The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS,
a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA
The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS,
a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA
|
An interactive resource for moms on easy steps they can take to reduce exposure to chemical toxins during pregnancy. Other excellent resources about avoiding toxins during pregnancy These are easy to read and understand and are beautifully presented. |
SWAMPS & SENSIBILITY In the Trenches............What Makes A Notion Reality? by Sue LaLeikeI'm currently involved with a group debating the best way to present a wide range of ideas about practical parenting skills and their long-ranging benefits to the public. Part of the debate involves what convinces parents to adapt techniques and customs into their parenting skills. I thought it would be beneficial to ask those "in the trenches,", i.e. parents, parents-to-be, educators, and caretakers of parents just what made them or their clients consider - and then actually implement - some of the practices we have been discussing.
The practices include such things as long-term breastfeeding and baby-led weaning, attachment parenting (including one parent staying at home with the infant throughout the first year or more), baby-wearing, the family bed, total responsiveness to an infant's needs and cries (which dovetails with attachment parenting for most, I would guess), and so on. Also under discussion, but in a very minor vein, are the benefits of unmedicated birth and non-interventionist birth.......what leads parents to choose these modes of entry into life for their infants?
The discussion of the rationale behind these choices seems to center on three routes: parents having the innate strength to listen to their own hearts, parents listening to their own hearts after being encouraged to do so by friends, relatives, or "experts," or parents being convinced by reading research..........or, of course, any combination of the above, and the other variable routes that also bring parents to these lifestyle choices.
Also, what about guilt? What about dealing with feelings of knowing that a different choice might have been better for the infant? What about dealing with the constraints of society or economics as opposed to what your heart tells you to do? I know these last two questions open a major can of worms, but I am curious both professionally and personally: I have been fortunate enough myself to be able to listen to our collective hearts as parents of our child, even though it meant many "sacrifices" to our lifestyle in the eyes of just about everyone we know except ourselves.
If Donna doesn't mind, this might present an interesting topic for a few weeks of discussion here on obcnews, and I can just distill your responses to report back to my group. If you prefer, you can also e-mail me privately. If at anytime you do not wish your responses to be copied in part or full, please also mention that so that I can respect your privacy and not include you in any wholesale cc project I may initiate.
{Donna's note: I would love to publish a continuing discussion on this ! If you want your letter in the obcnews, please cc to me when you write to Sue and add a note giving me permission to use.}
Thanks so much for sharing your influences with me. Sometimes it seems so easy to sit on the deck of my house and decide what makes the world go round.........kind of a swamper's version of the ivory tower approach to life............
Sue LaLeike
The Online Birth Center News is copyright 1997 by Donna Zelzer. The individual writers hold copyright to the individual messages. Copies may be freely distributed electronically, as long as
| About the Midwife Archives / Midwife Archives Disclaimer |