Documentary: "The Business of Being Born"

In 2009, I came across a documentary that kind of blew my mind. It's called "The Business of Being Born" (BoBB) and not only can you see the trailer here, but you can actually watch the whole movie for free here! In short, it's a documentary about birth in the USA, both in and out of hospitals. If you haven't seen it, check it out. Although the documentary focuses on the US, a lot of the issues explored ring true internationally (as always, the best thing to do is to check out numbers and statistics for your own country, which is not so hard with a search engine.)

When I first saw BoBB, there were several interesting points that came up, but probably what made the strongest impression on me was that today's common, Western expectations surrounding birth are (surprise surprise!) shaped by cultural and social assumptions rooted in history, a history that I knew nothing about. For instance, how did we end up thinking that lying on our backs with our legs spread apart is a good birth position? What did women do before birthing in a hospital became standard practice? How did we get to epidurals? BoBB looks closely at how, beginning in the 20th century, birth moved from the private space of homes to the private sector of hospitals. In addition, this documentary turns a spotlight on how hospital procedures around birth are not centered around mothers but around a business that has much to do with income, prestige, predictability and speed. It can be a tough film to watch, but one I highly recommend, especially before you are even pregnant (I firmly believe that most of your birthing learning should happen before you are pregnant, so that you are not trying to do a crash course in everything you need to know while struggling to stay awake/stay seated for more than 5 minutes/hold your pee/think of something other than what you will have for breakfast, lunch and dinner.)

It was BoBB that woke me up to the importance of making informed decisions when in came to birth. This, and a general distrust of hospitals due to the high rates of infections, missed diagnoses, and interventions on several of the women whom I have known to give birth in hospitals in the past years. (As a thought experiment, just for yourself, it might be interesting to think about how many women you know who have given birth without any form of intervention - this includes pain killers, induction, emergency Cesarean, episiotomy, blood transfusions, forceps or ventouse delivery. I can only think of 2 out of about 30 women.)

Now, before going any further, I would like to say that hospitals are great for emergencies. Even BoBB makes that clear. And not only that, but if upon entering a hospital you feel yourself relax and soften with the trust you have in that institution, than a hospital might be a great place for you to give birth in. Yet whether you like hospitals or not, the idea of learning about what a hospital is designed to do is crucial, and BoBB addresses some of the more important issues in this regard, like the standard hospital procedures around birth and some of the ways things could be different if approached from another perspective.

Among the people who speak in the documentary is the lovely Marsden Wagner MD. If you don't have time to watch BoBB, you might like to check out this interview with him. (My favorite question/answer starts at 2.25, with the difference between being a scientist and a surgeon.)

And of course, there is my favorite: Ina May Gaskin. (Imagine a few emoticons with hearts for eyes and a big, goofy smile.) This is the second time I mention her, and eventually I will write a more complete post on her and the midwives at the Farm, but for the time being know that she is in the documentary and worth getting to know. When I came across Ina May in BoBB, all there was on Youtube was this series of videos, which quickly cover some gems like why it can be nice to kiss while in labour and the wonderful sphincter law. I still love them, but nowadays there is much more available online! If you don't do some research yourself, I will give you more links to her talks the next time around.

Ruben is up and I need to turn the roast that D has put in the oven. 
Good bye for now and thank you for reading.

Thank you D!; or What About the Dad?

I've been thinking about what to write next, especially as I itch to introduce Ina May Gaskin to the blog, but then this evening, as I was feeding Ruben to sleep, D (my partner) spoke in the microphone of our baby monitor: "Is everything OK?" And it hit me: I must write about D! (Or rather, about my gratitude towards him as a partner, my expectations as a mother, and the need for more support for fathers in our nuclear family system.)

While the baby monitor is designed to monitor the sounds of your baby (and with Ruben, by "sounds" I mean cries only. No, up to now our son has never woken up calmly gurgling to himself or making cute cooing noises. If he wakes up and he's alone, he's unhappy and he makes it clear), our baby monitor has a the added "Talk" feature on the receiver (which you keep on you as a parent) so that you can soothe your baby with the sounds of your voice. Soothing Ruben with the sound of our voice has actually only started to work for us, like, today. BUT, hidden perk of the Talk function: ever since we've had the monitor, D and I have been able to be in touch with each other even when we were on different floors and without screaming at the top of our lungs. Especially in the early days, this usually meant I would be in bed with Ruben and David would be downstairs in our kitchen taking some sort of food/drink order from yours truly. The baby monitor became the B and D Special Communication Device, and even though we don't use it as much these days, my heart softens a little bit whenever D checks in on Ruben and I.

In fact, in those challenging, exhausting, exhilarating early days, D didn't just bring me food and drinks. He became my primary carer. During the first week, when I wanted to calmly get to know our new baby without too many visitors and too much interference, D became our guardian. Whenever I breastfed and thirst would overcome me, I would mercilessly demand water - immediately! When I needed Ruben to relax upstairs, D would bring up the Pilates ball so that I could bounce our baby to sleep. When I cried silent tears as Ruben wailed in mysterious discomfort during the late evenings, D would sometimes just sit in the same room as me, watching me bounce up and down (a recurring theme in Ruben's life until relatively recently), smiling and telling me what a great job I was doing. In other words, when Ruben was born, all of my energies became invested in him and, in turn, I needed D's energies to support me in my new, 24/7 job. And while I don't think D was quite prepared for becoming my full time carer, he did a marvellous job of it.

All this said, the transition from 2 to 3 did not come easy! While the hormonal cocktail that I had in circulation from the pregnancy, through birth, and with breastfeeding, primed me towards wanting to take full care of Ruben, D had no such physiological predisposition towards me. About five weeks after Ruben was born, I remember an exhausted D telling me he didn't feel considered in our relationship anymore. At the time, I almost bit his head off! I remember thinking: "99% of my energies go into keeping this new baby alive, then MAYBE I can take a moment to center myself! How am I supposed to take care of YOU as well?!?! Aaaaaghhhh!" It took a lot of breathing and trying to put myself in his shoes to realise: Ruben had me, I had D, but there was no one there for D! How to deal with this lack of support in our family?

In 2013, I started training to become a Doula (a birth and post-natal informed companion to new parents), and one of the main tenants of my training is that the Mother/Baby Dyad is the most crucial relationship to protect and support after the birth. In other words, I believe in mothering the mother. Before my Doula training, I remember thinking I would want to share childcare equally with the father of my children. Yet a few books and studies later, I realised that that model wouldn't work for me, and when I became pregnant I found myself prepared to become fully dedicated to the little creature growing inside my belly.  Coming from this perspective, when Ruben arrived in our lives I was pretty clear in regards to my preferences: I wanted D to be our guardian, our protector and carer, so that I may get to know our son and tune into him as much as possible. In other words, I wanted to be a Monkey Mama, my baby strapped to me, and my partner by my side helping me on my mothering quest.

Where did all this leave D? As the loving and open companion he is, D supported me in my choices and preferences surrounding pregnancy, birth and childcare, yet my learning did not prepare me to understand his new position. Unlike my mother, who was taught to take care of her husband even as she raised her daughters (this involved a lot of ironing and cooking), I expected D to do the cooking and the cleaning up as I fed, rocked, soothed, and responded to Ruben around the clock. That was that, and just as I was ready to put all of myself into our baby, I expected D to dedicate himself to me for those first few months. It turns out, it's all easier said than done. (As I recently told my sister: "It's so much work. No, really, you have no idea. So. Much. Work.")

The division of labour that D and I fell into when Ruben was born is quite a radical shift in the way parenting has been done for many generations in both of our families. Our parenting choice was made all the more challenging by the fact that we live away from our parents, so that there was no one to give D a break every now and then. Yet our situation is not unique, and more and more I encounter parents who are creating their own version of what "shared parenting" means. Inevitably, in these new family formations, fathers are playing a bigger role in the care of the baby and the mother, and this leaves me wondering: what about the Dad? Even in the traditional role as "the provider," fathers usually don't have as much support as they might need. Could it be that greater support for fathers might decrease the experience of the competition for attention and care with the newborn? And if so, what could support and care for new fathers look like?

I believe the question of how a new father gets attended to is actually quite powerful and possibly the cause for one of the oldest false competitions within traditional heterosexual families: the competition for the mother's attention between the baby and the father. In fact, although I am Italian and this perceived conflict is quite familiar to me (my father's main concern regarding co-sleeping is the detriment to the intimacy between the couple - a concern on which I see it more like this), as you saw I come from a rather radically different perspective on the whole thing. I believe that if fathers were sufficiently supported within a family unit, a baby would not have to be perceived as a threat to the relationship.

Here in Oxford, parents and carers are lucky to be surrounded by many different baby centered support groups (from Children Centres to Baby Cafes, to La Leche League meetings, NCT groups, and both free and paid for classes.) In my experience, these groups are mostly attended by mothers, and they are a wonderful way to feel less alone and to put the challenges of parenting a young baby into perspective. Yet I rarely see fathers attending, and there are probably multiple reasons why.

Alternatively to local groups, there are Dad centered websites which have a strong presence online. In just a few minutes of research,  I came across several blogs that address the Dad's experience, such as Dad's Adventure and New Dad's Blog. There are plenty more, and I would love to hear if you have suggestions. Overall, however, I still wonder about how we can start to imagine  ways to recognize and appreciate the challenging role that a Dad has within a family, especially a new Dad. 

Today's post is an attempt to acknowledge my partner's work of love, which was shaped by my strong desire to mother and be mothered. Now that the waters have calmed a bit and that I have a little more time to be with myself, I often feel great gratitude for D's relentless support over the past year and a half (going back to the pregnancy.) I wanted to share our story (at least part of it), because I think there are many other couples out there who might be struggling with the difficulties of rearranging their relationship around a baby - I send you my heartfelt good wishes and hope you can find support in this earthquake of a transition!*

Thank you for reading and be well.

* I recently described my relationship to my son and my husband like this: "It's like the baby is a whirling dervish, so full of energy, spinning and spinning in circles, and you and your partner are holding hands, trying to move with the spinning baby, making sure he doesn't bump into anything and get hurt, but trying to allow him full range of motion. And while all that is happening, you are still trying to hold hands and hold on to each other. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes a hand slips, but if you are lucky, you just get stronger and stronger in your hold. "

PS 
My good friend Ruti Levtov gave me this lovely heads up: www.men-care.org 

2 Blogs for the Early Days (and Onwards...)

One of the reasons it's taken me a while to get started on this blog, is that there are a couple of wonderful blogs already in existence out there, full of interesting and useful information. I remember how reassuring and helpful it was to be able to browse them in the early days of Ruben's life!

The first blog is www.kellymom.com. The American based author of this blog has put together an exhaustive collection of articles, links, studies, and more, on a wide range of topics surrounding breastfeeding and parenting. The blog is easily searchable by category or by keyword. For instance, under the "Breastfeeding" section, the heading "Got Milk?" opens up a page with 25 different questions that you might have and need answering to (click here to check them out.) I found www.kellymom.com easy to search on my smartphone and sometimes, while bouncing on a yoga ball at 3.30 am with Ruben over my shoulder, hoping he would burp or fart or do whatever he needed to do in order to relax back into sleep, I would browse around and read up on how to deal with engorgement or Ruben's green poos. And that's what you call multi-tasking (and worrying over the crazy sh*t - sometimes literally - that comes up in the first few weeks of caring for a tiny and beautiful human being.)

The second lovely blog that kept me company during the early days, and to which I now return often, is the articulate and funny www.analyticalarmadillo.com. Like my blog, the Analytical Armadillo is hosted by blogspot, so you can search it through the search box or the categories menu (scroll down a bit to find it on the right hand side.) Here you will find the voice of an informed and opinionated Mama who is on top of the latest research and is not afraid to get into a passionate conversation with any non-evidence based advice (especially when it comes from self-labeled "experts"!) Here is one of my favorite examples, a post on why comfort feeding on the boob is actually a valuable practice. The Analytical Armadillo is based in the UK, so some of her posts are specific to what's going on here (see, for instance, the creepy invasion of corporation Bounty in the hospitals: "That Innocent Little Bounty Pack...")

A word on reading and learning. There are, of course, so many more blogs, books and resources both online and in printed versions. My advice is to find a voice that works for you. When you are reading, trust your intuition. If it feels like you enjoy what you are learning, if what you are discovering "makes sense" to you, to your way of life, to how you would like to raise your baby, then go for it! But if there is a little part of you that resists, that doesn't feel quite right, if the author makes you feel uncomfortable or disempowered in any way, then forget it! I remember my mother's well-intentioned gift of Tracy Hogg's "Secrets of the Baby Whisperer", in the hope that the book would make it easier for me to get through the first few months (See Kellymom's review of the book here.) I started reading it and after just a couple of pages I remember wondering: "Oh man, am I doing it all wrong? Routine? Routine? How can I get Ruben on a routine? It seems impossible, but Hogg sounds so sure..." That's when I put the book down. We were co-sleeping and basically doing everything "baby led" (more on that in future posts), and her system just didn't jive with ours! Luckily I soon came across other resources that supported my intuitive response to Ruben and empowered me to feel good in my choices.

So read and learn while trusting your self! Pregnancy and baby advice comes from all around when you are in that world. Showers of it, in fact, and it can hit you hard in the most vulnerable of places ("What? Your 8 week old isn't sleeping through the night yet? That's strange...") That kind of comment, and thousands of others, can leave you feeling like you don't know what you are doing. I believe that is the WORSE possible scenario. Mothers, and parents, all around the world should be empowered to make well-informed decisions and to take care of their children from a place of knowledge and personal trust. So find yourself some good, evidence based support for your choices, and let everything else slide by :-).

That is all for now, thank you for reading and all good wishes your way!

Bump!

I am a 31 years old Mamma living in Oxford, UK, and all around me it seems like women are getting pregnant, birthing babies, or, at the very least, thinking about it. If you have spoken to me in the last 8.5 months (or since Ruben has made his appearance into my world), you have a generally good idea of how invested I have become in the world of pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and child development. And since I am a hungry reader and a passionate lady, during our latest conversation my interests probably translated into a flood of information. (I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to those new moms and moms to be to whom I have "offered" a long list of books, websites, blogs and organizations without necessarily being asked. Thank you for bearing with me.) I am starting this blog in order to get some of my thoughts and suggestions out there without having to overwhelm every other person I speak to. 

The title of this blog, "Learning With Ruben", is  in recognition of the fact that mothering is very much a work in progress,  a wild experiment that is the result of my interaction with the Unique Mr. Ruben. I cannot imagine I would do nearly as much reading and learning if this were my second, or eighth, child, so I am also paying tribute to the incredible work and learning curve that takes place for a first time mother. I hope some of the excitement and amazement that comes with my first parenting adventure will seep into my writing and inspire those reading (again, as opposed to flooding anyone within ear shot with the expanding galaxy of baby centered information within my brain.)

My first entry is dedicated to the lovely author Kate Evans, who has just come out with what I consider the BEST illustrated book on pregnancy: "Bump, how to make, grow, and birth a baby."  If you are thinking of having children, or have recently found out you are pregnant, this is my #1, top of the list, book suggestion for you. I enjoyed "Bump" so much that when I read it earlier this year I dreamt it could be used as a text book for Sex Education all around the world. It's only written in English so far (and some of its sections are specific to the UK and the National Healthcare Sytem), but for the most part it could work internationally. The beautiful comics and the honest humor with which Evans writes are definitely accessible to a young adult audience, and the information she shares is offered in a format that is easy to digest and multi-layered at the same time.

"Bump" covers everything from how to get to know your body for conception and contraception (Evans does a great job of illustrating the relatively simple Fertility Awareness Method), through the physiology behind getting pregnant, birth (both medicalized and not), miscarriage, abortion, and many other topics. The book is visually delightful, informative, and often hilarious. Yet while Evans brings lightness and humor to a very charged topic, her book is also based on up to date research. This means that while "Bump" is evidence based, it is very personal in tone and easy to read. Check out a chapter from the book here (although the preview chapter is of a healthy birth without intervention, in "Bump" Evans covers many different scenarios, including Emergency Cesareans and the use of pain killers during labour.) If this all sounds good, check it out!

Ruben calls, this must be it for now! I look forward to the next entry. In fact, if there's any particular topic that you would like me to focus on or if you have any questions, please get in touch!

With all good wishes,
B