Birth Into Being

I finally shelled out the dough and bought myself some birth videos. I admit, I wanted them for myself just as much as I wanted them for my doula client library. I also knew they would come in handy for showing the kids real births in prep for the birth of their future (not yet existing) siblings. So far, only one video (of three) has arrived.

Birth As We Know It is excellent. It features 11 births, including one twin birth. Nearly all of them are waterbirths. All of them our out-of-hospital births. The birthing mothers are beautiful and very conscious of their labors. In fact, the main point of the video is promoting "conscious birth" and how wonderful it can make the entire experience for a pregnant couple. I really jived with the video and loved the scenes of moms birthing into the sea. I was a little leery of how long they kept the babies under water, but I'm sure that is because the waterbirths I've experienced in real life brought the baby immediately to the surface. There was a short clip of a circumcision. You really can't help but squirm when watching that. There was also a segment on lotus birth in the "extras" that was really neat. Lotus birth is when you keep the umilical cord and placenta attached until it dries and falls off naturally. Sounds nice, but I doubt I could handle the hassle of how immobile you are with a baby attached to the placenta. Anyway, the video is great and just has some beautiful images. I look forward to lending it out to clients.

Book club

Tonight I attended my first book club meeting. But this isn't any ordinary book club. This is the "I want to get pregnant" book club. :) Last spring I was invited as a special guest to the book club, since I was largely pregnant with my second child, and I was a doula. So I went, and spoke, and discovered that of the 5 regular members, I already knew 2 of them. We had a great time that night. I've run into the ladies a number of times over the summer, and I basically invited myself to join the book club cause well, I want to be pregnant again soon. And they welcomed me with open arms.

Tonight's meeting was supposed to focus on the first trimester in honor of one of the book club members who is now 9 weeks pregnant. So we talked about her first big OB appointment, her first ultrasound, prenatal testing, and all that fun stuff. The book they are reading and using as a guide is Body, Soul, and Baby: A Doctor's Guide to the Complete Pregnancy Experience, From Preconception to Postpartum by Traci Gaudet and Paula Spencer. My feelings for the book (I've only read one section so far) are mediocre. The author is obviously uninformed about midwifery (she claimed there was no certifying body for lay midwives, which completes ignores NARM and all CPMs in the US), either that or she choose to omit information so as to steer readers to choose an OB. Plus, she claims when things go wrong in birth, that it happens very quickly, and that is exactly the opposite I've heard from most midwives. Perhaps the difference is that midwives are actually THERE and paying attention to their laboring patients.... But anyway... I don't especially like the book, but I do appreciate that the authors encourage a lot of self-checking about emotions, physical feelings, etc. It encourages quite a bit more self-care than the standard OB books I've seen.

ANYWAY! The entire reason I started this post was so I could share pictures of the cakes I made for tonight. One was for this book club meeting, and the other was for the monthly potluck at my midwife's house, which was also tonight. The cakes were a huge hit at both events. :)

The larger one is a two-layer orange-scented chocolate cake with buttercream icing and filling, covered in marshmallow-almond fondant. The babies are made of the fondant as well and are 100% edible (and 100% yummy). The smaller cake is a two-layer also, with the same icing, filling, and fondant. One layer is the same orange-scented chocolate cake, and the other layer is vanilla-almond cake. Both were delicious.