Archive for the ‘About Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way’ Category

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The La Leche League Conference Was Great

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

We just had the Western Pennsylvania La Leche League conference with guest speaker Marian Tompson. It was wonderful to hear her speak. Not only is she one of the seven original founding mothers of LLL, she was also the first president as well. I was able to speak with her after her session and gave her a copy of my book: Doulas’ Guide to to Birthing Your Way, which I signed for her. As she thanked me for the book, she told me she was glad to see that I had put La Leche League Leader after my name as one of my credentials. She was also glad to see that Dr. Kennell had written the forward to the book. She knew Dr. Kennell and was glad to see he was still out and about.

At the conference I spoke on two topics: ”Influencing Breastfeeding Behavior through Advocacy & Action” and also “Communicating with Health-Care Providers: How to Be an Effective Health-Care Consumer”. I was able to speak about several ways women in Pittsburgh can help accomplish our goal of having a breastfeeding culture. It was a fun conference and it was great to see so many mom/baby nursing dyads!


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Doulas’ Guide News

Friday, March 11th, 2011

Today I received a personal message from Soka Gakkai International President Daisaku Ikeda, congratulating me on our book: Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way. He also thanked me for sending him a signed copy. President Ikeda is my mentor in faith and I can’t describe how happy I was to get his message. Yay!

Doulas’ Guide is now for sale in the Lactation Center at Magee Hospital. The Lactation Consultants told us they are happy to offer it for sale. This was a banner day for our book!

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Physiologic or Mother Directed Pushing

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

Here is a short video clip showing two mothers giving birth at home. Both mothers, during the pushing stage of labor, are pushing the way their own bodies are guiding them. No one is telling them to hold their breath for a count of ten or telling them that they are pushing wrong. They are following their own instincts. This is the way we encourage mothers to push in our book: Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way. When a mother follows her own urge to push, she often enjoys pushing and birthing her baby, rather than feeling frustrated or overwhelmed.

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Ordering Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way

Monday, February 7th, 2011

You can order our book: Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way at Amazon.com or at Hale’s website. The response to the book has been very positive. We have to been excited to hear stories from around the country of women whose births have been joyful after reading our book. That is why we wrote it!

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VBAC — 5 Things That Help

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Here are 5 things you can do to increase your chances of a vaginal birth after you’ve had a cesarean birth:

  1. Choose your caregiver by their VBAC success record. It isn’t enough for them to say that they will support your VBAC. Find out how much success they have had and what aspects of your pregnancy and previous birth make that make a VBAC favorable for you.
  2. Find a doula to support your labor. Sometimes a doula will come to your house in earlier labor to support you so that you won’t get to the hospital too early. Getting there in a well-established labor greatly increases your chances. That is just one way a doula can help. Support is beautiful!
  3. Invest in your VBAC. Write a birth vision, we show you how to do it in my book: Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way. Go see a chiropractor who works on pregnant women. See a nutritionist. Do pregnancy yoga. Choose whichever of these works for you.
  4. Find out your birth options and do everything you can to support your VBAC. Then, if you have a cesarean birth again, you’ll know you tried everything. Knowing that you needed  to have a cesarean birth is one of the keys to recovering from it.
  5. Visualize your gentle vaginal birth. Seeing is believing. Visualization is practice for your actual birth.

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