Healthy Pregnancy

1. What most may not know

Mum’s body completely renews itself whilst pregnant and breastfeeding. This means she can remake herself, improving on all levels, if she tends herself as a newborn all through preparing for, and undergoing pregnancy states.

She can conversely wreck herself as she strives to do all for everyone and attack all projects as though today were the only day she had left on the planet – forgetting that he primary job she has when pregnant is to make as good a foundation for the rest of someone else’s life for them – that she can.

Being a mum is about heart-felt connection, the joys of being; needed in others lives – and as a mum – intimately forever – in another’s close circle of contact.

2. What do you make a baby with?

Basics ingredients – nutrient dense foods – often.

Your gut is what sustains you and your baby.
By choosing simple, plain and natural foods, you are assisting in making the best baby you can. No chemicals, no sugar – added in or otherwise sweet taste will not make the saturated, natural animal fats (not oils industrially made) and protein needed to give a great baby.

All pregnancy symptoms written about in texts and talked about in forums are not normal to experience. No symptoms – just no periods, breasts busy and a growing belly. All else are signals that you may not have all the ingredients to do this project perfectly. Warnings that your body is not as able as it could be to undertake the baby making business well enough, with what is available.

3. Current obstetric culture vs nature and women led care

Understanding the role of diet, of healthy living and of a good start to life could be, but is not the focus of the current mainstream ‘health’ system. Being the best mum possible does not enter into the medical equation, where having a live baby seems to be the only focus – along with getting the most services paid for.

The new mum takes baby home and is expected to just grow into the role. Nature would have helped her. If she had been allowed to discover her self through natural birthing and all around to support her – not frighten and hassle her into being ‘good’ and on time. The Farm, where women have midwifery led care, where home birth is the norm, and where they have less than a 5% transfer rate to hospital for birthing – not necessarily C sections – is a case to watch. Less than 1% post natal depression much less psychosis.

They can show us by their rates of natural birthing, http://www.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/farm-statistics.html  (Stats) within a supportive safe birthing culture, and their resultant rates of post natal depression (Stats) – that there is a direct correlation between good nutrition, tender midwifery care and positive maternal outcomes including very high (almost 100%) breastfeeding rates and happy babies.

The questions you may need to ask of your obstetric carers are how do their stats measure up, as the rates of postnatal depression and psychosis in the general community are rising to unprecedented levels.  Perhaps we need to know what ‘safety’ is to be defined at. Most young mums would wish to be in love with being a mum and with their baby and their new lives.

4. Modern wash up from all the medicalisation

Perhaps it is time to start asking different questions of the expensive ‘best ‘medical care you are paying for.

It may well be that there is seen to be no relationship between a woman’s perception of her baby’s birth – maybe – mothers recently are just deficient in some way. Look about you – who is happy about their natural birth, their lactation and their relationship to mothering and their baby really? Why all the horror stories abounding?

Why the elective surgeries to cut through a well body, putting self at risk of losing uterus, sexual sensations and possibly baby (higher infant mortality with C sections) and higher likelihood of maternal problems, as it is a major surgery) than just birthing as women were designed to?

Is informed choice even evident against the backdrop of terror induced through what ‘might go wrong’ when naturally birthing? Why sign up to lose all the maternal love hormones, and the easy bounce back without complications after birthing? It seems no longer to be common knowledge that women’s bodies birth beautifully, giving rise to all the bonding emotions and instincts that allow easy mothering.

You may find that obstetricians now openly talk of ‘Mother Nature being a bitch’. What is really means is that they do not understand the rules of maternity – great nutrition and leave well alone. Birthing is a transformation process, and a ripening – and when watching a rose bud, it would be senseless to force the petals to open in your rush to smell the fragrance. It is a matter of waiting till the plant revels itself by blooming in its own time.

Same too with fruit – pulling a nearly ripe apple or peach off a tree is not going to give you the juicy, tasty morsel that you would have if you waited for it to go through the cycle of natural ripening. So too with mums and their fruits – wait and it will happen. Get in the way, especially with tales of awful things in store, and mum’s imagination may run away with her.

So instead of the gifts naturally there to allow mum to birth and bond with baby beautifully, the emphasis is on her perceived trauma and probable pain levels, the medical system is writing normal out through the dictates of what is and is not acceptable at every level of the natural ripening process, giving no thought to the feeing and the sensitivities involved for any of the parents or children, and the doctors have their ’best practice’ manuals and protocols, and mum just has to fit in.

This leaves baby out of the equation except as an after thought.

Life, and birth is to be feared and overcome.

Knights on the white chargers of technology, calendars, screens and clocks are all undoing the routines that nature does so very beautifully alone. In the dark, mysteriously and like a flower – opening mum up in her own good time.

Nature is to be trusted – when there is an idea of what creates wellness or imbalance.  Trust a system that has always worked – when left in peace. Patience needed to raise a child, feed a toddler and birth a baby. Perhaps we need to go back to the perfect road set out by nature for all women to naturally grow, birth, feed and love their babies.

5. The likely outcome of not trusting nature

Underlying becoming an ‘unsettled mum’ is a wealth of pre birth fears, insecurities, and assumptions that were preyed upon to ensure you were/she was conditioned to feel she needed to trust others – not her body or herself. This sets her up for not knowing what to do. Nature had it all sussed. Left to herself she has all the instincts and drives to ensure baby is safe and protected – just like all mammals are and do.

Opening into the infrequently asked, though privately pondered upon questions.
What to do if I do not feel maternal?

What if being a mum is/has not ‘come naturally’ to me?

Maybe to understand this – ask yourself – did loving, pregnancy and birthing come naturally? Were you interrupted at any stage of being connected to baby?  All those scans and the worry of ‘maybe’ – did this upset you and your perfect pregnancy dreams? Did you experience moments or days./weeks of the possibility of loss at the beginning of pregnancy? Did you listen to all that happened to others and internalise it – being grateful when doctor took away the unknowing and give you a date and a ‘pass out’ from having to be a natural birthing mum?
Did you ask how you would feel being a mum without all the birthing hormones intact? Whether baby would be awake and aware enough to be part of the birthing bonding tableaux?

Did you focus on the stories of ‘what may happen’ – the handing over of the decision making ‘for the good of baby’? .  . Did you think to ask – what about when I take baby home – will my maternal instincts all flow then? Will milk, love, and wanting to be a mum happen later?

Often it does not.

Much more often than not now birthing is removed from how nature sets you up to be able, and wanting to be a mum.

Is it possible to get this back?

Yes – but not the same . . . This is possibly why such vehemence is directed by women to women – those who can breastfeed and those who do not – did you realise that lactation is part of the nature package and that bottles and maternal trauma often follow from not having the hormonal helpers that nature intended through the exhilaration and the conquest of all that is faced when birthing?

There is plenty of time to ponder for the rest of your life, why you may have ignored all of the natural steps to becoming a mum. At least it is possible to do it differently next time – but – the firstborn (as this usually happens as we do not know any better) is the one the inspiration to do differently comes from.

What to do to settle mum into being mum?

This is helped tremendously by having made the decisions to make as natural life/ baby as possible – thus to have a healthy as pregnancy as possible (not fearfully monitored, but grown with love) and to have chosen to birth with trusted mid-wives who nurture and tend a blossoming mum – with motherly attention to natural pregnancy.

Nature has programmes to ensure baby is safe as mum is bound to him/her.

Once born, baby will help – if baby is alert and aware and has not gone through his/ her own traumas – especially if s/he has been vaccinated and is not able to be a natural baby, as all the chemicals and the drugs administered to mum have altered what comes naturally to baby.

This brings us to why the Pregnancy App was designed, and to the information that is found when you buy the natural pregnancy and natural living packages.

The App itself is written as a problem/why/solution model. This means it is not possible to work from a wellness but a problem orientation. This is why the support Heather Says website runs in tandem.