Jillian Michaels of Big Loser CAPPA responds
Posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 · Permanent link to the post
Posted by: Cindy Pitts Gilbert
What a tremendous opportunity you have presented to us at CAPPA Ms. Jillian Michaels. We are blessed with the opportunity that you have presented to us to take your comments in the Women’s Health Magazine as well as, your follow up comments about your health related resistance to carrying a child inside of you, to remind women out there that ladies, you have a Choice. You live in a country that allows you to decide to give birth or not give birth to bring life into this world or to work out your body to optimize your own health and well being or adopt a child that has no one else in the world. You know, the point isn’t what Jillian Michaels said or didn’t say about pregnancy. The point is that having a child should always be not just a choice, but also a truly educated choice. CAPPA’s mission is to create opportunities to educate women to make the most informed decisions possible concerning the choice to give birth, along with the multitude of opportunities available during the first year of birth. If Jillian Michaels doesn’t want to give birth that is her choice, for whatever reason she has. It is still her personal decision. The problem with the outrage here is that Jillian is a public figure and an inspiration to thousands of women. Her website states that she wants to be an inspiration to others, therefore anything said in a public setting like a magazine article is then open to public scrutiny. Those who scrutinize and those who are interviewed like Ms. Michaels all have an equal right to their opinion and a right to speak out. Ms. Michaels we don’t want to criticize your choices. We want to thank you for the opportunity to educate women, girls and mothers everywhere about the choices available to them. We want you to know that you do have a choice how you choose to give birth, how you bond with your child and how you choose to feed your child. You do have a right to be educated about all the wonderful opportunities available to you as mothers. You have the choice to give birth, to be part of the future of our planet, to participate in pro-creation and ladies of the world you have the choice to carry a child inside of you and share your blood with their blood and your breath with their breath your life with their life. You have the choice to push a new life into this world and to push that life to be the best it can be. Each new life can offer you the choice to help that life a part of something bigger than his or her self. Jillian you can make a choice to have the ultimate body. You can choose to inspire those who struggle with weight to choose a healthier life. You can choose to give life or adopt and raise the quality of life for another human being who needs you. Life is all about choices and women who choose to hold life inside their bodies and sacrifice their comfort and their waistline to bring life into this world and women who choose to improve the quality of life for children who need a helping hand are all special. The point here is that the more educated women are in their choices the better the quality of life will be for our newest generation. Life’s choices are ours to make. Jillian make your choices for whatever reason you feel is right for you and mothers to be make your choices based on informed decisions not celebrity statements. Give birth if your body will allow it, because it is the right choice for you and your family. CAPPA is here to help all women when you are ready to educate yourself on best choices for your family and all mothers who wish prepare themselves for the best birth experience for their child.
iCAPPA
Posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 · Permanent link to the post
Linking childbirth and postpartum professionals together for a stronger networking community
By Michelle Schnaars, Managing Editor CAPPA Quarterly
iCAPPA is the new interactive community website for CAPPA members; and it allows you to do a lot of things. iCAPPA will enable you to access your membership card, upload your facebook badge, interact via mobile phone, participate in polls, and download forms. Maximize the value of your membership and get the information you need by using the bulletin board to read and post messages.
iCAPPA has created a number of tools to help you connect to other members, learn about upcoming events; manage your online profile and much more! Everyone will reap the rewards of a strong, dynamic community of members that readily share and exchange information, and other resources for their mutual benefit.
You might wonder where to begin with iCAPPA; begin with your profile page. This is very important because this is the information that potential clients will find when looking for services. It is also the information that professionals will use to find and connect with you. Be sure to include your bio, credentials, skills, expertise, and experience. You can also upload a photo of yourself.
For over a decade, CAPPA’s mission has been to offer comprehensive, evidence-based education, certification, professional membership, and training to childbirth educators, lactation educators, labor doulas, antepartum doulas, postpartum doulas, and teen educators worldwide. CAPPA is proud to provide new and expectant families’ access to these professionals.
iCAPPA, a new empowering online directory for CAPPA members, and the birth year community.
Mothers Day
Posted on Friday, May 07th, 2010 · Permanent link to the post
Mothers Day is just around the corner and I’ve been thinking about being a mother, and about my own mother. I started pondering what, and who, I want to be to my own children. I asked myself, “What sort of nurturer I am?” Dictionary.com has a variety of definitions specifically;
1. To feed and protect; to nurture one’s offspring.
2. To support and encourage, as during the period of training or development;
foster: to nurture promising musicians.
3. To bring up; train; educate.
My husband and I own a motorcycle, which is stored during the winter months. This spring, our family was blessed with a nest of small birds on the motorcycle. We watched as the mother sat on her eggs. Then we watched the babies, who had small but very wide mouths, eat while their mother fed them; all-the-while the mom fended off chipmunks, as well as a local cat from the nest. Suddenly the day arrived when we no longer saw the birds in the nest, or anywhere nearby.
Some time later, my husband witnessed a heartbreaking scene; a small struggling bird, all alone trying to make its little wings beat to reach the limbs of a small bush. Despite being without its mother or father, the baby bird was determined. The mother’s job was done, and the babies, like this one, were suddenly on their own. I had to ask myself, in what ways does a mother bird nurture? Does she inspire her babies to believe they can fly?
All is now quiet in the small nest and the motorcycle is once again ours to use. I believe in my heart that by and large most of us as mothers totally get the ‘feed and protect’ part of nurturing, and fulfill that role wholeheartedly. We are ‘mother bear hear us roar’, and we know our children must eat to grow. We watch over them to be sure they don’t come to harm and check them in the middle of the night to be sure they are still breathing, or they are cool to the touch. But is that where the nurturing stops? Do we as mothers get so involved in the day-to-day routine of our busy lives that we forget to ‘nurture the spirits’ of our children? Do we encourage and support them to be creative? To find out who they are and who they are meant to be? Do we inspire them? Arouse their minds throughout their adolescence to be creative; to sing, to dream. To believe that whatever they can dream they can achieve? Or, are we caught up in the routines of ‘feeding and protecting’, that we actually hold them back for fear they will be hurt, or that they might experience disappointment if they fail? Where do we draw the line as mothers, between protecting what is healthy and overprotecting against what is unhealthy?
Is ours a protectiveness that stifles the creativity our children are born with? Do we breathe inspiration into their little ears that they are meant for great things? Do we teach them that within all disappointment, there is a new lesson to learn that will lead them to their own greatness? As Mothers Day approaches and the cards and phone calls begin to circle the earth, I challenge all mothers to think back to your own childhood and try to remember what inspired you the most. Remember your childhood dreams. Remember the things you knew to be true; that all things were possible. The princess was always saved by the prince, the dragon always got slain by the brave, and houses and cities were built in our rooms in a day and were perfect in every way.
I encourage all mothers to realize that it is never too late to be there for our children. To inspire them to greatness, to remind them that they are meant to be anything they want to be. And, if you’re a mother who thinks that your job is done because your child has grown, or you think that somehow you didn’t remember to nurture them by supporting and encouraging them in their youth, then remember it’s never too late
to say that you were mistaken and if you sent the wrong message then begin a
new day of nurturing and inspiring.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Yesterday is only a memory and cannot be changed or even hold you back from who you and your children are meant to be. Today is all that we have at this moment to be the muse of inspiration that is wind beneath their wings, today and everyday for the rest of our lives.
Written by: Cindy Pitts Gilbert
Reference:
http://www.dicterinary.reference.com/browse/nurture
Birth Book Review
Posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 · Permanent link to the post
Birth Book, by Raven Lang, limited edition reprint 2007 (Santa Cruz, CA: Dynamic Press, $40, 161 pages, soft cover, available from Citizens for Midwifery, 888-CfM-4880).
“Birth has not only reached the absurdity of having to be relearned, it also has the absurdity of becoming a criminal offense if we are to go ahead with our ideals and do things the way we desire. And so, because of the system, midwifery as practiced in this book is against the law. It has become political. We didn’t make it that way. For us it is a beautiful, personal, spiritual, sexual experience. And for us to have that, we become criminals.”
Though this quote from the introduction to Birth Book was written in 1972, it seems remarkably timely today though women’s choices in childbirth have possibly become even more politicized. In the early 70s, Raven Lang was a self-trained midwife in Santa Cruz, CA. She and her sister midwives opened a birth center and served many women before one of the midwives was arrested in an undercover sting operation by a law enforcement couple posing as homebirth clients. Birth Book was the first woman authored, empowerment model, homebirth-oriented book to come out of the childbirth and midwifery movement of the 70s (published even before the better known and also much beloved classic, Spiritual Midwifery). This book has recently been reprinted on a very limited basis and I was delighted to read it at last.
“This book is a collection of intimacies…It is not a manual for doing home birth yourself, instead it is a book proselytizing for family centered birth and self directed birth” (Introduction). The book opens with an introduction and a short history of childbirth as well as a discussion of pain and then begins to share women’s stories in words and pictures. The pictures are the highlight of this book! It contains a large quantity of descriptive, beautiful, black and white photos. The birth stories alternate between stories told by mothers and those told by midwives and partners. There are 16 women’s stories, 11 from the midwife’s perspective, and 7 from partners. Interspersed among the stories and photographs are short segments about imprinting, female sexuality, confronting fear, prenatal care, “what to watch for” (21 pages of basic Midwifery 101 type of content). There is one story of a stillbirth (midwife’s perspective) and one account of a transfer and cesarean section. The book closes with a short description of the statistics of the Birth Center from 1971-1972 and also a transcript of a “birth seminar” held there and some follow up commentary from local physicians.
There were 87 homebirths during the year captured in Birth Book. The statistics section notes that half of these births took place on hands and knees and this is reflected in the photographic content. Most of the excellent photos are of women birthing on their hands and knees. (Side note: Raven Lang’s initial publisher said they would not publish the book unless she removed all the photos of vulvas and bottoms. She did not and published the book on her own.)
There is no index, no table of contents, and the book is an atypical size—11 x 8.5. Aside from the addition of page numbers and a different cover image, this book is an exact reprint from 1972.
The birth stories and midwives’ accounts use almost exclusively slang terms for women’s genitals which is something I found a little jarring. I recognize that reclaiming language that has historically been used to demean women is empowering. However, I tend to use “proper” language and to be conservative verbally, so I found the use of slang to be crude and unsophisticated and I felt uncomfortable with it personally. I did become more accustomed to the choice of language as the book went on.
In terms of the history of the birth movement in the US and choices in childbirth, this book is an historical treasure! A little time capsule of the awakening of American women to joyful birth, the politics of birthing as one chooses, and the legal struggles of midwifery. As I read it, I imagined what it would have meant to me to discover this book as a pregnant woman in 1972 when it was occurring to more women to take back their births and when women were hungry for information. (I was actually born in 1979. At home, and yes, my mother did read this book.) Books like this were a tremendous contribution to birth change and to the expansion of choices for women in birth. Many concerns and issues that were current then are still in need of change today—the book is strikingly current, considering it has not been updated for the present day. “None of this would have happened if we had waited for organized medicine to come around, or if we had been scared of the laws we would break, or if we had waited for money. I want now to say POWER TO THE PEOPLE, AND YOU CAN DO IT IF YOU WANT.”
This classic book has been reprinted in a limited edition and Citizens for Midwifery has copies for sale.
- Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE
Childbirth for the Holidays
Posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 · Permanent link to the post
Attending a family during childbirth is an honor. While I’m not currently doing doula work, I still remember the births I have attended with joy and look forward to the time I am able to attend births again. Many doulas have had that extra special occasion of spending a holiday with a laboring woman. Although I never did, one of my own children was born on a holiday. My oldest child, Havilah, was born on Purim ten years ago. During that year it was celebrated March 20-21st. This year it is sunset February 27th.
You may already be familiar with the history of Purim. Purim, or lots, is a festival that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people of the ancient Persian Empire from Haman’s plot to annihilate them, as recorded in the Book of Esther. Haman cast lots to determine the day upon which to exterminate the Jews.
Purim is characterized by the public recitation of the Book of Esther (keriat ha-megilla), giving mutual gifts of food and drink (mishloach manot), giving charity to the poor (matanot la-evyonim), and a celebratory meal (se’edat Purim). Other customs include drinking wine, and wearing masks and costumes. The story of Purim is often referred to as “the Megillah”. This is publically read in synagogues twice on Purim: when the holiday begins at nightfall, and the following morning. When the name of Haman is read, people stomp their feet, hiss, boo, or shake noisemakers to obliterate his name.
The joyous holiday of Purim celebrates the salvation of the Jews from the wicked Haman, through the leadership of Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai. Purim takes place on the 14th day of Adar, the 12th month of the Jewish calendar. (In the case of a leap year, it takes place in the 13th month, Adar II, while a minor holiday, Purim Katan, takes place in Adar I.) It usually falls in March. In 2010, Purim begins at sundown on February 27th.
Our temple had a celebration that night. But, we were in the hospital having our little girl. It had been a long labor starting a couple of days earlier, and all of us were tired and ready for her to come. My husband, Michael, was a wonderful support for me, and a friend of ours, Heather, who would be our doula at our second child’s birth, came and visited us for a few hours. Then the time came to begin pushing, and I got a second wind. My nurse Peggy was completely wonderful. She was supportive of my wishes for an un-medicated birth, and she encouraged me when I needed it. We talked about Purim, and in between contractions, explained to her what it is. It was a special time for all of us. I would not have changed a thing from Havilah’s birth. Havilah was born healthy and happy. She had strong lungs and belted quite a scream. Now she is a happy, smart, beautiful, and an enjoyable child.
- Michelle Schnaars
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