#birth experience

[harmonyhealinghub]

Birth Doulas: Empowering Support for Expectant Families

Shaina Tranquilino

December 12, 2023

Bringing a new life into the world is an incredible journey filled with joy, anticipation, and sometimes, uncertainty. During this transformative time, many women seek additional support to ensure a positive birth experience. Enter birth doulas – compassionate professionals who provide continuous physical, emotional, and informational assistance before, during, and after childbirth. In this blog post, we will delve into what birth doulas are and explore their invaluable role in empowering expectant mothers.

Understanding Birth Doulas: A birth doula is a trained individual who offers non-medical support to expectant mothers throughout the entire childbirth process. These dedicated individuals are typically experienced in various birthing techniques and possess extensive knowledge of the physiological and emotional aspects of labour and delivery.

Their Role: 1. Emotional Support: Birth doulas provide unwavering emotional support during pregnancy, labour, and postpartum periods. They assist expectant mothers by actively listening to their concerns, fears, hopes, and dreams surrounding childbirth. By offering empathy and reassurance, these caring professionals help alleviate anxieties while fostering confidence.

2. Continuous Physical Comfort: Doulas employ an array of comfort measures to ease discomforts associated with labour pains such as massage techniques, breathing exercises, relaxation techniques, positioning suggestions, and more. Their presence ensures that the mother's physical needs are addressed consistently throughout the birthing process.

3. Advocacy & Communication: One significant aspect of a birth doula's role is to act as an advocate for the mother's preferences and desires when communicating with healthcare providers or medical staff. This may include discussing pain management options or ensuring the mother has access to accurate information about procedures being performed.

4. Informational Support: Birth doulas empower expectant mothers by providing evidence-based information on various aspects of childbirth like different birthing positions or breastfeeding techniques. They ensure that the mother is well-informed, enabling her to make educated decisions regarding her birth plan.

5. Partner Support: Birth doulas also extend their support to partners or other family members involved in the birthing process. By guiding them on how best to assist and comfort the labouring mother, doulas help create a harmonious environment where everyone feels included and informed.

Benefits of Hiring a Birth Doula: The advantages of having a birth doula during childbirth are numerous:

1. Increased Satisfaction: Studies have shown that women who receive continuous support from a birth doula report higher levels of satisfaction with their birthing experience.

2. Reduced Interventions: Research indicates that with the presence of a doula, there is often a decrease in interventions like cesarean sections and epidurals, leading to more positive outcomes for both mother and baby.

3. Emotional Well-being: The emotional support provided by birth doulas significantly reduces stress levels for expectant mothers, promoting overall emotional well-being throughout pregnancy and beyond.

4. Lowered Risk of Postpartum Depression: Women supported by birth doulas tend to have lower rates of postpartum depression due to the consistent guidance and nurturing they receive during the vulnerable post-birth period.

Birth doulas play an essential role in ensuring positive experiences for expectant mothers during childbirth. Their unwavering support, knowledge, and advocacy empower women to navigate this transformative journey confidently. By providing physical comfort, emotional reassurance, informational assistance, and acting as an advocate, these dedicated professionals contribute significantly to creating fulfilling and empowering birthing experiences for all involved.

[themommydiary]

Due Dates & Induction Dates

I am currently due September 26th. As I have said before, my pregnancy was 100% healthy and smooth. I did not develop Gestational Diabetes, did not have/was not a carrier for Group Strep B, or did not have any signs of preeclampsia or blood pressure issues & gained an appropriate level of weight during my pregnancy.

So many people are asking me, why are they choosing to induce you if you had such a healthy pregnancy? New medicine/research.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that elective inductions in healthy pregnancies can be offered as early as 39 weeks pregnant. (Source: https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/labor-induction)

When I was around 37 weeks pregnancy, my doctor checked by cervix for the first time and offered me the option of elective induction closer to my due date. At the time I wasn't really thinking about it ACTUALLY being a possibility. I told her I was open to it and from there she told me a scheduling representative will reach out to schedule.

Fast forward to now, September 20th, 2023. I am technically due in just 6 days; HOWEVER, I have shown absolutely no signs of labor. This Induction Date is seemingly becoming more real. I cannot explain the amount of research I personally have done on this topic in addition to reaching out to friends, colleagues and other OB/GYNs about this.

Of course, when I first heard the word "induction" I was absolutely terrified. My husband, family, and friends were all concerned for me. Most of which told me to deny the induction as it is my right as a patient to be able to. But once I dove a little deeper and found out my OWN personal benefits outweighs my risks of going over my due date I was more convinced.

My physician & the research I've done on my own suggested elective induction at 40 weeks due to my healthy pregnancy and to reduce the risk of placental issues and stillborn.

I thought I was going to be robbed of the experience of having myself spontaneously/chaotically go into labor at first. After some thought, I told my husband that I am more than okay with showing up to the hospital checking in as if it's a 5 star hotel, relaxed & my mind ready.

Of course, I do want to point out that I'm still hoping to go into labor naturally as this is "better for your body" or "the way God intended". But in moments like these, you start to forget about what it is that YOU want, and what it will take to ensure that your baby will be safe and healthy.

Please reach out/comment/message and tell me about your induction experience.

[emacrow]

Jazz always wanted a little brother.

Her best friend's mommy having a baby brother in her tummy, but right now they were at gotham, mom was meeting with some important people while she stay safe in the car with dad sleeping in the front passenger seat.

When she asked her mom and dad for a baby brother earlier that same week, mom had to explained that her tummy was broken after she had her because she was a very special miracle baby because they tried so hard to have her.

Jazz understood but at the same time, she wanted- no she need a baby brother, maybe one with dad's hair and mom's eyes, or maybe one with hair like hair and dad's eyes.

And she was determined, as she snuck out of the fentomobile car, sneaking inside beside the scary ninjas guards that were temporarily distracted.

She was very good at sneaking around thanks to mom training her to stay quiet and hide better then a ghost.

There was pools of ectoplasmic but much dirtier and less cleaner then the stuff mom and dad work with. Container and chambers full of them.

She saw doctor walking out of one room and snuck in before the the door close on her. There was another ectoplasmic container that had babies in them..

One sleeping upside down and the other upside up. The one of the bottom was sleeping but the older has his eyes open, revealing pretty blue eyes like dad's eyes.

She chewed on her bottom lip a bit and weigh her short limited choices as nodding.

She close her eyes, focusing as she quickly started to float a bit wobbly, sticking her small hands onto the glass ectoplasmic ball using her secret powers that she had learned without mom and dad noticing.

Her invisible hand grabbed the baby slowly, making it invisible as she pulled it out of the ectoplasmic ball.

The baby was very small and light then a feather while covered in wet ectoplasm goop.. the baby cough a bit, dripping ectoplasm out his mouth, squirming a bit as he was about to male a fuzz but quiet down as she held him close into her warm fuzzy jacket.

She snuck back out of the room and quickly out of the place all the way back into fentonmobile..

Covering the baby with her Einstein beat designed blanket, cleaning the baby up like she would with her baby dolls, and she open the empty toy baby bottle and open her mini almond milk jug, then pour the milk in and close it, after remembering to cut a little open hole on the tip of the hard plastic nibble part.

Scooting over to the baby, and carefully picking him up and helding him close onto her lap like she seen the mommy do on TV as she press the toy baby bottle again the baby's mouth.

It would be 1 hour later before mom came back looking excited then 2 hours later after they left gotham before a soft baby wail woke her dad from the backseat of the fenton car where jazz was.

Jazz was pink in the face as she was trying to hide the baby but she couldn't stop him from crying.

It would 20 minutes of jazz lying straight to her parents's faces on where she found the baby, and it would forever be her only best lie she ever told that convinced them to adopt the baby boy that was now named danny..

Meanwhile back at league of Assassin headquarters. The head scientist has noticed that the first unborn twin baby has been removed early then schedule, probably due to natural condition of death since the first one has a much weaker pulse compared to the second unborn baby which Talia had name Damian later.

The leading scientist check off the existence of the supposed first born who went without a name on the data base...

Unknownly to both parties, Jazz was very happy to have a little brother of her own now, even if his eyes flashes green a bit from time to time.

[peaceandlove26]

the sun is my girl

[lleann-art]

i have a hard time drawing his hair on the show so i always end up accidentally giving him alice cullen hair🙁

[ruporas]

feast (ID in alt)

[pansyfemme]

im going off t 🎉

[annabelle--cane]

stop talking about agab. stop talking about agab. stop talking about "amab and afab experiences." stop saying "afab" when you talk about misogyny. you can say that someone who isn't a woman is affected by misogyny without it being an "afab thing." there are gazillions of women who were assigned male at birth who super duper have experienced misogyny from a young age. I'll kill you.

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage - The World Within

[dark-star-exe]

Leon learns that actions (eating raw eggs and random ass snakes) have consequences (hopital)

[the-tortured-fangirl-department]

If I was Apollos Baby Mama that had to go trough nine months of pregnancy and birth just to find out that Apollo can do it himself I would be FUCKING PISSED

[nelkcats]

Halves company

Danny had a big problem: since a couple of days ago he had discovered that he didn't look good in pictures. He wasn't a vampire so he was actually in them but his eyes always looked bright green, and the photos left an eerie feeling.

His friends didn't mind, and his family much less (they had gotten along much better after revealing the whole secret), the problem was that he was due to take a trip to Gotham soon and he just knew he would have some pictures taken.

A couple of years ago Danny had accepted Vlad's request to "start over" and together they had formed a research company that specialized in several fields, among them: the technological field, advanced engineering, space engineering, and different ecto-related projects, although the latter was not revealed to the public.

Few months later "Wayne Enterprises" seemed very interested in their inventions for everyday life so they wanted to negotiate some deal and dig into their technology. Danny was fine with that, he had created those things to make people's lives easier.

The problem came when Bruce Wayne invited them to a gala, he told them that the "founders" of the company were very elusive about their identity (neither Vlad nor Danny liked cameras much in those days) and joked that it was a shell company for some illegal activities and it was better to check, Danny was not amused about it.

He accepted Bruce's invitation knowing full well that Vlad couldn't meet the challenge (or be polite about it), but once he got to the gala he saw all the reporters and knew he was screwed.

Would it be better to be unsettling or not appear in the photos at all?, he supposed it would be best to avoid all the cameras and say hello to Bruce or Lucius, talk a bit and then leave.

It was supposed to be easy: walk in, say hello, walk out; Of course, his plans had never been perfect, so before he knew it he was seeing the Wayne "kids", and a reporter from the Daily Planet looking extremely nervous.

[discard-celestia]

lestat de lioncourt - on the deer which runs faster than itself. Hélène Cixous, Stigmata / Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat / Interview with a Vampire (2022) / Catherine Malabou, Ontology of the Accident / Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001 / Louis Moe, Allegory / Ovid, Metamorphoses / Ethel Cain, Ptolomea / The Company of Wolves (1984) / Lingua Ignota, I WHO BEND THE TALL GRASSES / Hugh Parry, Ovid's Metamorphoses: Violence in a Pastoral Landscape.

[kacievvbbbb]

Some Goth Fam Modern AU headcanons I can't stop thinking about and will probably explode if I don't put pen to paper or in this case- Type to screen

Here we go. This is going to be a long one;

-Shanks isnt officially part of the goth family. Even though he's know these kids since mihawk had them, helped raise them is always there in the morning to take them to school and is practically their other father. Perona and Zoro still refer to him as "Mihawk's bum of a boyfriend" (byprodcut of hearing mihawk call shanks a bum one to many times).

-Zoro and Perona relentlessly troll mihawk for having only 2 friends and they are his boyfriend and business partner. even though perona herself only has like 1 friend and a gaggle of minions.

-Perona got a giant bear cut out all the stuffing and used to make a baby zoro wear the carcass of her destuffed bear. baby zoro was very chill about all this.

-People think mihawk is a housewife but he actually has a job with the government that nobody really knows what it is and nobody is really allowed to talk about. he just never goes in except for the once a month meeting where they threaten to fire him.

-They have a groupchat just the three of them called "The Family" and then another one with shanks sinces hes the one that actually drives them places called "the family and shanks"

-Mihawk is the type of person to get a family portrait every time the kids have grown to look significantly different from the last so every couple of years. They are all extremely giant and actually painted. these are the only family picture hanging on the walls. even tho mihawk secretly scrapbooks all the pictures shanks takes.

-Mihawk has had them since they were toddlers they still call him Mihawk tho. excpet zoro hits 13 and starts exclusively referring to him as Hawkeyes or "that guy".

-Mihawk is a crunchy mom tm and they grew up in an ingredient household. But because mihawk is a grazer at heart and zoro needs fuel like a truck and all their little friends all practically live at their house. Theres awlays charcuterie boards on hand. Zoro never had a pop tart until he went to Luffy's house one time. He asked Mihawk what fruit snacks are and he reacted like zoro just summoned the devil into their home. He's very Nara smith I cook all my kids meals from scratch coded. He's definitely running one of those mommy blogs and being really bitchy and personal attacky about the whole thing and hes not even trying to hide it. Literally two steps away from bring a mommy influencer. literally just needs the instagram page (which he has but doesn't know its run by perona).

-Despite this zoro and perona cant cook for shit. That one tiktok video of the woman showing her husband what she used to have for a midnight snake as a kid in an ingredient house and it was just a bowl of mixed vegetables is so them coded. Despite mihawk's nara smith tendencies once thye get to a certain age every meal but dinner is every man for himself. mihawk only cooks once and so raises a family of girl lunch havers and grazers. Zoro thinks a greenshake is a snack. his eating habits are a source of constant stress for sanji.

-Perona is definitely an influencer her content ranges from fashion stuff to content about her strange family (she tries to get them to make tiktoks and msot of the videos are just zoro's resignantion and mihawk's funnily shutting that shit down with a swiftness) and just stories of her weird family and her brothers even weirder friends. nobody can figure out what their family dynamics are.

-shanks definelty makes those "dealing my italian husband psychic damage videos" except they are like my Spanish-Romanian husband and mihawk get genuinely upset and every video ends witrh the threat of shanks being murdered.

-Nobody on these channels realizes that this mihawk is the same internationally recognized as the best swordfighter to ever live Dracule Mihawk.

-Zoro goes to the local community college with most of the gang while perona goes to a fashion college as a fashion/fashion history major. she lives on campus but is home every weekend tho so mihawk can do her laundry and restock her fridge.

-Only luffy and nami who are his childhood friends truly know just how fucking rich his family is even tho Zoro and the parent that zoro and luffy both weirdly share, despite not being otherwise related, look and act like bums. They meet the rest of the straw hats in college.

-At no given time do shanks or zoro even have 20 dollars on them something that endlessly frustrates everyone else around them. Usopp has bought one to many meals for zoro to be nothing other than incensed when he is invited to "summer" at their lake house thats more like a resort. Zoro can live in a converted mid century castle but Usopp has seen him pay for a sandwhich with a collection of change.

-people often wonder where exactly perona got her bratty attitude from because zoro and mihawk are pretty chill, composed guys. and then they see how mihawk acts around Shanks and the lenghts of childishness Shanks can push him too and then they

-Zoro and Mihawk are endlessly competing at petty meaningless activities espoecially if they involve cutting things with a blade. they have a running count into the 300s off how much mihawk has won vs zoro and he is endlessly smug about it. Zoro has only just begun to start clawing more victories for himself. He recently won their speed cucumber cutting challenge and mihawk was non to pleased about this.

-Adopted this one from a mutual; but Mihawk used to take Perona to all the twighlight, pop girlie, pastel goth stuff and pretends that its all a hastle even tho he's really into the stuff and has been since perona got into it.

-They are the kind of family that always had dinner together but would have every other meal wherever and whenever but since perona is away at college it became sunday lunch and dinner which just turned into sunday bruch for practically the entire neighborhood because zoro and perona keep inviting their weird friends over. and now its a whole thing and mihawk is none to pleased.

-Mihawk was about to be an empty nester and then s-hawk falls in his lap and heres another kid he has to look after and makes sure survives till adulthood 🙄. S-hawk ironically for all he looks exactly like him is the child that acts the least like him (This is largely zoro's influence) And he's definetly that stereotype of when you parents decide to have a kid in their 40s and they grow up in a completely different household than you did. like who even are these people?? S-hawk actually gets to have fruit snacks and zoro is still super salty about this. Because Mihawk was just off achieving his biggest dream with nothing better to do that to pout all his energy into being a parent to these two monsters. but now he has actually has a job that he actively needs to work at🙄

-Zoro looks baby sits s-hawk the most and like s-hawk is like 5 to zoro's 20 and zoro is definitely one of those people that doesnt "play" with kids instead he just folds s-hawk into whatever routine he has for the day without missing a step. He takes him with him to his classes at the community college. He pulls up a chair for s-hawk he has his own little notebook and everything everytime people try to coo at him Zoro tells them to leave him a lone the little dude's trying to learn here. He takes him to the gym like all those videos with dads and their babies repping sets. He gives s-hawk baby dumbells and teaches him proper form and everything. just goes about his life like there isnt a 5 year old trailing him like a duckling. Zoro puts on act for mihawk but he loves having a little buddy since chopper's kind of outgrown it.

-Zoro and Mihawk both talk to baby s-hawk like a regular person. Mihawk talks to him likes he's a distinguished gentleman with thoughts and opinions and who should know better than to fling food and toys and he often reads him the news. Zoro talks to him like he's just a dude definetly the type to have a beer with the baby while they sit on the couch watching sports. Perona and Shanks are the ones that actually treat him like a baby and baby talk him and shanks is definietly one of those parents that's always doing extreme sports stuff with a baby while Perona essentially treats him like a teddy bear / dress up doll. she and mihawk are the only ones allowed to make clothing decisons for him after the time he came home from a shopping trip with zoro and shanks looking like both a bum and a middle aged dad on vacation. Shanks was allowed to keep one tiny s-hawk sized haiwain shirt.

-Zoro essentially raises s-hawk like he's his child 😭. Like Junior and devante from Black-ish but he's less upront about this. He keeps adding things to the kid's schedule without telling Mihawk and essentially treats mihawk like the unwanted third in their relationship. He takes him everywhere with him. People would think that was his kid if he didn't look so intensely like mihawk. He signs baby hawk up for kendo classes from the age like 3 cause he'll be damned if he takes after mihawk's swordsmanship. He attends every practice he gets very intense during matches. its a whole thing. He also keeps signing baby hawk up for random extracurriclars that Mihawk can't keep up with and change depending on season. Baby hawk is in baby gymnastics with all the other seraphim. Zoro is very invested in this. Zoro the type to pull up to a heist with a baby.

[brinnanza]

most gays and reasonable people: you can't judge people for immutable aspects of their being like their sexuality or race or county of origin; bisexuals are not a monolith they don't all like iced coffee

some of those same bitches without a shred of awareness: except for your birthday which can determine your entire personality my girlfriend the moon told me so

[pinbones]

There's two types of people who use transandrophobia to decribe transmascs' and trans mens' experiences:

- Simply specificity, language used to hone in on a specific way being trans affects people who just happen to be men

- As both the above and as a springboard to discuss how societal misogyny, radical feminism, gender stereotypes, and bioessentalism affect all people who can be pecieved as men or masculine by others, and how bigotries compound in meaningful ways with stereotypes and bigotry surrounding maleness and manhood

Like. Half of you are saying "maleness is a hollow experience which is standard, and exists in opposition to gendered oppression, and transandrophobia is therefore when dudes experience misogyny and transphobia"

and half of you are saying "Being percieved and/or transitioning towards male uniquely affects how I am treated, because, for example, how people perceive my blackness or mental illness or kinkiness or femininity is compounded with my manhood in ways that don't usually happen to gender conforming cisperi women"

Which are two fundamentally different approaches to transandrophobia as a concept. One suggests that maleness is a simple downy layer of privilege that coats a person through their male life, and the other acknowledges that a man (or somebody perceived as masculine/male) can experience oppression in ways that those NOT perceived male may not.

Only one of these interpretations is intersectional. Black individuals who are policed more hashly when interpreted as masc know they are risking dangerous experiences when transitioning to male, as has been discussed before on here (to no avail). Male or percieved male people with personality disorders are treated as more dangerous than women with similar symptoms, and are sometiems diagnosed with different disorders entirely based on percieved gender differences. This affects transmascs too, especially considering the already dire state of queerness in psychiatric institutions. Being a male birthing parent is a whole shitshow of transphobia because men are not supposed to give birth, and transmascs are lucky to access related healthcare at all, let alone access it without being ceaselessly misgendered and treated as a stigmatised 'other' to deleterious affects on parent and baby. These are just a few examples, there are many more ways maleness can screw a person over. And that's not to say that female privilege is a thing instead of male privilege, but rather to emphasise that men are not supposed to be minorities. Men are not supposed to be assaulted, men are not supposed to be outliers, men are absolutely not supposed to be trans.

When a man is autistic, he's not just autistic, he's an autistic male, and that makes him more likely to be killed by cops (especially if black). When someone says "you claim you're not ableist but you're scared of the homeless x on a bus talking to xself", they always say the person is a man, because that sounds more significant (and cops think so too). Consider when a person's rape/abuse is considered to not be all that serious due to the victim being male, or when a man's attraction is considered to be more exploitative than a woman's, or when a fat man is considered more creepy/sexist than a thin man or a fat woman. Consider why so many caricatures of evil and creepiness are men with deformities. Consider the fact that men's bathrooms don't have baby changing tables, and that a man may get less support from others after their child's death than the mother might. Maleness can negatively compound with things like minority status, vulnerability, aggression, sexuality, etc. in ways that screw that person over, both in social spaces (such as queer communities that dislike/distrust maleness and masculinity, or how isolation affects men harder), and in more tangible ways, like their rates of suicide and being murdered.

There are tangible ways in which transitioning to male can negatively affect a person's life even if you remove (hypothetically, not really possible) the transphobia element, and these also constitute as worthwhile topics of discussion. If you think maleness is the lack of gendered oppression, then you're not intersectional in your feminism at all. If your life as a male is genuinely sunshine and rainbows (apart from the transphobia if trans), then good for you, genuinely that's great, but not everyone lives in a radfem fantasy world.

Being unable to tell the difference between men talking about mens issues/liberation, and right wingers talking about oppressing women more, isn't feminist. It's ignorant and antifeminist. (MRAs don't care about actual mens lib, and are actively worsening it because they are sexist and opposed to gender lib. You guys know that, right? That male and female liberation aren't oppositional or binary, but the same gender liberation that is entirely oppositional to patriarchy?)

These men and mascs talking about issues facing men aren't ignorant womanhaters who deny misogyny and want ultraprivileged men to be coddled, they are good faith members of your community with experiences just as varied and valid as yours. Treat them like it.