Check out Julie’s guest blog at the new birth and parenting website, Newmom.me. The site connects parents-to-be with trusted service providers like doulas, lactation and sleep consultants, and massage therapists. You can find Julie listed on the site in her capacities as a birth doula, childbirth educator, and exercise trainer, too.
Check out Julie’s new blog post on her doula site about when first time moms should think about going to the hospital – and when they can wait a bit longer.
Deciding when to go to the hospital can cause laboring couples a lot of stress. If you get there too early, you may get sent home or you run the risk of labor slowing down or stopping. If you go in too late, you run the risk of not making it. So when is the best time?
Well, for most first time couples the chances of not making it to the hospital in time and delivering in the car or at home are pretty slim. That’s a much more likely scenario with subsequent births, but for most first timers labor is long enough and the signs are pretty clear when it is time to go. Here are the signs to look for:
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We all need a community; friends, family, the guy who makes our coffee. But when you are pregnant and preparing for the big life change that comes with labor and birth, human connections are especially important.
Pregnancy, labor, and becoming a parent all have steep learning curves associated with them and one of the best ways to not be overwhelmed is to surround yourself with those who are on the same journey. Being around others who are in your same boat will help decrease anxiety and increase your enjoyment as you sail through this time.
Where can you begin to look for this tribe? Prenatal yoga classes are a good way to prepare physically for birth and connect with other moms in a relaxed, consistent way. Pregnancy support groups are also becoming more common in hospitals and birth centers. If your physician group offers prenatal appointments in a group centering…
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Thanks to new dad Matthew Young for his five star review of “Deliver!” on Amazon.
Says Matthew:
My wife and I enjoyed reading this book and found it very useful. We brought it to the hospital too. It’s a perfect guide for busy parents that want to be well informed about the labor/delivery process, but find your baby prep reading list is already quite full. Love the sample hospital bag packing list, sample birthing plan, and tips for how to support your spouse during labor/delivery, including what to say and not to say! It’s definitely one of the best books we read and would highly recommend checking it out.
I recently had the experience of helping a wonderful couple achieve their goal of a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Caesarean). When they hired me, they explained that for their first birth they had not taken any classes and had not prepared for the birth, trusting that the hospital staff would tell them what to do.
The thing is, that isn’t really the staff’s job. They are supposed to keep mom and baby healthy, which of course is extremely important. But they won’t necessarily suggest positions to help baby move down, offer ideas for staying comfortable or strategies for making make labor efficient, although some do all that and more.
So when this first-time laboring mother told the nurse she was feeling uncomfortable and anxious, the nurse advised her to get an epidural, even though it was very early in the labor and the mom wasn’t then able to be up and changing positions…
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If you’d like to read the Kindle edition of “Deliver! A Concise Guide To Helping The Woman You Love Through Labor” for free, you don’t have long. The offer ends Saturday April 27th.
Check it out for yourself. Tell a friend who might be interested. And if you like it, do share your review on our Amazon page.
It’s here! For the rest of this week, you can download the Kindle edition of Deliver! absolutely free.
Check it out for yourself. Tell a friend who might be interested. And if you like it, share your review on our Amazon page.
Starting Tuesday April 24, and for the rest of this week, you will be able to download the Kindle edition of Deliver! absolutely free! Check it out for yourself. Or tell a friend who might be interested.
Just go to our Amazon page and select the Kindle edition to start your free download.
At a birth recently, the doctor asked if I’d had unmedicated births myself. I was surprised that I hesitated in answering “yes,” even though I did.
Right after the births of my children, I would have wanted to shout my accomplishment from the rooftops. And then as a inexperienced doula, I felt like everyone could and should follow the same path I did.
But over these 17 years of watching women’s experiences vary in length, in intensity, and in levels of anxiety, I now feel like it is not the avoidance or acceptance of an epidural that defines her accomplishment but the way that an expectant mom experiences her path.
My job at the end of the day is not to check the box that says “unmedicated, vaginalbirth” but to help comfort and empower all women with whom I work to make on their own best journey.
Deliver! Books 