Shelley Russell, CNM- Aromatic Midwife

The colors are so beautiful

Talk about a spring color palette 🩷💜🩵

📍 The Bahamas
📷 .saltypineapple

Gorgeous sculpture in Milan, Italy

I have reached 200 followers! Thank you for your continued support. I could not have done it without each of you. 🙏🤗🎉

Dads can be part of the first embrace!
When fathers hold babies skin-to-skin, it helps them stay warm and safe. It’s a simple but powerful way of improving the health of preterm and low-birth-weight babies.

Did you know that excessive blood loss at the time of birth or in the immediate postpartum period can affect your milk supply?

I can! This can affect the normal prolactin levels in the pituitary. This is known as Sheehan's Syndrome.

Just made Lactation Cookies!

These are pretty good. Link in the comments.

Do you have a recipe you love and want to share?

Hey Momma’s!

This is a great visual for feeding the littles! 🫐🍓🍊🍎🥬🥕

“Mommy, Josie said chocolate is bad for you, but it just does a few things in your body, right?” M asked me this last year. ⁠
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If I could teach my kids just ONE thing about nutrition, it would be that foods do different things and different amounts of things in our bodies. ⁠
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As a deep thinking person, and ever learning nutrition professional, I know a lot. I especially know a lot about the nuance. The gray areas. The part where food isn’t black and white. The part where bad for me is good for you. ⁠
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And I won’t raise my kids thinking some foods are categorically bad and others are categorically good...giving them kindling to burn down some other kid’s culture, self-worth, or safety. ⁠
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I also don’t want to raise them thinking what we eat doesn’t matter and they shouldn’t care about what they eat. ⁠
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So that time we talked about chocolate when he was five, I told him it did a few things in his body... and other foods that he likes, like carrots, do a whole bunch of things. We learned about some of the things. When the prevailing cultural opinion that foods are good or bad, healthy or unhealthy hot him in the face at the ripe age of SIX, guess what... he had some questions about the information shoved in his face. ⁠
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Is chocolate really bad? Or does it just do a few things in our body? ⁠
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You may have seen this post before... but I post it from time to time, because it’s just that important for us to remember that giving kids information about foods is more powerful than giving them labels. The will eventually run into a situation where the labels fail or do harm. ⁠
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⁠If you need help with picky eating, the free picky eater guide is in my bio - and if you don’t have a picky eater, but you want to include more veggies - my free shopping list is also in my bio ⁠.eat.in.color⁠. 😘⁠
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✨The Golden Hour ✨ The first hour after birth is an incredibly special and important time. New parents should be left to bond with their baby, with as little medical intervention as is safe and practical.

‘The golden hour’ encompasses a set of evidence-based practices that can aid the baby’s physiological transition from the womb to life outside. An undisturbed first hour has a number of benefits, including: neonatal thermoregulation, decreased stress levels in parent and newborn, improved bonding and increased rates and duration of breastfeeding.

As midwives we should do as much as we can to respect physiology and support ‘the golden hour’. So what should we consider?

✨ Immediate skin-to-skin contact, when safe to do so, with no separation between the mother / birthing person and baby.

✨ Ensure families understand the benefits of delayed cord clamping - and aim to facilitate this where requested.

✨ Perform newborn assessments on the birthing parent's abdomen, if possible.

✨ Delay non-urgent tasks (weighing, dressing etc) within the first 60 minutes.

✨ Encourage baby-led breastfeeding initiation.

✨ Consider administering Vitamin-K (if opting for it) shortly after the first hour or whilst the baby is with the mother.

✨ If suturing is required, the baby should be able to stay with the mother in most circumstances.

✨ And what if it’s a c-section? Depending on the situation, you may still be able to facilitate a ‘golden hour’ - or at least elements of it.

✨ If immediate skin-to-skin is not medically viable, there are other ways you can help. Bring baby close to the mother or birthing person; facilitate skin-to-skin between baby and the birth partner; and reassure the mother that skin-to-skin is beneficial at all times and there will be plenty of opportunity to bond with and enjoy her newborn.

📸: 💗

Truth!

Partners take note. 📝

🚨Important car seat information. 🚨

Happy Mother’s Day!

Some funny memes that sum up motherhood! 🥰

🌸🧡Happy Mother’s Day 🌸🧡

Why give Vitamin K injection to your newborn after birth?

This is a a very in depth article about this topic from Evidence Based Birth with references to years of research.

Key points:

💗With one dose of a Vitamin K injection the risk of getting Vitamin K deficiency Bleeding ( VKDB) is almost completely removed.

💗Oral Vitamin K is a supplement which is over the counter and unregulated. It requires 3 doses @ birth, 4- 6 days, and 4-6 weeks. This leaves compliance an issue. Even with correct dose and timing it still is not as effective as one injection at birth.

💗 There is minimal risk with Vitamin K injection extremely rare side effects. Most common is redness at the site of injection. Many internet blog sited risks are not factual. Research has shown there is no increased risk of Leukemia with vitamin K injection.

💗There is very little vitamin k in cord blood. Delayed cord clamping does not increase the infants vitamin K levels.

💗The studies have shown cases of VKDB occurred only in solely breastfeed infants that did not receive Vitamin K injection at birth.

💗Maternal supplement of vitamin K does pass to the breast milk. More research needs to be done to determine dosage needed and if this will prevent late VKDB. Most VKDB occurs in first week before breastfeeding is well established.

💗Oral vitamin K dosing is challenging as infants often naturally spit it out.

I found this article to be most informative. If you read it and got a another key point of it please comment below your thoughts. 💗

Evidence on: The Vitamin K Shot in Newborns - Evidence Based Birth® Vitamin K deficiency bleeding, thought to be a problem of the past—has been recently thrust back into the spotlight, so dive in to the latest evidence.

How to enter:
1. Follow on Instagram
2. Like any of the posts about the giveaway
3. Tag two friends

The Giveaway is open from 4/23- 5/6 11:59 PM Pacific Time
The winner will be announced on May 7th!
*We will also be having a Mother’s Day Sale May 7th- 9th for 30% off of everything with code MOMSDAY30!*

How many of you suffer from Hyperemesis Gravidarum?

The big word for severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy?

If you weren’t aware of this group check them out they are trying to help people understand how this effects certain women and how to treat it.

How do you spread HG Awareness? Here's one way you can help educate others. Invite them to follow the Hyperemesis Education & Research - HER Foundation and our 1MomIs2Many campaign to learn about hyperemesis.

To invite people to like HER:
1. Go to our main page.
2. Click on the three dots.
3. Scroll down to invite and select your friends.

Cervical dilation is always a question momma’s want to understand and can be a bit scary to think about.

The human body is absolutely amazing that it can stretch and then return back to almost original size!

Here is a graphic from labor.nurse.mama that gives you a good visual on dilation.

𝐖𝐡𝗼 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝗼 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐚 𝐠𝐚𝗺𝐞?

Especially games when you get to win a prize! Right? 😁

With the joys of Easter weekend I thought I would play a little game in my Group! Just to be in the giving spirit. 🌼

𝐓𝗼 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲:

Join my Group

𝑾𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝑮𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒅 𝑬𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒂𝒍𝒔

Each day starting today! I will have a post with a question. Some you will need to look up the answer. I mean it is a scavenger hunt! 😉

I will be picking 5 winners each day for fun prizes. And 1 Grand Prize Winner will get an Introductory Oil Kit! 💜

Check out the link below or post in the comments. 👇🏼

https://www.facebook.com/groups/157288648401757/?ref=share

Every mom knows this is the truth!

If you need more reasons to decrease your exposure to toxins?

Check out this article from Scientific American. They tested 10 newborns cord blood and found 200 toxic chemicals. 😬

While it is almost impossible to completely prevent toxin exposure you can be aware of many ways we toxins enter are life and limit that exposure.

Tests Find More Than 200 Chemicals in Newborn Umbilical Cord Blood Study commissioned by environmental group finds high levels of chemicals in U.S. minority infants

This is an older article that was reprinted. But the point is still just as pertinent.

Being a new mom is hard. You are learning how to care for your tiny human that does not have instructions. You are figuring out all the idiosyncrasies of breastfeeding not to mention the exhaustion. To pump or not to pump? To sleep or do laundry? What are you going to feed yourself and the family? It’s hard.

Some women have a supportive family and others have no support at all and must return to work before they are ready.

The fact is new moms need nurturing.

If you know a new mom and she looks like she could use some help, do what you can for her even if it’s just a few words of encouragement. Tell her she is doing a great job! Let her know you care about her. Because she is probably crying inside feeling like she isn’t doing as good a job as thinks she should be.

❤️

Nurturing the New Nurturer: Doing it by Yourself | La Leche League International TERESA PITMAN Originally published June 2016 and republished with the express permission of the author. Reading articles about “mothering the new mother” (or, more inclusively, “nurturing the new parent”) would always make me cry. Have your partner take some time off work and help you out af...