This is an excerpt from my book – Life After Birth: A Parent’s Holistic Guide for Thriving in the Fourth Trimester now in press. It’s a bit long for a blog and I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please share your comments below. Postpartum W.E.L.L.N.E.S.S. Plan © Diane S Speier, PhD At the start of…
I recently received an email about dealing with disappointment, which often happens as the result of unmet expectations we have about how things should be or turn out. We can feel a range of emotions when we feel let down, by ourselves or by others. It’s a tough feeling to experience but it’s a natural…
I recently came across a post on Facebook that included a clip of a news program talking about birth in which instrumental deliveries were described as ‘natural childbirth’. There seems to be some confusion as to what natural childbirth is, and anything that is not a cesarean section is now labeled natural childbirth. And this…
Maternal representations, body images, and mothers’ real life experience. Birthlight Womb to World 2015 At the 2015 Birthlight Womb to World conference I spoke about postnatal bodies and the disparity between what the media says and women’s real life experience. When this conference theme was first announced publicly, I felt compelled to make a contribution…
“I know why you call it Birth Empowerment! I felt so empowered, elated, wonderful – I was on such a high”, exclaimed one of my clients when we spoke on the phone after her birth. This woman was the last client I taught birth preparation to before immigrating to the UK in 1998, and it…
Lately I’ve been thinking about my work as a doula and how important it is to support a woman making the transition to parenthood; it’s a time of unique vulnerability for a new mother who is moving through uncharted territory while also responsible for the needs of an even more vulnerable newborn person, 24/7. A new mother…
Reflections on breastfeeding. These days more and more women are choosing to breastfeed, sometimes under pressure to do the right thing, but often for the pleasure and benefits that it provides. The vast majority of women born during the baby boom generation were not breastfed. This generation of women, including me, didn’t have the personal…
In my last blog I suggested the importance of transforming the experience of birth from being scared to being sacred. The simple switching of letters in this anagram is a metaphor for how birth has been transmuted in the 20th century from a woman-centered labor of love to a medicalized emergency waiting to happen. When birth…
What is the distinction? I believe that one of the difficulties that women experience during breastfeeding is the pull between cultural femininity and biological femininity. This distinction was first brought to my attention in Karen Pryor’s book, Nursing Your Baby (which I believe is out of print now). Cultural femininity is comprised of many stereotypes…
Childbirth Education. Over the years as a certified childbirth educator I have had the privilege of teaching about childbirth and how to give birth in an informed, empowered and confident way. I taught classes for twenty years, first as a Bradley Method® teacher, and then I created a methodology that synthesized and incorporated the best of what I…
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