August 2020

World Breastfeeding Week (Aug 3 - 9 2020)

This wonderful old piece crossed my desktop at the end of World Breastfeeding Week, via my friend Rosie Rick.  I love this piece as it tells a story of breastfeeding without boundaries, describing what a breastfeeding positive culture looks like.  Breastfeeding, like birth, has been medicalised and commodified in our society.  We have lost touch with our innateness, our humanness even, no longer trusting ourselves.  The Knowledgeable were persecuted, as the patriarchy took over, but the knowledge was never completely lost.  In quiet corners and rural areas where needs must, the knowledge was held and passed on.  This knowledge belongs to you.  You have a right - and a responsibility - to hold it.  Have you claimed it?

A Matter for Birth and Death

August 8th each year is 'Dying to Know Day'.  It is day focused on death literacy.  From basic preparations, like wills and advanced care directives, power of attorney funeral details and 'disposal'...to understanding the physiological process of a natural death, and how this differs to a medicalised death.  It also helps in understanding grief and sudden death.

read more: from medicalisation to humanisation of birth and death 

Full Scope Maternity Care

"[this] study suggests that soon women won't have a choice to have a vaginal birth for their twins because there will be no obstetrician able to provide such care safely. Actually, this is already the truth for many women depending on where they live."
#fullscopeobstetrics
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We need our Obstetricians fully capable to support breech vaginal birth, multiple births, and all vaginal birth. They need to work in conjunction with full scope midwives. A team - NOT A HIERARCHY.

Before the study period included in this study, I was born. MZ MCDA both head down, born in 5 hours, no interventions. Our mother had to request a scan at 6mths pregnant as she was "either carrying an octopus or there's two in there"....she worked for an OB, so this was done whilst she was at work. She said once it was confirmed she was treated differently, but as her OB had fathered twins not longer before and all had gone well, he was supportive of her having a 'normal' birth (just with extra attendants...in the room where students can watch). This always struck me as odd...so if that OB had had a difficult or tragic experience, my own birth would have been influenced by his trauma and fears?

Is ever-increasing fear and over-cautiousness, actually leading to a deskilling?

Michel Odent, speaking on The Renegade Mama podcast

In Marrying the Science of Birth and Intuition, Michel Odent who is now 90 years old and been telling the world since the 70s that birth is best when undisturbed, explains it again.  If you have yet to hear him speak, be prepared for a wonderful French accent.  Listen carefully, learn deeply.  The Future of Homo {sapiens} depends on it!

Has Feminism forgotten Mothers?

This piece from 2017 by Vanessa Olorenshaw, author of the revolutionary Liberating Motherhood​.  It highlights a gathering of awesome minds, in 2017, where the rumbling of a revolution rolled...but what happened?   

What happened to The Purple Stockings Movement?  What happened to the revolution?

I can't quite answer these questions, certainly not with conviction.  I have my suspicions and some ideas, and welcome a discussion (comment below or message me if you're keen).  
I'd like to share another revolutionary mind with you, Andrea O'Reilly.  She came to Australia in 2018 to speak about matricentric feminism, which differs from maternal feminism...somehow.  She explains her term in this keynote speech from 2014, when she was inducted into the Motherhood Hall of Fame at the Museum of Motherhood. There is also a distinction between mothering and motherhood, which is quite interesting and important to explore.  
I find this all rather frustrating.  Why - with so many great minds and evidence - is mothering so ignored?

BUT EVEN MORE FRUSTRATING, as I feel this is key to the whole 'enterprise'...why is pregnancy and birth ignored in feminism.  

Both these issues have been attended to by great minds, wonderful high level studies have been conducted, great discussions and books, but...crickets.

The evidence is glaring, and yet policy does not change.  What will it take?  How can we shift things?  

The best I can suggest is putting your support behind the organisations that represent you.  The Consumer groups have seats on the boards and committees that determine maternity, child and family care, from education standards to strategic directions.  In Australia, these organisations are Maternity Choices, Maternity Consumer Network and Maternal Health Matters (Safe Motherhood for All).  There are others with very specific goals or foci, these three take the broad view of improving maternity care for all and from there, the experience of mothering.  

How do we change the narrative to a mother honouring, menstruation positive, cycle understanding one? Not because all women should be mothers, but because we all have mothers.

The Case of The Obstetrical dilemma

Holly Dunsworth thought she'd settled the matter...but it seems that many researchers and laypersons are still holding onto a narrative.  
What Holly has done is looked a a long accepted narrative and asked: is that actually the best explanation?  
As with much research related to women, it is looked at through a male lens, one which place male as a default and female as faulty.  
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read more:
big brain, big head; what's the big idea?