After finally getting 7 hours of sleep it was my turn to teach.
Yours truly, “Morning exercise session – Prenatal Yoga: Learning proper alignment and taking it into your childbirth classes.”
Teaching at 7:30 am is not my best time of day… especially on mediocre hotel room coffee and no breakfast. However, I think I did a bang-up job.
I had 45 people in my workshop! Wow, talk about a full house! After giving my usual disclaimer of “yoga should always feel good and if it doesn’t you should tell me”, we did a bit of breath work and warm up.
We began with making seat positions accessible with the amazing magic towel under the sitting bones.
Then we moved into making hands and knees poses accessible – again with the amazing magic towel.
The majority of the rest of the class was on squats and the amazing magic towel. To see the lights go on in my student’s eyes, and hear the “Oooohh! Ahhh!” of “I get it” when they saw me adjust one woman all they way down comfortably in her squat, warmed my heart.
I wish I had more time to teach. There was quite a bit more I would have liked to have gone over. Maybe next year.
I did get some fantastic feedback from a number of attendees. It seemed that folks really appreciated the hands-on, practical tools I gave them (amazing magic towel!). I was also complimented on my teaching style, command of the room and grace(?). I had one woman tell me I should do it as a half-day pre-conference seminar next year. I’m up for it, if Lamaze is!
Then on to breakfast… tell you what a scone and coffee just ain’t enough…
From there it was on to keynote, “Infant safety: The first hours, birthing practices and hypoglycemia.” with Dr. Jack Newman… you know, he of the Breastfeeding Center. Wow, does he talk fast! It was a challenge to keep up with the slides and his speech, but I managed.
“Breastfeeding success is all about the birth.”
Hospital births break all the rules regarding mother-baby necessity. What the dyad needs it for helpers to stay out of the way; vaginal birth so mom does all the work; baby stays with mom; baby figures out how to breastfeed on his own.
“It is not necessary that labor support be trained. She should just sit and watch.”
Such a profound statement, but so simple. What women need it to know is that someone cares and that if anything happens, there is help available. Women need to feel confident in their own abilities, and a quiet, calm observer can facilitate this.
“All interventions, even when medically necessary, decrease her (the mother) sense of control.”
Electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) increases anxiety and increases the risk of other interventions. There is no evidence that risk of death or low APGAR scores improve with EFM.
IV Fluids interfere with mom’s mobility and comfort. Having an IV placed turns mom into a patient. It takes away her sense of normal. The IV fluids also increases mom and baby’s blood sugar and increase baby’s birth weight. Edema of the areola will adversely affect baby’s latch.
“FORGET percent weightloss! It’s meaningless. The 10% weightloss that pediatricians worry about is not evidence based.”
I’m not wholly surprised, but it was good to hear that directly.
Pictocin prevents you from peeing out excess fluids… Ok, so you get extra IV fluids, and then PIT prevents you from losing the fluid… so you swell like a balloon and so does baby. Wonderful. Oh, and it also affects mom’s let-down reflex such that it has a negative impact on breastfeeding.
A note on baby scales – different scales can vary by as much as 400g. So, ensure baby is weighed with the same scale. Also there is human error involved, transposing numbers, etc.
Epidurals: Requires an IV (one liter of fluid before medication); meds do get into mom’s bloodstream, therefore baby gets the meds too; mom can’t walk; fever, sepsis, antibiotics; risk of fever goes up over time; fever means rapid heart rate means c-section means delay in breastfeeding, edema and separation. Whew… gotta love that cascade of interventions…
Induction of labor – IV fluids, failure to progress, c-section
Narcotics in labor = sleepy baby = no breastfeeding
If mom is uncomfortable after birth she is less likely to breastfeed. With c-section, 79% of moms experience pain 2 months postpartum and are less responsive to their infants.
Skin to skin: Is the baby cold? Skin to skin, even without a blanket covering is enough to help baby maintain his body temperature.
Baby should be skin to skin with mom and nursing after a c-section as soon as possible.
We know that a baby, when separated from mother, will emit cries of distress. This is true even if baby is in a cot, just next to the mother.
Breast-crawl: Baby self attaches partly on smell, on sight. Babies crawl and find the unwashed nipple. Baby chooses the breast. Suctioning out baby’s mouth and nose interferes with the breastcrawl.
So, as caregivers, why don’t we take the baby’s opinion into account? Why try to force baby to breastfeed in a way that doesn’t make sense to them?
Hypoglycemia:
- There is no universally acceptable level for a newborn.
- No one knows what the acceptable lower limit is for blood sugar.
- There is no reason to screen a healthy baby.
- Give NO formula.
- Low blood sugar is not a problem for babies.
- Normal blood glucose dips 1-2 hours after birth and stabilizes 2-4 hours after birth.
- The baby’s sugars reflect the mother’s sugars.
- The medical staff is treating normal.
- Normal for a breastfed baby is lower blood sugar, higher ketones. There is no reason to screen for ‘stress’.
- No reason to give formula. Glucose levels are the same with exclusively breastfeed, shared breastfeeding and formula feeding and exclusive formula feeding. Exclusive formula feeding = lower sugars, lower ketones and is not healthy. Ketones protect baby’s brain and formula suppresses ketones.
- Low blood sugar and low ketones = gestational diabetic mother
- Colostrum is the best way to treat hypoglycemia. Express colostrum before birth, approx. 1 ml/day to give to baby of a type 1 diabetic mother. Note: early expression of breastmilk does not increase preterm labor.
Other things of note: Babies don’t get tired at the breast. When the milk stops flowing, baby stops sucking.
Ban nipple shields. There are zero studies that show nipple shields aren’t harmful. We need to prove they are better than just the nipple.
“Using a nipple shield is like sex with a condom.” ~Dr. Jack Newman
Needless to say, I learned an awful lot for Dr. Newman. I also quite enjoyed his manner and demeanor.
From there is was on to lunch. The Day 2 afternoon sessions and the oh-so-fun country music evening will be in the next post.
Sat Nam.
Thank you so much for the notes. I wasn’t able to make it to the conference this year, so I really enjoyed this post.
No problem! I’ll get the rest of the posts out on the conference soon.
I wrote the condom quote down word for word because it was so provoking, it goes like this, “Breast shields are like condoms, nobody likes them – skin to skin is better.” I shared it on my page it and created quite a stir – so much so that I removed it.
Great post! Great notes! Thanks for sharing your thoughts
P.S. You taught a fantastic class! Thank you! (Gotta love my expression on that squat shot.)
Thanks for the full quote. He spoke so fast it was tough to get it all down.
So glad you liked the class. I’m hoping to build it into a bigger, more complete workshop.