Absolute Nurturing Doula Services

Did you know that rates of mastitis go up around holiday periods? Why? Well, loads of reasons to be honest. Let's picture it shall we? It's your first christ...mas with your baby. You're mega excited and so is everyone else to have this gorgeous bundle in their lives. Christmas is going to be AWESOME. Lots of travelling around in the car visiting friends and family, making the most of maternity leave to see everyone and proudly show off this little person, taking up offers to go over and be cooked for! And that is genuinely fabulous. But all that travelling leads to lots of time in the car seat, and for most babies the car seat sends them to sleep. And long sleeps mean long gaps between feeds, which leads to full breasts with potential for blockages... Then the parties, the gatherings, celebrations! Lovely right?! Yes! Except everyone wants a hold of little baby Rupert and once again he has longer stretches between feeds. And when he does come back to you he's over stimulated and over tired and only takes two minutes on the breast before he falls asleep leaving you with, you guessed it, full breasts.... Or the guests seem to think they know better than you do about baby Josie's feeding cues and tell you she doesn't need feeding, they can settle her for you. They talk about how 'when they had babies you only fed every four hours and it didn't do them any harm'. You're then stuck between a rock and a hard place, because you would like to feed your baby, but you don't want to upset family or the way they did things, and maybe they're right? Feeds are often cut short around celebrations, because you have lots of people offering to help and hold the baby so your dinner doesn't go cold, or guests arrive, or you're due somewhere, or you'reupstairs feeding and want to get back down to the party...the list goes on. So your breasts don't get 'emptied' like usual and can you guess what happens next? Yep.... Maybe you don't feel comfortable feeding around Auntie Ethel and Uncle Bernard, so you don't quite expose your breast as much as you might normally, and your clothes/bra are digging in a little and restricting milk flow and cause a blockage... Maybe you're sleeping somewhere different, the bed is different, you can't quite get the angle of the feed right on this squishy mattress and the latch goes a bit dodgy, but you put up with it because you don't want the baby to cry and wake everyone. Dodgy latch leads to breast not emptying efficiently...and you know the rest. Christmas is lovely, but for a huge amount of people it's also very stressful. Stress hormones can impact on oxytocin, which is the hormone needed to let your milk flow. So stress can temporarily inhibit milk flow leading to those full/blocked breasts again. I might be coming across as a bit Bah, Humbug! but I've been around enough mothers with mastitis to know its REALLY not what you want to be dealing with at any point. It is not to be messed with, it is a serious condition and you can potentially end up very poorly. What I'm saying is, take it EASY. Plan ahead now to make sure this holiday season is one where you can feed whenever and wherever you need to. Be led by your baby. Don't stretch out or cut short feeds. Listen to your body, not Auntie Denise.

For my fellow BREASTFEEDING families, particularly those with concerns about their MILK SUPPLY: . Imagine you and a friend are drinking water at a restaurant.... You have a very small glass, and your friend has a large glass. You both want to drink a total of 24 ounces of water by the end of the night. Now imagine two different scenarios with me: . Scenario #1: You and your friend both drink the same amount of water in the same amount of time. But because your glass is smaller, the waiter has to come fill it up much more frequently than your friend’s. Your waiter laughs and says that you are keeping him very busy with your frequent refills. Both you and your friend have drunk your desired 24 ounces before you leave. . Scenario #2: You are drinking your water to satisfy your thirst at every moment that you want to drink it. The waiter comes to refill your glass every time you empty it. Your friend, on the other hand, is drinking their water in timed installments, and limiting their amount to certain increments. Because their glass is hardly being emptied, the waiter either doesn’t fill the glass at all, or can only add very small amounts each time he comes by your table. You end the night having drunk your desired 24 ounces but your friend does not and blames the waiter on not filling their glass more often. . BREAST MILK PRODUCTION IS BASED ON TWO PRINCIPLES: 1) Storage capacity 2) Supply and demand . The size of the glasses represent your breast milk storage capacity, or how much breast milk your breasts can hold at one time. The size of a woman’s breasts does NOT determine her storage capacity; the number/amount of glandular tissue (milk-making glands) does, and this varies from woman to woman, like anything else. Those with a small storage capacity can make the exact same amount of milk as those with a larger storage capacity, and therefore are just as capable of meeting their baby’s milk needs; they simply have to nurse more frequently in order to meet the quota. . So women with larger storage capacities just have it made out for them right? Maybe but not necessarily! . Remember: the supply depends on the demand. The waiter represents your body. He is on constant standby to see when your glass needs refilled. And if it isn’t emptied, he isn’t going to bring you more water. . When women watch the clock and limit their feedings to last a certain amount of time and/or space them out in certain increments, they risk sabotaging their overall production and output of milk, regardless of their storage capacity. They may have the ability to store larger amounts of milk, but if they are signaling to their bodies that there isn’t a need for a certain quantity, their bodies aren’t going to make it. Because women are often encouraged to keep rigid nursing schedules, they often blame their own bodies for not making enough milk, even though in reality, they most likely CAN. . A baby aged 1 month old to 6 months old only needs a total of 24 ounces a day, and will typically drink an average of 2-3 ounces at each feeding: an average of 8-12 feedings per day. However (and this is the part no one is telling mothers!), depending on a woman’s storage capacity and how fast her baby eats, she may need to nurse more or less often than that, or for longer or shorter amounts of time. . So the BEST way to ensure that your baby gets what s/he needs in each 24 hour period is to THROW AWAY THE CLOCK and FEED ON DEMAND as much as possible -- be that waiter on standby and constantly watching: learn your baby’s hunger cues and feed them when they signal for it. An emptied breast is a milk-making breast! . It’s important to keep in mind: most doctors and nurses are NOT educated in human lactation and have no idea how to help you if you are struggling to breastfeed. If you are ever told you need to switch to or supplement with formula (and you don’t want to), or if you feel you are truly struggling and need help troubleshooting, speak with a breastfeeding EXPERT: an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) is the gold standard for lactation support and knowledge. . Your body is designed to make enough milk for your baby! Arm yourself with education and seek out the people who will support you to make it happen.

Submission deadline has been extended until the end of June. There's still time to share your stories.

This is so important! Every woman would benefit from an assessment postpartum!

Covering your stroller in the thinnest of blankets can still turn it into a furnace for your little one.

Have you heard of the supplementing cycle? Share your experience! Were you able to go from supplementing to exclusively nursing? What helped? What kept you fro...m reaching your breastfeeding goals? #supplementing #breastfeeding #lowsupply #lowmilksupply Are you concerned that you aren’t making enough? Contact an Leader near you for free, personalized support. Find them at lllusa.org [Image: Close up photo of newborn baby legs. Text: The Supplementing Cycle. Many families begin to supplement because they are worried that they are not producing enough to breastfeed exclusively. If you wish to continue nursing, it is important to be aware of and avoid the supplementing cycle. Text positioned around a circle with arrows going from Feel like you aren't producing enough to Supplement with formula to Baby feels overfull and sleeps more to Baby nurses less to Body produces less milk back to Feel like you aren't producing enough.] See more

"This is one of many Spinning Babies positions to help the baby down the pelvis. It’s called Walcher's Maneuver. I get so happy when I see midwives in hospital...s using these techniques. Many tend to go straight to more drugs to get stronger contractions to force the baby out, but when it’s stuck the baby don’t need more pressure but a better position in the pelvis. After a long birth, the doctor came in and talked to the mum about the possibility of a cesarian. She really wanted a vaginal birth and asked the midwife if there was anything else they could try. She was fully dilated but the baby was too high. They first tried a Spinning Babies technique called Sidelying Release but it didn’t work so the midwife made her lay on the bed like this. Two contractions and suddenly we could hear a new sound from her moaning, and her belly changed its form. 5 minutes later a beautiful baby was born. After attending a Spinning Babies Workshop with Birthsupport.NL, I saw the birthing process with new eyes. I’m hoping more midwives could get the chance to learn these positions!" - Fødselsfotografen More on Walcher's: bit.ly/SpBWB

Did you know that modern C sections were invented by African women centuries before they were standard elsewhere? Midwives and surgeons living around Lake Tang...anyika and Lake Victoria perfected the procedure hundreds of years ago. When a baby couldn’t be delivered vaginally, these healers sedated the laboring mother using large amounts of banana wine. They tied the mother to the bed for safety, sterilized a knife using heat, and made the incision, acting quickly as a team to prevent excessive blood loss or the accidental cutting of other organs. The combination of sterile, sharp equipment and sedation made the procedure surprisingly calm and comfortable for the mother. After the baby was delivered, antiseptic tinctures and salves were used to clean the area and stitches were applied. Women rarely developed infections, shock, or excessive blood loss after a cesarean section and the most common problem reported was that it took longer for the mother’s milk to come in (an issue that was solved with friends and relatives who would nurse the baby instead). In Uganda, C sections were normally performed by a team of male healers, but in Tanzania and DRC, they were typically done by female midwives. The majority of women and babies survived this, and when questioned about it by European colonists in the mid-1800s, many people in Uganda and Tanzania indicated that the procedure had been performed routinely since time immemorial. This was at a time when Europeans had only barely started to figure out that they should wash their hands before performing surgery, when nearly half of European and US women died in childbirth, and when nearly 100% of European women died if a C section was performed. Detailed explanations of Ugandan C-sections were published globally in scholarly journals by the 1880s and helped the rest of the world learn how to save mothers and babies with minimal complications. So if you’re one of the people who wouldn’t be alive today without a C-section, you have Ugandan surgeons and Tanzanian and Congolese midwives to thank for their contributions to medical science. #BlackHistoryMonth

Women, this is really powerful work! Join us!

For my fellow BREASTFEEDING families, particularly those with concerns about their MILK SUPPLY: . Imagine you and a friend are drinking water at a restaurant.... You have a very small glass, and your friend has a large glass. You both want to drink a total of 24 ounces of water by the end of the night. Now imagine two different scenarios with me: . Scenario #1: You and your friend both drink the same amount of water in the same amount of time. But because your glass is smaller, the waiter has to come fill it up much more frequently than your friend’s. Your waiter laughs and says that you are keeping him very busy with your frequent refills. Both you and your friend have drunk your desired 24 ounces before you leave. . Scenario #2: You are drinking your water to satisfy your thirst at every moment that you want to drink it. The waiter comes to refill your glass every time you empty it. Your friend, on the other hand, is drinking their water in timed installments, and limiting their amount to certain increments. Because their glass is hardly being emptied, the waiter either doesn’t fill the glass at all, or can only add very small amounts each time he comes by your table. You end the night having drunk your desired 24 ounces but your friend does not and blames the waiter on not filling their glass more often. . BREAST MILK PRODUCTION IS BASED ON TWO PRINCIPLES: 1) Storage capacity 2) Supply and demand . The size of the glasses represent your breast milk storage capacity, or how much breast milk your breasts can hold at one time. The size of a woman’s breasts does NOT determine her storage capacity; the number/amount of glandular tissue (milk-making glands) does, and this varies from woman to woman, like anything else. Those with a small storage capacity can make the exact same amount of milk as those with a larger storage capacity, and therefore are just as capable of meeting their baby’s milk needs; they simply have to nurse more frequently in order to meet the quota. . So women with larger storage capacities just have it made out for them right? Maybe but not necessarily! . Remember: the supply depends on the demand. The waiter represents your body. He is on constant standby to see when your glass needs refilled. And if it isn’t emptied, he isn’t going to bring you more water. . When women watch the clock and limit their feedings to last a certain amount of time and/or space them out in certain increments, they risk sabotaging their overall production and output of milk, regardless of their storage capacity. They may have the ability to store larger amounts of milk, but if they are signaling to their bodies that there isn’t a need for a certain quantity, their bodies aren’t going to make it. Because women are often encouraged to keep rigid nursing schedules, they often blame their own bodies for not making enough milk, even though in reality, they most likely CAN. . A baby aged 1 month old to 6 months old only needs a total of 24 ounces a day, and will typically drink an average of 2-3 ounces at each feeding: an average of 8-12 feedings per day. However (and this is the part no one is telling mothers!), depending on a woman’s storage capacity and how fast her baby eats, she may need to nurse more or less often than that, or for longer or shorter amounts of time. . So the BEST way to ensure that your baby gets what s/he needs in each 24 hour period is to THROW AWAY THE CLOCK and FEED ON DEMAND as much as possible -- be that waiter on standby and constantly watching: learn your baby’s hunger cues and feed them when they signal for it. An emptied breast is a milk-making breast! . It’s important to keep in mind: most doctors and nurses are NOT educated in human lactation and have no idea how to help you if you are struggling to breastfeed. If you are ever told you need to switch to or supplement with formula (and you don’t want to), or if you feel you are truly struggling and need help troubleshooting, speak with a breastfeeding EXPERT: an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) is the gold standard for lactation support and knowledge. . Your body is designed to make enough milk for your baby! Arm yourself with education and seek out the people who will support you to make it happen.

Women of Edmonton and surrounding areas. I started taking Nathalie's programs a few years ago. They profoundly changed my life! If you are currently seeking more out of life, trying to find out why you are here, or seeking greater meaning, please consider taking her program. I can't say enough about it!

Hello ladies, We have space available for low risk mothers with a due date of either October or November. Please contact our office via email or telephone. ... Thank you!

Submission deadline has been extended until the end of June. There's still time to share your stories.