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Home Birth Association Meeting

We had a meeting yesterday at one of our member's homes in Palmerston North. There were 5 women and 6 children present. There are lots of projects on the way in the near future for the Manwatu Home Birth Association.

• Firstly we are preparing a poster / pamphlet / bumper sticker campaign to promote home birth.
  
• Also discussed was the possibility of bringing the film 'The Business of Being Born' to Palmerston North.
  
• We heard from some of our members that attended a meeting organised by the Manawatu District Health Board where we met with providers of antenatal services to families in our area in order to touch base and make sure the women they are in contact with hear about the option of homebirth.
  
• The next hui (where home birth associations from around the country get together) is in September - time to start preparing our minds for this.
  
• One of our members pointed out that there are some blow up paddling pools with wide sides available at The Warehouse for about $50 on special at the moment (it's winter). These make great birth pools that you can keep for later use as a paddling pool.

The meeting was nicely completed with the consumption of freshly made queen's cake and hot drinks all round.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Friday July 7th at 1pm in Palmerston North. If you are interested in coming along email mhbanewsletter at hotmail dot com or phone 356 Baby for further details. We would appreciate your input and ideas as to how we can help more families enjoy the amazing journey of birthing at home.

2008 - Year of Home Birth Awareness

According to Joyous Birth, The Australian Homebirth Network 2008 is the year of Home Birth Awareness. On their website they have a great list of ideas for how we can promote homebirth awareness every day in small, achievable ways. Lots of people each making a small effort can make a huge difference to the awareness of an entire community of the possibilities for birthing joyously at home. Take a look now and see what you can do to help spread the word about how great home birth is.

Taku tamaiti

There is a beautiful blog called Taku tamaiti which outlines the days before and after the home birth of Raniera. It is a fantastic journal of this family's birth process and babymoon.

It is so lovely to have local content on this blog. If any of you would like to submit your birth story or other homebirth or pregnancy/baby related article to the blog then just email mhbanewsletter at hotmail dot com

Natural Age of Weaning

A Natural Age of Weaning

by Katherine Dettwyler, PhD

Department of Anthropology,
Texas A and M University

My research has looked at the various "life-history" variables (such as length of gestation, birth weight, growth rate, age at sexual maturity, age at eruption of teeth, life span, etc.) in non-human primates and then looked at how these variables correlate with age at weaning in these animals. These are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, especially gorillas and chimpanzees, who share more than 98% of their genes with humans. I came up with a number of predictions for when humans would "naturally" wean their children if they didn't have a lot of cultural rules about it. This interest stemmed from a reading of the cross-cultural literature on age at weaning, which shows that cultures have very different beliefs about when children should be weaned, from very early in the U.S. to very late in some places. One often hears that the worldwide average age of weaning is 4.2 years, but this figure is neither accurate nor meaningful. A survey of 64 "traditional" studies done prior to the 1940s showed a median duration of breastfeeding of about 2.8 years, but with some societies breastfeeding for much shorter, and some for much longer. It is meaningless, statistically, to speak of an average age of weaning worldwide, as so many children never nurse at all, or their mothers give up in the first few days, or at six weeks when they go back to work. It is true that there are still many societies in the world where children are routinely breastfed until the age of four or five years or older, and even in the United States, some children are nursed for this long and longer. In societies where children are allowed to nurse "as long as they want" they usually self-wean, with no arguments or emotional trauma, between 3 and 4 years of age. This interest also stemmed from the realization that other animals have "natural" ages of weaning, around 8 weeks for dogs, 8-12 months for horses, etc. Presumably these animals don't have cultural beliefs about when it would be appropriate.

Some of the results are as follows:

1. In a group of 21 species of non-human primates (monkeys and apes) studied by Holly Smith, she found that the offspring were weaned at the same time they were getting their first permanent molars. In humans, that would be: 5.5-6.0 years.

2. It has been common for pediatricians to claim that length of gestation is approximately equal to length of nursing in many species, suggesting a weaning age of 9 months for humans. However, this relationship turns out to be affected by how large the adult animals are -- the larger the adults, the longer the length of breastfeeding relative to gestation. For chimpanzees and gorillas, the two primates closest in size to humans and also the most closely genetically related, the relationship is 6 to 1. That is to say, they nurse their offspring for SIX times the length of gestation (actually 6.1 for chimps and 6.4 for gorillas, with humans mid-way in size between these two). In humans, that would be: 4.5 years of nursing (six times the 9 months of gestation).

3. It has been common for pediatricians to claim that most mammals wean their offspring when they have tripled their birth weight, suggesting a weaning age of 1 year in humans. Again though, this is affected by body weight, with larger mammals nursing their offspring until they have quadrupled their birth weight. In humans, quadrupling of birth weight occurs between 2.5 and 3.5 years, usually.

4. One study of primates showed that the offspring were weaned when they had reached about 1/3 their adult weight. This happens in humans at about 5-7 years.

5. A comparison of weaning age and sexual maturity in non-human primates suggests a weaning age of 6-7 for humans (about half-way to reproductive maturity).

6. Studies have shown that a child's immune system doesn't completely mature until about 6 years of age, and it is well established that breast milk helps develop the immune system and augment it with maternal antibodies as long as breast milk is produced (up to two years, no studies have been done on breast milk composition after two years post partum).

And on and on. The minimum predicted age for a natural age of weaning in humans is 2.5 years, with a maximum of 7.0 years.

In terms of the benefits of extended breastfeeding, there have been a number of studies comparing breastfed and bottlefed babies in terms of the frequency of various diseases, and also IQ achievement. In every case, the breastfed babies had lower risk of disease and higher IQs than the bottle-fed babies. In those studies that divided breastfed babies into categories based on length of breastfeeding, the babies breastfed the longest did better in terms of both lower disease and higher IQ. In other words, if the categories were 0-6 months of breastfeeding, 6-12 months, 12-18 months and 18-24+ months, then the 18-24+ month babies did the best, and the 12-18 month babies did the next best, and the 6-12 months babies did the next best, and the 0-6 months babies did the worst of the breastfed groups, but still much better than the bottlefeeding group. This has been shown for gastrointestinal illness, upper respiratory illness, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, heart disease, and on and on and on. Likewise, the babies nursed the longest scored the highest on the IQ tests. One important point to notice is that none of these studies looked at children who had nursed longer than 2 years. Anyone 18-24 month or longer was lumped into big category. Presumably, the benefits continue to accrue, as your body doesn't *know* that the baby has bad a birth day and suddenly start producing nutritionally and immunologically worthless milk.

However, no one has yet proved, either way, that the benefits of breastfeeding either continue or stop at two years of age, because the appropriate studies have not been done. The trend during the first two years is clearly for continuing benefits the longer you nurse. Clearly the phenomenon of dimishing returns is at work here -- the first six months of breastfeeding are clearly much more important in terms of the baby's nutrition and immunological development than the six months from 3.5 to 4.0 years. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't continue to provide breast milk if your baby wants and you don't mind. It would be like saying, "Well Mabel, we don't get very much income from that oil well anymore. Used to get $56 a month in royalties, now we're lucky if we get $25 a year. Guess we should tell that oil company just to keep their durn money." And Mabel says, in return "Good grief, Clyde, don't be ridiculous. That check still buys $25 worth of food. Where has your mind gone to now?"

Clearly, babies born in the U.S. don't have to contend with all the diseases and parasites and contaminated water that babies in Third World countries do. We have more supplementary foods that we can generally trust to be safe and clean. We can get our children immunized, and get them antibiotics for infections when necessary. The fact that we *can* does not mean that breastfeeding is unimportant. Breastfed babies still have the "edge" over bottlefed babies, even in a squeaky clean environment with wonderful medical care. They get sick less often, they are smarter, they are happier. Another important consideration for the older child is that they are able to maintain their emotional attachment to a person, rather than being forced to switch to an inanimate object such as a teddy bear or blanket. I think this sets the stage for a life of people-orientation, rather than materialism, and I think that is a good thing. I also can't imagine living through the toddler years without that close loving connection to a child going through enormous changes, some of which are very frustrating to the child. I could go on forever, but will stop here.

I hope this has been of help. These ideas are developed much more eloquently and in much greater detail in my chapter "A Time to Wean" in Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives, being published by Aldine de Gruyter.

Prepared August 3, 1995. Edited February 10, 1997.

This article has been copied directly from http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html with the kind permission of Kathy Dettwyler.

Contents copyright 1999 Sue Ann Kendall and Kathy Dettwyler.

Great Home Birth Article

There is a really great article entitled Real Birth at Home ... no bells; no whistles! by a blogger that calls herself Kneeling Woman. Here is a small excerpt of what she has written ...

I never thought that birth needed special equipment or classes on "how to do it". My experience has always been that birth happens quite well on it's own and every woman will have her own way of laboring and birthing. As I've written before; birth happens. Some women like to have a lot of people around; some don't. Some women talk all the way through labor; some don't. Some couples are very physical and close during the labor; some are not. I have no "birth ball" or "birthing stool". I don't have women do any kind of herbal or homeopathic preparation for labor nor do I prescribe any particular "regime" regarding diet or exercise; I expect women to eat well and take good care of themselves but I don't believe in getting my ( or anyone else's ) knickers in a twist about how many grams of protein they ate today or going through their cupboards looking for the hidden box of fruit loops! Likewise, I assume that the labor will unfold in it's own, unique, individual way for each woman; and it does.

...... Take a look at the full article here

Pregnant Women Needed......

Pregnant women offer insights for asthma research

Health researchers working on a groundbreaking asthma study to determine whether and why children raised on farms have greater asthma resistance want another 500 pregnant women from the lower North Island.

So far 300 women have joined the study, which involves a series of questionnaires, keeping a diary of their baby’s health and a home visit from a nurse.

Dr Jeroen Douwes from the Centre for Public Health Research says asthma and allergies are very common in New Zealand, but living on a farm may protect children against developing these conditions. Research so far has indicates that children whose mothers had been frequently exposed to farm animals during pregnancy had a 50 per cent reduction in risk of having asthma, hay fever or eczema.

His team is now investigating which specific aspects of animal contact during pregnancy are protective. They also want to find out more about how these factors affect the child’s immune system.

In order to do this, they are seeking pregnant women from both farming and non-farming backgrounds to help. They need 800 women to provide enough data for results to be useful.

The results of this valuable study will help develop programmes to reduce asthma and allergy risk.

Women who are interested can contact the centre’s research nurse Heather Duckett on free phone 0800-000-544, or e-mail H.G.Duckett@massey.ac.nz.

Birth Notice and Story - Laelle Emili Galbraith

Jarrod and Helen Galbraith are thrilled to add a precious daughter to their family. Laelle Emili was born at home on 14th August 2007 at 10.13pm, weighing 7lb 6oz, and welcomed warmly by big brothers Byron, Declan and Alaric, and especially by big sister Kerilee. Huge thanks to Sue Crabtree for her wisdom and encouragement, and to Ellen for being a lovely back-up.

I’ve been a bit dubious about having a homebirth, as it’s a pretty painful event and having a homebirth takes away my pain relief options. My midwife explained to me when I was first pregnant that homebirth can be really empowering, and I felt I lost my power during my second birth, where my bubs was posterior and really stuck. That birth left me afraid of the labour pain and pretty traumatised, so I’d had an epidural with my last two births.

I decided to go with the homebirth for several reasons:

- I really hate hospitals and feel tense around doctors and nurses, as I had a lot of surgery as a child.

- I feel I don’t have much control at hospital, and have to birth in a certain way, sticking with ‘hospital protocol’.

- I wanted to have privacy, with no one turning up in the room unexpectedly, and without feeling like I’d lost my dignity.

- Childhood sexual abuse left me spending most of my life feeling like a victim, and I wanted to take control of my own birth experience, and do it on my terms.

- My midwife (Sue) has a theory that natural birth without pain relief seems to result in less postnatal depression, and with progressively worse PND with each pregnancy, I am willing to try anything to ease that possibility.

- During my pregnancy I slowly gained confidence in my ability to birth well (thanks to lots of positive reinforcement from Sue) and started to think about all the things I wanted to do during birth – dim lights and plenty of time alone were top on my list, and I occasionally entertained thoughts of birthing totally alone – not that I wanted my man to miss it! I knew I could do it, and I could handle the pain.

My concerns with having a homebirth were:

- Having the kids around may be a distraction, as I was not comfortable with them seeing me in labour. I arranged for my Dad to hang out in the lounge with them with DVDs and popcorn while I set up my bedroom at the other end of the house as my birth room.

- Had concerns about a difficult birth and not being able to access pain relief. Sue checked Squishy’s (her womb name) position regularly, and when she turned posterior late in pregnancy, gave me lots of tips to encourage her to turn. She also pointed out that although I’d had a difficult posterior birth, my body had managed to birth naturally, so I was capable of doing that again if necessary. Another point was that most complications during birth have plenty of warning, so transfer to hospital was still an option if things got too much, or labour took too long.

So it was that I found myself approaching my due date, with a birth pool set up in my bedroom, tentatively anticipating my fifth child. I’d had our first three children born at 37 weeks, so we were ready to go by then, but I was happy to enjoy my final days of pregnancy for as long as I could with only a 2 year old during school hours. Each day was started with a pang of disappointment that labour hadn’t started overnight, and each evening the house was immaculately tidy ‘just in case’ tonight was it. Daytime was reserved for lazy isolation, with the phone very neglected and the car used as little as possible. I was loving those quiet days doing as little as possible, soaking up the sunshine on the floor of the lounge, and snoozing with a book in the early afternoon before the after school noise and bustle. The older kids had slowly been integrated into the jobs needing doing around the house, and were responsible for dishes 6 days a week, keeping their rooms tidy, and helping out with a basic tidy and vacuum each evening. I’d also put about 3 weeks’ of hot meals in the freezer, got the expected necessaries for post-birth (including haemorrhoid cream and paraffin gauze!) and made a list of jobs to do in early labour.

So there we were, all ready to go, feeling a little apprehensive but organised. Two days before due date I saw my midwife, and despite enjoying my lazy days, I was very emotionally fragile. I seemed to be in tears over the little things (and big things – the older kids had done impromptu gardening in our soggy front yard that morning before school, and had a big clean up job ahead of them when they got home!). As she left it occurred to me that my fragility could be an early warning sign, so decided to be kind to myself for a few days - long hot baths and plenty of sleep. Next day (yes, the yard was cleaned up and the mud off the path and the carpet, which helped me feel better!) I had a sleep while my toddler played quietly in his room, and then woke to find him asleep, giving me time for a long, hot shower and a laze in the sun before school pick-up. While lazing in the sun I had the general period-like ache that I’d had on and off for weeks, yet this time it included an ache in my cervix as well. It was all very random, nothing definite, just enough for me to take notice. Picking the kids up from school I found our oldest had broken his only wearable shoes, so made a quick Warehouse stop, feeling increasingly restless to be home. Tea was ready to go, so I took it easy, chatted with the kids about their day and checked e-mails.

By 5pm the aches were coming in gentle waves, enough for me to text the midwife to say I suspected early labour. ‘O.K,’ I thought, ‘if this is labour, I’ll start my labour list of things to do, and even if it’s not, I’ll be busy, and organised before the evening’. So over the next few hours a note was written for Dad about popcorn, duvets and movies, lunches were made for the next day, fire on, a quick clean around the bathroom, Squishy’s first clothes out with a hottie bottle, towels and plastics Sue had previously dropped off out on the bed, washing machine half full with napisan ready for soaking, a splash of deodorant on, post-birth clothes out on my dressing table (including a pad in the knickers!) and ice cream container rinsed, for placenta.

Hubby was home after 5pm, and I cautiously told him I thought early labour was kicking in, as by now the achy pain had increased into an irregular pattern.

Around 6pm we told the kids we thought we might be having the baby tonight, which caused a stir of excitement. I phoned Dad, and continued to wander around doing random jobs, putting on my bedside light and a few candles, so I could retreat to my room every now and then to be alone.

Hubby started filling the birth pool as we expected a reasonably quick birth, and around 7pm I started writing down when contractions were coming, as I was slowly focussing inwards, unable to remember what time the last one was. They were still fairly random; 9 minutes, 3 minutes, 7 minutes… I was rocking on a rocking stool, as my biggest concern was keeping the baby anterior – a few weeks prior she had been posterior, and I wanted to encourage her to stay that way as she descended into my pelvis. My poor man kept asking if I had phoned Sue yet, but I was putting it off, not wanting anyone watching me. I told him I’d call her when contractions were regular and around 5 minutes apart, and I was comfortable to wait. He was dubious, but willing to trust that I knew where I was at in the labour.

Around 8pm I finally called her, knowing she lived half an hour or so away, and told her to take her time, but that we were definitely in the swing of things. Hubby and I put our toddler to bed together, as normal, although a little late, hoping he would sleep well, considering he was in the room next to ours.

I started kneeling by my bed, breathing through each contraction with my eyes closed, focussing inwards, telling myself that the more pain, the better my cervix was opening. It was so nice to just be able to switch off; leaving Hubby responsible for the pool filling and temperature, knowing the kids were happy with Granddad and their movie.

I listened to Hubby go into the lounge, and my 9 year old ask, “Has Mum had the baby yet?” I had to smile when Hubby replied, “Not yet, it’s not quite cooked.” (We had told the kids occasionally that the baby would come out when it was ‘cooked’, rather than on any specific day, and had not told them any due dates.)

Sue turned up around 8.30pm, quietly kneeling beside me to watch me through a contraction, and gently telling me how great I was doing. It was such a lovely nurturing feeling I relaxed a whole lot more, knowing I could completely focus inwards now, and leave all the observations and decisions to her. Squishy was really active during all this, which was uncomfortable, yet nice to know she was happy. Hubby was kept busy boiling pots of water, as the pool was a little too cold, which gave me the space I needed.

9.45pm Sue offered to check how dilated I was, as the contractions were getting more intense, taking a lot more focus to get through. I was slightly nauseous through each contraction now, but still coping O.K. with the pain level. I knew I had previously felt nauseous late in my labours, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I hesitated, not wanting to be disappointed if I wasn’t too far along, figuring the pain wasn’t bad enough yet. I decided it would be good to know where I was at, so went to the toilet and eased onto the bed, taking my time. 8cm was the verdict, which was awesome, as I had thought the pain would be more intense by now.

I tentatively climbed into the pool, not knowing what relief to expect from the water, but loving the easing of weight on my pelvis. I went back to kneeling, leaning forward on the side, and asked Hubby to sit with me now, so I could lean my face on his arms while he rested his hands on my back. The skin contact with strong arms was really comforting. Our back-up midwife appeared then, a gentle unobtrusive woman I hadn’t had the chance to meet before, who sat on the bed writing notes, leaving Sue to tend to us. The next two contractions were bliss – back to the gentle waves of bad period pain.

It was that next one that told me we were well on the way to transition, which I still didn’t want to believe was here already. I was breathing deeply enough to find I was hyperventilating, getting tingly in my hands and feet and feeling my body starting to involuntarily push. The next one was the same, and I needed my mans arms to lean on. I wanted to get more comfortable after that, as my hands and feet were too tingly to lean on, so I turned over, sitting, yet floating slightly, so my tailbone was off the bottom. The next contraction built, and with it I felt the pop of my waters and a huge, involuntary push, producing a little dark head. Wow. I was stunned to realise my baby was in sight, although incredibly sore as she wriggled her shoulders into position, ready for the next contraction. I found out later that Hubby struggled through this stage, as it was so hard to comprehend the logic of letting our baby stay underwater, when instinct told him that surely she would drown. He knew the facts, but in that moment, he had to draw on the calmness of Sue. The next contraction, three minutes later, was so intense, but only moments long, producing the rest of our baby, which Sue scooped up and pressed to my chest. My first thought was, “Is it a girl?” so I glanced between her legs and found yes, it was – yay! I asked Hubby to get our older daughter, who, with three brothers already, desperately wanted a sister. In she came, briefly, to meet her sister, then have the privilege of telling her brothers. A few crampy pushes later and the placenta was out, Hubby cut the cord, and took her to the lounge to meet the family and get dressed by the fire. Sue suggested I get out of the pool to be checked over, but as I rose I found the weight on my abdomen really uncomfortable, so sunk back down for a few minutes, joking that I could stay there for the next week. Eventually got out, easing onto the bed for the undignified ‘down there’ check, to be told I had no tear, and very minimal grazing, although a few ‘grandfather-sized’ haemorrhoids. I felt I’d got off really lightly, and think the time in the water had softened things up enough to stretch easily. Off for a quick pee (which barely stung – yay!) and into bed, to sit and feed my little bundle and chat with the kids. Still in awe with how well the birth had gone, and thrilled that I had coped so well. Hubby and granddad then got the kids into bed, after a round of kisses and cuddles for our new addition, and I snuggled down into bed with her while Hubby and Co got the pool emptied. What a beautiful way to end the day, feeding my precious daughter while everyone else pottered around tidying and cleaning, and by midnight we were all settled in for the night.

So that’s the birth story of Laelle. Surprisingly different from the four hospital births I’d had previously, very intimate and private, and very much on my terms and my turf. I could not have asked for anything more.