mother’s appearance? WE ARE SO BLOODY FRAGILE RIGHT NOW! If my va**na wasn’t so sore, I might have pulled some Kung Fu Panda on your ass.

Sure, some people can’t wait to have visitors. That’s not what this is about. This is about people who have tried to ask visitors to wait a day or 2, but been made to feel like they told them they can’t be in the baby’s life. I feel so loved that everyone couldn’t wait to meet our new baby, and so happy that everyone wanted to be part of our baby’s life. What I didn’t realise was how hard trying to ask people to stay away for a day would be. “It’ll just be a quick visit.” You’re too tired to argue, so you sit and wait for them to get their baby fix.

The next time someone you know has a baby, remember how tired this new mother looks. I know you are excited, but remember it is not your right to visit a new baby, it is a privilege. If that offends you, go home and put it in your burn book.

A great gift for birthworkers from Thrive Midwives! 💕

A joyous winter season to all! As my annual gift of appreciation to birth workers, complimentary health and wellness providers, and self-employed female badasses, I am offering free 15 minute visits on December 23rd from 10-5. Are you due for a cholesterol check? Is your eczema driving you crazy this winter? Do you need refills on your asthma inhaler? Migraines taking over your life? (These will be clothes-on visits and don’t include lab fees.) When was the last time you were greeted by a provider, with a hot cup of mulled cider and a holiday hug? Thrive Midwives, women’s health innovation with heart.

We couldn't love this more! When it comes to parenting, you do what works best for your family and say later to the haters!
https://www.mother.ly/news/photographers-anti-mom-shaming-pics-go-viral?rebelltitem=10

This photographer's 'anti mom-shaming' pics go viral No matter how you feed your baby, how you put them to sleep, whether your baby watches TV or has never looked at a screen, we can all agree that we are trying. One mom's best may look different from another's, but it's her life, her child and her choices. And those choices (while they may not be the...

Beautiful

We love of the childbirth collective! Show them some love during give to the max won't you?

Come visit us at the Birth and Baby Expo!

Come see us at the birth and baby expo on Saturday and put your name in the drawing for this fabulous little basket :-)