Category: Education

Stressed Parents CAN Raise Calm Kids

Posted on by Baby Led Enlightenment

♥Stressed Parents CAN Raise Calm Kids♥

I see you, stressed parents. Your stress, your fear, your overwhelm, your feelings of not being good enough. I see it all. And I’m here to tell you that you are good enough.

Stressed parents: "Adults addicted to their own stress hormones were once children who lived in unpredictable environments of overreaction, rage spirals, and fear. Healing is becoming conscious to when we unconsciously seek chaos, why we do it, and how often. With this awareness we can teach our bodies safety in the present." -- Dr. Nicole LePera

Born to Be Stressed Parents

So many of us lived childhoods full of unpredictable emotions exhibited by our parents. We learned how to overreact to the smallest things. Then we learned how to blame others for it, and inflict our anger on everyone around us. Children learn by example. How could we not learn these behaviors when our parents showed these uncontrollable emotions? Previous generations, just like ours, were still learning. They didn’t understand the effect of their behavior on their children’s mental processes. Emotional intelligence was for hippies. They dismissed it as “woo”. After all that, even the most enlightened among us can still struggle to fight these unconscious patterns that were taught to us.

Do Stressed Parents Always Have Stressed Kids?

No! Just because we learned those unhealthy patterns from our own stressed parents parents doesn’t mean we have to teach them to our children. Even when we struggle, and feel like we’re failing, we can teach them how not to take on our stress. Those less-than-savory outbursts of ours can become educational moments to teach them how to handle their emotions in healthier ways than we have. By including them in our healing journey, we can help foster increased emotional intelligence and support them in learning healthier ways to process their emotions.

How Can We Teach Them Better?

This starts by learning how to recognize these moments, and acknowledging them. When we acknowledge them, we can explain to our children what was wrong about our behavior and why. Then, we can tell them what we could have done better, and what we will try to do next time instead. They will learn healthier ways to handle their emotions, and we will learn increased accountability for our own. When they have their own struggles with their emotions, they’ll start to model the same process, and begin to come up with their own solutions of how to handle their stress. Over time, they may even start to help us recognize and correct our own reactions. Healing ourselves while teaching them will help them to learn even faster, and really cement the lessons we are teaching them.

But How Can You Heal?

Healing isn’t necessarily a destination, but a journey. For many people, it may not be possible to ever consider themselves fully “healed”. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the effort. Working with a trained therapist can help you to explore your childhood and the effects it may have on your behavior and parenting. They can help form a plan to heal any trauma and retrain your brain to create new, healthier patterns. A coach can also help you to discover ways to rewire your brain and create those healthier patterns.

The most important step, however, is examining your own behavior and recognizing its effects on others. Once you’ve done this, you can start to puzzle out which behaviors you need to eliminate from your subconscious. Understanding the reasons behind those behaviors can help to make the changes needed, and make them more likely to stick. But, even if you are unable to figure out why you react the way you do, you can still train yourself to make healthier choices and model healthier behavior for your children. If you need help learning what healthier choices are, I highly recommend consulting a therapist or coach that can help you find the approriate solutions for your unique situation.

Want More Support?

Visit nami.org to find a trained mental health professional serving your area if you’d like to speak with a therapist regarding your struggles. If you don’t feel that your situation warrants a mental health professional, you can book a discovery session with me to explore what your goals are and how we can reach them. I can help you identify what changes need to be made, as well as formulate a plan for how to make them. Click here to schedule your session now.

 

Let’s End Toxic Positivity

Posted on by Baby Led Enlightenment

♥ Let’s End Toxic Positivity in Pregnancy♥

 

Pregnancy is amazing. It’s an incredible time in your life, and leads to the most precious gift of all: your baby. It’s also messy, painful, and at times downright miserable. These facts are not mutually exclusive. You can love your baby and be grateful for their existence without enjoying the aching hips, the inability to keep food down, and the mood swings that make you cry at how cute something is, then want to smack your partner for trying to give you a compliment because you’re absolutely certain they said it sarcastically and think you look like a beached whale that’s been tarred and feathered. Toxic positivity can make you feel ashamed for having these valid feelings that are completely normal during such a tumultuous time in your life.

What is Toxic Positivity?

Toxic positivity is a sugar-coated form of gaslighting. It is a way of invalidating a person’s genuine feelings and making them feel shamed for them. It is the belief that a person should maintain a positive mindset regardless of their circumstances, and that any voicing of negative emotion makes them responsible for those emotions’ very existence.

A Phenomenon on the Rise

Lately, I have been seeing an increase in the number of pregnant moms hurting because their family or friends have invalidated their feelings for the umpteenth time. One mom said that her grandmother told her that she had a miserable time when she was pregnant with her oldest daughter, then later that day, told her she needed to “stop complaining and just love her baby” when she tried to vent about how tired she was feeling on her own personal facebook timeline. Another told of her aunt who would tell her she needed to stop being ungrateful and “suck it up” every time she heard her mention anything not 100% positive about how she was feeling. I have heard the anguished cries of loss mamas, shamed into suffering in silence by toxic positivity, unable to seek support from their friends when they needed it most, as they went through their pregnancies with their rainbow babies.

Every Mama’s Feelings are Valid

This treatment is not okay. Just because she is having a hard time does not mean she doesn’t love her baby, and we as a society need to stop pretending it does. I love my girls with all of my heart and soul. They also drive me up the walls at times. And that’s okay! It doesn’t make me an ungrateful mother to wish they were able to see things from my perspective once in a while. I would never dream of telling another mama that she didn’t love her children just because she didn’t always love their behavior.

The Double Standards Need to Stop

Have you ever been so incredibly annoyed by something your partner did, but still loved them anyway? Unless you live in a fictional world or have never loved anyone, you probably have. Why can the same principle not be applied in parenthood as in relationships? Would you tell a woman she couldn’t possibly love her husband if she felt hurt that he chose to go out for an impromptu drink with his friends while she was at home puking her guts out after having to cancel plans with her friends because she felt so sick? Maybe you can see it from both sides, and think maybe he just thought she wanted to have some peace and be alone, but he should have asked her if that’s what she wanted instead of assuming. But you probably wouldn’t tell her “You should stop whining and be glad you have a husband!” or “It isn’t good for your marriage to get so stressed out over everything, you need to calm down!”

Trauma Is Not Healed By Positivity

A growing number of women suffer from trauma of one kind or another during pregnancy and birth. Many more have experienced it prior to pregnancy, and will experience it after. Some of us will even develop PTSD from our experiences. Being positive does not erase the trauma. The only way to heal from it is to process it. Yes, therapy is extremely important, especially in cases of PTSD. But support from your friends and family is, too. Shaming or shunning someone because they have unhealed trauma might make your ego feel better about your own trauma, or allow you to wrap yourself in a bubble to avoid facing it altogether, but it can be incredibly damaging to the other person, and can serve to deepen and reinforce their trauma. If the goal is to help them develop a positive mindset, this is entirely counterproductive, not to mention cruel.

A Positive Mindset Does Not Exist in a Vacuum

Yes, during pregnancy and immediately postpartum, it is important to protect your emotional space and try to keep a positive mindset. It’s important for success in all areas of life. Having a positive mindset, however, doesn’t protect us from all possible negative feelings and experiences. The human brain needs to be able to process the things that happen in order to move forward. To do this, we need to talk about them. Holding it all inside can foster resentment, anger, fear, and a whole host of other negative feelings. Letting it out can help to release those feelings, allowing them to be replaced by more positive ones.

 

How You Can Help

Don’t invalidate a mom’s feelings and experiences just because they are unpleasant. Empathize with her. Try to understand what she is going through and hold space for her to talk about it and process it. Allow her to speak on it and seek to better understand her through it. Let her know she is not alone. Make her feel heard and validated. Support her. If you see someone participating in toxic positivity against another (or even themselves), gently remind them that all feelings are valid and deserve the space they need to be processed. That is how we change lives and make the world a better place.

 

Are you searching for a safe place to talk about your troubles while being supported instead of invalidated? Would you like to join a community of moms coming together to educate and empower each other in healthy ways? Come join us and help us build the village we all need.

 

My Homebirth Story — Freebirth

Posted on by Baby Led Enlightenment

♥ My Homebirth Story — Freebirth ♥

 

Happy International Homebirth Day!

Since the restrictions of 2020 changed the experience of hospital birth so dramatically all over the world, many more women have turned to homebirth as their way of having the birth experience they want. Others have wanted to, but for one reason or another, not gotten that experience they so desire.

Some of you may know that I had a homebirth with my second. What you may not know is that I wanted one with my first, but thought I couldn’t have it because Medicaid didn’t cover homebirth midwives in Ohio, and my husband had been laid off for several months due to a natural disaster, so we had very little funds at the time. I probably could have found a way to make it happen if I’d had the support and knowledge then that I have now. I hear similar stories all the time, where the mama wanted to have a homebirth, but didn’t think she could afford it, or her insurance wouldn’t cover it.

If you want a homebirth, sometimes you have to work for it. It shouldn’t be this way in the US and other countries around the world, but it is. The important thing is that you know there are options, and if that is what you really want, you can have it. For instance, in Florida, homebirth midwives ARE covered by medicaid. There are still guidelines and restrictions put in place by governing bodies that limit the access to them for VBAC, plus size mamas, breech, twins, etc, nearly everywhere. But there are oftentimes ways around this as well. Sometimes, simply seeing an OB one time, regardless of what they tell you regarding their opinion on homebirth, is enough to satisfy the requirements. The red tape and hoops you may need to jump through can vary depending on your insurance, provider, and location. Seek out your local birth network and talk to birth activists in your area to find out more about ways you can advocate for your right to a homebirth.

Read on for more of my personal homebirth story:

 

Planning Makes it Possible

I planned to have an unassisted homebirth with my second daughter. I knew, even before I got pregnant with her, that it was the birth experience I wanted to have. I got involved in my local birth network, studied numerous books, took a course on homeopathy, attended a workshop for birth professionals, and just generally soaked in as much information about birth as I could. When I finally saw that second line, I knew I could do this.

 

Preparations

A few weeks before my guess date, a doula and student midwife friend of mine lent me her birth pool. We cleared a space in our living room for it, behind our couch. It was a cozy corner, where I hung up red Christmas lights and a double-heart light. My friend hosted a mother’s blessing for me, and I had brought home several beautiful drawings and quotes from friends, which I hung on the walls. I also put up a family photo with my husband, my oldest daughter, and myself, as well as a photo of my grandma from when she was younger, which we had displayed at her funeral just days before I found out I was pregnant. She was my rock, and I wished I could have had her there for my birth, but this was the next best thing.

Pardon the fuzzy photo, this was the only one I managed to salvage after issues with my camera. 

I’m in labor!

The night I went into labor, I had been sitting on the couch watching TV with my husband, and we were about to go to bed. I had been having contractions off and on all night, the same as I had for the past 3 months. Suddenly, I realized one of them made me sit up straighter than usual. After 2 more, I felt the urge to go to the bathroom, and knew that it was time. I spent the next 2 hours laboring on the toilet, which brought me considerable relief (They don’t call it the porcelain birthing stool for nothing!).

I called my friend around 2AM, who I had planned to have there as my doula. She told me to call her back when I wanted her there. I had no idea when I “should” have her there, but I wanted her there then. Since she clearly didn’t want to come right then, and I felt bad about it being 2AM, I just said ok and we hung up.

I went straight from the toilet to the birth pool. I just draped myself over the side of it without any water for an hour or two. Once I started feeling the need to vocalize through contractions, I had my husband begin filling the pool. We only filled it halfway for the first couple of hours. The contractions were easier to handle when the water was over my lumbar. My baby’s spine was facing mine, so I felt significant pressure in my back. I tried to hold off on filling the pool, so that the water wouldn’t get too cold too soon. I had my husband put on some music to help me relax in the meantime.

My friend called around the time we got the pool filled, and reminded me to have my husband bring me food and drink. I had been sleeping in between contractions, and he had too. He made me some scrambled eggs and brought me some chocolate coconut water, which took me a good hour to fully consume.

 

It’s Time to Push!

About 10 hours after that first contraction that made me sit up straight, my vocalizations became much louder and more frequent. My mom, who lived with us, came out of her bedroom because she could tell something had changed. Our daughter woke up and came out of her bedroom. We told her that her sister was coming. She stayed until the next contraction, but said that my vocalizations were too loud, and retreated to her room again. I began to feel the urge to push. About forty-five minutes later, she began to crown. My husband saw her forehead, but saw her pulling back in a bit in between each contraction. I went slower and panted through a few contractions as her eyebrows began to emerge. My husband told me to push, and I told him to shut up. I was listening to my body, and it was telling me that it needed time to stretch as we reached “the ring of fire”. A few minutes later, her head was free, and my husband worried about her trying to breathe under the water as he saw her mouth opening and closing. I assured him that she was fine, and she would not try to breathe yet, and she was still getting her oxygen from the umbilical cord.

 

I did it!

At almost exactly one hour from the first push, she was free. I had spent the entire labor on my knees, hanging over the side of the pool because my body wouldn’t allow me any other position. I was so relieved to finally be able to sit down properly. My husband helped me bring her to my chest. She was covered in vernix. He brought us a blanket to put over her to keep her warm against my chest, as the water had gotten colder than I had realized. This was when I finally decided to call my friend and tell her to come over. We spent a few more minutes in the pool, giving me a chance to rest. Once I had delivered the placenta, we placed it in a bowl, still attached to our baby, and moved to the couch, where we laid on chux pads together, with the bowl near my head.

My favorite photo ever. I feel it truly embodies the tranquility and connection felt after a homebirth. 

(yes, I wore a Wonder Woman camisole as my birthing gown)

Breastfeeding Begins

I placed her on my belly and allowed her to do “the breast crawl”. It only took her a few minutes to find the breast, but she needed a lot of help with latching. My first had needed help, and I just thought it was similar, her mouth was too tiny and my breast was so big that it was hard for her. I later found out she had tongue and lip ties. But with a little help from me, she was able to get enough colostrum to fill her tummy and she drifted off to sleep peacefully on my chest.

So teeny tiny in comparison!
Drifting off after a nice meal ♥

 

A Happy Ending

About two hours later, my friend and my midwife showed up and worked together to get me cleaned up and baby checked out. My friend brought a cord burning box and some candles. Around 10PM, my husband and I decided it was time to go ahead and burn the cord. We tied it off with some string left from the anklets I made for myself and my daughters at my mother’s blessing, then we got it situated in the box and began to burn through it. It took a lot longer than we expected, and dripped a lot, so we were glad we had the box to support the candles and catch the dripping.

A sacred family moment

 

The Less-Pretty Details (TMI WARNING!!!)

There were a few things I didn’t include in the actual story itself. I feel these need to be mentioned, however, to show that even the most beautiful experience can include trying times.

 

My Tailbone Broke

After about half an hour of pushing, I felt and heard my tailbone break. My mom asked me what happened, and I told her my tailbone just broke, and she told me that there was no way it broke. I began to lose my patience with everyone after that, and used some colorful language when telling both my mother and my husband that I was doing things my way and they needed to stop trying to tell me what to do. After a few weeks of postpartum agony, my chiropractor did an x-ray and proved that my tailbone had indeed broken, and it was due to a deformity caused by a childhood injury. This felt very vindicating.

 

I hemorrhaged 

After delivery, my friend showed up before my midwife, and urged me to get up and go to the bathroom. I had tons of chux pads ready so that I wouldn’t need to worry about this. I didn’t feel I had the strength to get up, and she had to support most of my weight when I finally relented and went. As soon as I sat down on the toilet, I dropped two big clots, and started to fall asleep. My mom panicked and started to call 911. Thankfully, my friend was able to wake me and get me up and back to the couch and hydrated, and my mom told them it was a false alarm. I drank copious amounts of coconut water over the next hour and took several doses of homeopathic remedies. This helped me regain my strength and begin to rebuild my blood volume. I personally think I should not have gotten up when I did, and could have avoided such trouble if I had listened to my body telling me to wait a little longer, rather than my friend urging me to get up, but there is no way to be sure of what was actually the best thing to do in that moment, or if the hemmoraging could have been entirely avoided either way. Had the coconut water and homeopathics not shown effective, the next step would have been to cut a small piece of my placenta off and stick it in my cheek. The placenta contains hormones that signal the uterus to contract, which would have helped to stop the hemmorage as well.

 

The Afterpains

One thing no one seems to mention when preparing for birth is the afterpains. The contractions after delivery felt so much stronger to me because I had nothing to push against them anymore. They lasted for nearly an entire day, with the worst of them happening over the first six hours or so. Taking homeopathic Sabina helped greatly, but the pain was still pretty intense. My midwife did a massage on my uterus to try to help it contract (part of the reasoning behind the “breast crawl” as well), and it HURT. I was not prepared for that at all. Clearly, I had missed a few things in my research!

 

If you would like to learn more about your options for homebirth, with or without assistance, here are a few great resources to check out:

American Pregnancy Association

Birthing Better

Midwives Alliance North America

The Unassisted Baby

Preeclampsia in Pregnancy

Posted on by Baby Led Enlightenment

 

♥ Preeclampsia in Pregnancy ♥

 

 

Today is preeclampsia day. This is something that is very important to know about during pregnancy and the postpartum period. 

 

What is Preeclampsia?

Preeclampsia.org summarizes it like this: “Preeclampsia is persistent high blood pressure that develops during pregnancy or the postpartum period and is often associated with high levels of protein in the urine OR the new development of decreased blood platelets, trouble with the kidneys or liver, fluid in the lungs, or signs of brain trouble such as seizures and/or visual disturbances.”

This is a very basic description of it, but there is a lot more to know about it, and you can learn more from their website. Here are some key things that I think everyone should be aware of about preeclampsia in pregnancy:

Preeclampsia can be life-threatening during pregnancy, and for baby as well. Medical professionals no longer require the detection of protein in the urine to diagnose it, as research has shown that organ trouble can occur without the development of protein in the urine. Symptoms to watch out for include headaches, abdominal pain, shortness of breath or burning behind the sternum, nausea and vomiting, confusion, heightened state of anxiety, and/or visual disturbances such as oversensitivity to light, blurred vision, seeing flashing spots or auras, or swelling in the limbs, face, or genitals.

 

How Common is Preeclampsia?

I don’t mean to alarm you. Chances are, it won’t even happen to you. Preeclampsia and related hypertensive disorders of pregnancy impact 5-10% of all pregnancies. Let’s flip that to a more positive way of thinking. That’s a 90-95% chance you won’t have preeclampsia in pregnancy. So your odds are good, but with so many pregnancies per year, that’s still a lot of people affected by it!

But remember, most people with preeclampsia in pregnancy will deliver healthy babies and fully recover.

 

What Causes Preeclampsia in Pregnancy?

The abovementioned website has a great chart with a listing of basic summaries of theories of what causes preeclampsia, though no one knows for certain what actually causes it. This is fairly common in conditions of pregnancy, due to a lack of research and subsequent lack of full understanding of how having the DNA of two different people inside of one body really affects the body. Preeclampsia.org’s chart covers things like nutrition, genetics, injury, and random malfunctions of the human body. One theory that was not well-specified in that chart is the partner’s contribution. Partners who have contributed to one pre-eclamptic pregnancy are twice as likely to contribute to another pregnancy with a different person. It is also more likely to happen with limited sperm exposure from the same partner prior to conception. The reason for these statistics is currently unknown.

 

How is Preeclampsia Treated?

There are various treatments for the condition, ranging from medications to supplements to diets. Intravenous magnesium sulfate can be used to help lower blood pressure and decrease the likelihood of seizures. A high-protein diet is another commonly used treatment, which has shown great results.

 

What’s My Story?

Most people don’t even realize that it can occur in the postpartum period. It is less common, but definitely still happens. In fact, it happened to me!

I developed preeclampsia a few days after I went home from the hospital when I had a C-section with my oldest daughter. I had many of the classic symptoms mentioned above. I had actually experienced many of those symptoms during my pregnancy as well, and was suspected to be developing preeclampsia several weeks before birth. My blood pressure went back down below the threshhold of what my doctor considered “too dangerous”, however, and they didn’t look into it any further.

When I called my doctor’s office and informed them of my concerns, asking to move up my appointment scheduled two weeks out, my doctor declined to bring me in any sooner. He brushed off my concerns and treated me as though I knew nothing about my own body (just as he had tried to do when I came to the hospital, telling him that something was wrong with my baby, leading to my emergency c-section).

Luckily for me, he broke his arm while on the vacation he didn’t tell me about (presumably the reason he didn’t want me in the office any sooner), and the office brought in his son in to cover for him. His son had more up-to-date training and knowledge, and had worked all over the world. He told me to come into the office immediately when I called again, voicing my concerns which had then turned to fear. He examined me, reviewed my symptoms, and did some bloodwork. He determined that I had indeed developed preeclampsia, however it seemed to be resolving on its own at this point, which is a rare but happy occurrence. I told him that I had discovered the Brewer diet, and been trying to follow it, while also taking extra magnesium supplements. He told me that this was spot-on and commended me for doing my own research, while also apologizing for his father’s failure to listen to me. He told me to keep listening to my instincts and hinted that I may want to find another doctor once his father returned and he set back off on his international adventures.

I was lucky, not only because I had been empowered to listen to my instincts by my own previous life experiences, and I had the education and resources to do my own research, but because I got to meet a doctor that so thoroughly embodied the essence of what a doctor should be, and what a good doctor is.

 

Lastly…

I wish everyone could be as lucky as I was, but unfortunately, many are not. This is why I am here. This is why I do what I do. By sharing my knowledge and my stories, I can help to empower and educate others who may otherwise never find their power or learn the things they need to know. If you would like to gain more education and empowerment, please follow my page, and join the growing Baby Led Enlightenment Support Village on facebook. We are a community dedicated to supporting and empowering each other to make informed decisions so that we can have happy, healthy pregnancies, and raise happy, healthy, emotionally intelligent children. I hope to see you there!

 

 

Join the Baby Led Enlightenment Support Village

 

Sources:

Preeclampsia.org, Sanford Health, Dr Brewer Pregnancy Diet