Birthing Wisdom classes celebrate and empower all women. Whether you choose to birth in a hospital, free standing birth center, home birth or if you desire to give birth with or without medical intervention, these classes will help you understand the choices that are best for you and your unborn baby. Birthing Wisdom's goals are to allow a mother and her family experience an individualized birth that is experienced as a joyous labor of life. Birthing Wisdom was founded by Pauline White-Nardella, RN, MPA I began teaching families in 1982 when I earned a B.S. degree in Nursing and began working in the field of Maternal Child Health & Pediatrics. I have three beautiful healthy children all born naturally using these techniques. I have been teaching Natural Childbirth classes since 1991 and dual certified in HypnoBirthing®-The Mongan Method in 2001. These two childbirth education options offer an expectant family a complete, comprehensive childbirth and early parenting educational program. My mantra is Knowledge is Power! Understanding the beauty of the human body, trusting it and working with your body to create a healthy baby and a safe birth is empowering for all women. I actively lecture, teach and consult throughout the tri-state area at conferences, colleges, hospitals, health fairs and parenting centers. I am also a regional speaker for the March of Dimes. Please contact me at info@BirthingWisdom.com for a speaking engagement. Recent Media Coverage: Birthing Wisdom's Pauline Nardella was featured on The Learning Channel's "A Baby Story: The Goldstein Baby." Pauline Nardella hosted The Road to Motherhood at Babies R Us, a national tour throughout the nation, that educates women and families about pregnancy, birth and newborn care. Co-Authored and published a training manual entitled, Births Basics and presented a two-day workshop entitled, Births Basics in Marlborough, MA at the North East HypnoBirthing¨-The Mongan Method conference. Presented multiple Parenting, Birthing & Breastfeeding topics at LaLeche League North East Conferences Pauline White-Nardella RN, MPA an adjunct nursing instructor for Dominican College and owner of Birthing Wisdom, a maternal-child health educational company, was recently interviewed by Patricia Stark from Craving Confidence. Craving Confidence is the place where experts from all walks of life share their confidence stories, secrets, and suggestions with you. Three video interviews of Pauline Nardella are presented including; Confident Pregnancy, Confidence for Birth & Confidence for New Parenting. Go to: CravingConfidence.com to view the videos or download them to your iPod.
Confident Pregnancy |
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Birthing Wisdom
HypnoBirthing Birth Story of Eli
Eli Siegel February 26, 2008
My birthing story doesn’t begin with my water breaking. It really begins with the support of the childbirth educators who empowered me and offered the revelation that there are birthing options. Without them, I would have continued to believe in the limits of prenatal care (dipping a stick in my urine, checking my weight and warning me of the various fetal maladies by yet another OB in my five minute checkup.) In this system, I understood that labor can only take place in a hospital with intervention. And that giving birth is a medical event. We are reminded that women can “fail to progress” and labors become “unpromising” and necessitate drugs and major surgery. And worst of all, despite the battery of tests, we are reminded that the baby can go into “fetal distress” for any unforeseen reason that no amount of prenatal care can prepare for or prevent. In this system, pregnancy is a congratulated precarious condition. As is true of life, situations arise and bridges must be crossed. But we all know not to focus on the “what ifs” so why is pregnancy the exception? The truth is that there are things one can do to prepare both physically and emotionally. And there are things one can do to ensure the best possible outcome for mother and baby. Pregnant women are not passive victims to their bodies.
I learned these things from women like Pauline Nardella, Childbirth Educator, Anne Margolis, Certified Nurse Midwife and the filmmakers Ricky Lake and Abby Epstein who made “The Business of Being Born”. For every woman there are specifics that stand out in their prenatal care. I did not have to be subjected to constant pelvic exams since most of the time, there was no medical need for it. When my midwife had to determine if the baby was head down she respectfully offered me options; a pelvic exam or sonogram. Until that point, I had always been told to undress from the waist down. Never asked. Never aware I had choices.
I also learned that women are suggestive when pregnant. This is not because we are suffering from “pregnancy brain” or any other one of those derogatory descriptions of a woman expecting. We are suggestive in this condition by nature because it assists in the birthing process. A pregnant woman can be told she can bond with her unborn baby and therefore she can. A pregnant woman can be told that the contractions are surges, or simply a tight feeling and therefore they are endurable or even pain free. Being suggestive is critical to the birthing process and being exposed to fear in a suggestive state puts women on a dangerous path toward labor. This is why numbing drugs are so critical in an optionless system. Not just to medicate the pain, but a women’s fear and even the fear of fear.
My homebirth midwife asked me questions about my pregnancy. She asked questions about my life situation and my concerns. She let me speak and she listened. I was an active participant in the prenatal check-ups to determine the well-being of my baby. She did not overwhelm me and with each visit she provided simple handouts of things to do or assist me in my pregnancy. I did not feel pressure to do everything (like walk a mile a day, drink a gallon of raspberry leaf tea and do 1000 kegel muscle exercises while sitting in traffic) but to do what I could and even without doing anything at all, my body knows what to do. Women do not “fail” to give birth. This truth was reaffirmed in my Hypnobirthing class. My body and my baby know what to do. We follow nature.
Despite this, the moment my water broke, I felt fear. “I am not ready” I thought. At nearly 42 weeks I should have felt ready. But I still could not let my thoughts go. Did I practice enough with the tapes? Do I have the stamina? Am I going to fail to progress like I did in the hospital with my daughter? Can I take the pain without meds? The first contraction was powerful. It took me by surprise. This is where my prenatal care began to demonstrate its effect on me. Instead of thinking “OW!” I thought “WOW! My body is strong.” Holding on to that thought, I went from contractions every 10 minutes to every 5 in less than an hour.
I called my midwife to let her know the contractions were coming strong and quickly. But at that point, I did not refer to them as contractions but as waves because they were not isolated to my uterus. I felt them from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.
My husband ran around preparing the bath and trying to figure out why the heat wasn’t working that cold February night. My 2 year old woke up looking for me “The baby is coming?” If someone told me she was going to wake up and pine for me before our babysitter arrived, it would have scared me. I cuddled with her and tried to put her back to bed as my husband stopped between errands to hold my hand. My midwife had the wisdom that I should prepare and inform my daughter with videos and a homebirth children’s book. She was a little afraid but more excited. The contractions were now three minutes apart and lasting beyond a minute. I did not know I had the strength to care for my daughter and my labor at the same time.
At my first birth my husband could not be out of reach with me for two seconds. I needed his strength to get through the 20 hours of pain. Without any rubs, I made it one wave at a time. I realized that the waves only lasted for about one minute and at this point the endorphins kicked in and the calm between lasted for three or more. It felt utterly divine so I focused on this. Since I was so suggestive, all I had to do from my Hypnobirthing practice was say the word relax and I was completely weightless, and floating. I did not mind the contractions as much simply because the strength of them was instigating this endorphine induced blissful relaxation.
At transition, my midwife was not there and my husband and neighbor had just completed filling the tub. I went back into my head since I did not expect to be in the bath alone and I got scared. My midwife and Doula just arrived as I completed dilating. I let her know I was scared and she asked me of what. And I said of being alone. My husband was with me at that point, the babysitter arrived and so did my caretakers. She only needed to say “You are not alone” and I was not alone. In the warmth of the tub, my husband was holding me, sharing our strength to birth our son. In the timelessness of following nature, I remember my midwive’s words as I fell into what seemed like a trance. She said go with your body after I announced the urge to push. And I did. She said “Open your pelvis and let the baby through.” And I did. She said “Push past the ring of fire.” And I did. My son was nearly 10 pounds. We brought him into this world without fear and after only three hours of labor and 15 minutes of pushing, he arrived into our arms with a feeling of love that cannot be described. Perhaps it was the Oxytocin. Still, the experience was life changing. It gave me strength through the turbulent changes of the first week of post-partum and a feeling of empowerment that I can carry with me through life. This story of trust, birth and love has bonded us immediately as a family and I have no doubt this birth story will continue to shape our lives.
HypnoBirthing® Mothers are making choices -creating change!
HypnoBirthing® Mothers are making choices -creating change!
In 2007 15.5% of US HypnoBirthing® mothers birthed via C-Section, compared the the national average of 32%
12% of HypnoBirthing® mothers chose to birth in the comfort of their homes. The national average is less than 1%.
6% of HypnoBirthing® mothers chose to birth in freestanding birth centers. The national average is less than 1%.
Over 70% of HypnoBirthing® mothers birthing vaginally had unmedicated births.
HypnoBirthing-The Mongan Method
HypnoBirthing® - The Mongan Method is as much a philosophy as it is a technique. The concept of HypnoBirthing® is not new, but rather a "rebirth" of the philosophy of birthing as it existed thousands of years ago and as it was recaptured in the work of Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, an English obstetrician, who first forwarded the concept of natural birthing in the 1920s. The method teaches you that in the absence of fear and tension, severe pain does not have to be an accompaniment of labor.
You will gain an understanding of how the birthing muscles work in perfect harmony--as they were designed to--when your body is sufficiently relaxed. You will learn how to achieve this kind of relaxation, free of the resistance that fear creates, and you will learn to use your natural birthing instincts for a calm, serene and comfortable birthing.
When you have your baby with HypnoBirthing®, you will not be in a deep trance or asleep. What you will experience is similar to the daydreaming or focusing that occurs when you are engrossed in a book or a movie or staring into a fire.
You will be conversant and in good spirits--totally relaxed, but fully in control. Awake throughout, you will be aware of your body's surges; but because you will have trained yourself to reach complete relaxation, you will be able to determine the degree to which you will feel the surges. You will experience birthing in an atmosphere of calm relaxation, free of the fear and tension that prevents the muscles of your body from functioning as nature intended them to. In this calm state your body's natural anesthesia, endorphins, replaces the stress hormones that constrict and cause pain.
Trained educators of HypnoBirthing® are successfully teaching women and their birthing companions relaxation techniques of HypnoBirthing® that eliminate the Fear-Tension-Pain Syndrome throughout the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. www.hypnobirthing.com/