Empowering women to take control of their mental and physical health by sharing personal stories, practical medical information and guidance.
All in Postpartum
For the first time parent seeing how much a baby spits up can be a little scary. It can present questions of concern like "is my baby getting too much to eat?" "Did she just spit up her entire meal?!" "Is she sick?"
Fear and anxiety around childbirth tend to come from the unknown or from anticipating a negative experience in childbirth.
Swaddling can be an excellent tool to calm your baby IF your baby enjoys it! Swaddling can reduce the risk of SIDS if done correctly AND if your baby doesn’t sleep for too long in the swaddle. A baby who doesn’t wake often is a baby at higher risk for SIDS. Night time awakenings are an infant's best defense against SIDS or other physiologic challenges while their body systems mature.
Are there heavy metals in your prenatal vitamin? What are the best prenatal vitamins? There are so many options on the market it can be difficult to know which one to choose (and time-consuming to figure out!). One study collected and tested twenty-six commonly used prenatal vitamin brands, including one prescription brand, for toxic element contamination. They found lead, arsenic, and other toxic elements such as Aluminum, Nickel, Titanium, and Thallium in all samples!
The rise of cesarean births mirror the rise of asthma, allergies, and immune disorders diagnosed in children. There's speculation, and a modest amount of evidence, that exposure to vaginal flora during a vaginal birth stimulates the immune system, regulates the gut and prevents the growth of dangerous bacteria.
Every infant cries! Most infants follow a universal crying pattern during the first few months of life. Nevertheless, it can be stressful and confusing as you get to know what works for your baby.
As many as 80% of new parents experience intrusive thoughts! People, most new parents experience unwanted negative thoughts about their infants — the same kinds of thoughts that mothers with postpartum OCD or postpartum psychosis experience! However, there's a difference between normal intrusive thoughts, intrusive thoughts associated with postpartum OCD, depression, or anxiety, and intrusive thoughts associated with postpartum psychosis.
Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recovery is a time of heightened emotion, and of physical and neurobiological changes. This makes it the perfect time to mold and integrate our brain into something more flexible, resilient, and compassionate. You can learn how to use your mind and body to change your brain and emotions so that pregnancy, birth, and parenthood are well within your window of tolerance.
85% of parents hold their baby on their left hip even if they are left-handed! The Journal of Biology Letters found that “handedness bore no difference in cradling bias.”
Too much or too little? That question summarizes the dilemma across the board in obstetrics. Are we doing too much or too little to protect and support mom and baby? Electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) is one more topic in which we thought we were doing too little by only listening to a baby’s heartbeat intermittently and then we overshot by implementing continuous electronic monitoring (cEFM) for majority of U.S women delivering in hospitals. Learn more about cEFM and what it means for you in labor!
