Health care is a top priority for President-elect Obama and for Senator Tom Daschle, Secretary-designate for Health and Human Services (HHS). They both are committed to health care reform that comes from the ground up -- that's why this holiday season, they're asking childbirth professionals to give the gift of your ideas and input.

Sign up to lead a Health Care Community Discussion at a birth center in your area, your home, or even a local coffee shop, anytime until December 31st.

Choices in Childbirth has a free Healthy Birth booklet available to the public with valuable resources and evidence-based information. It includes articles that provide empowering tips preparing women for childbirth. Download the 2009 Healthy Birth guide and see the beautiful picture of two week old Olive with her mother Sara and read the poem next to her photo (page 23).

While often separated or compartmentalized mentally, giving birth is part of a woman's sexual life cycle. Indeed, an effective analogy is sometimes made between birth experiences and sexual experiences. The same things that contribute to feeling safe in a sexual encounter also apply to feeling safe in a birth environment--i.e. most people would not be able to comfortably "perform" sexually in a hospital, on an elevated surface, surrounded by strangers, with bright lights shining on them, and with people "coaching" their performance. So to it can be difficult for women to relax and feel comfortable enough in a hospital setting to release their inhibitions, let their bodies take over, and do what needs to be done to give birth to their babies. Birth--like sex--is an intensely physical process, the flow of which is also strongly influenced by the mind and emotions (and which can be disturbed or disrupted by outside interruptions or interference).

Some time ago, I read an article called Industrial Childbirth in Adbusters magazine (an unexpected place to find a birth article, I thought!). This author draws another effective parallel between sex and birth:

"Our collective idea of childbirth is pretty nasty – blood and fluid, panting and screaming, stretched anatomy, the emergent gooey greyish-purple alien...horrible! Remember when you first heard about sex? Remember how horrible that seemed? But sex isn’t horrible, is it? What’s missing...is the emotional element (emphasis mine). Sex is a natural and beautiful process, all entangled with love and passion. So too, and a million times more, is birth...But childbirth is not a medical procedure any more than sex is."

While then explaining that she isn't saying women who all have pain-free, blissful, complication-free births, she goes on to discuss fear.

The Way I Teach, December 2008 issue, of the International Journal of Childbirth Education should be arriving to members before the holidays. From the ICEA website you can listen to the podcast Pleasure in Birth for contact hours, locate contact hours and workshops, download handouts, and print out the B.E.S.T. certificate honoring all you accomplished in 2008. Enjoy the holidays!

There’s a buzz around homebirth these days. Ricki Lake’s "Business of Being Born" has inspired a slew of expectant New York mamas to consider homebirth to welcome their babies into the world. A recent New York Times article entitled, "Baby, You’re Home" examines this growing trend. Written by Julie Scelfo, the article chronicles the experiences of several women who opted for homebirths. "Baby, You’re Home" details some of the logistics surrounding homebirth and addresses the fears and concerns of expectant moms.

NY midwives are surprised by all of the calls they’ve been getting. Those who have home-birth-only practices say they have received so many requests in recent months that they’ve had to refer pregnant women to midwives in Rockland County, Long Island, and New Jersey. However, what is even more surprising to them is that the increasing numbers are not so much coming from the “dyed-in-the-wool back-to-nature types or typical religious fundamentalists, but from professionals like lawyers and bankers.”

This article is a great read!

- Deanna