The end of March marked World Doula Week 2024, and it reminded me of how important doula care can be in making the fourth trimester a positive experience for new parents. A doula is someone who mothers the mother, whether it’s during the labor and delivery process or during the fourth trimester, when she offers…
Here’s a little nugget that I found in my upcoming book during the editing process. I thought it was important to share with fathers in the childbearing year. Fathers and Hormones* © Diane S Speier, PhD One of the most exciting developments in the last decade is the discovery that fathers go through natural hormonal…
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…
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