Wednesday night was the first official meeting of my new Holistic Moms Network chapter. We're meeting for free each month at the San Leandro library, which is awesome for me. This month's topic was "birth options" and our speaker was T. Except that T called me as I was setting out the snacks to say she couldn't make it. She was still recovering from a couple births and had just found out she had to put her dog down to sleep. She was in tears when she called me and I felt so bad for her.
So, I stepped in as the speaker as people were walking into the meeting. I wish I had thought to prepare an outline ahead of time, just in case. It felt like I was a little bit all over the place sometimes. Basically, we talked about options in birth that included places of birth, types of providers, and preferences. I explained the difference in types of midwives, what a monitrice is, and what a doula does. I talked about the local birth centers and the local hospitals with labor and delivery units (and which were most natural birth friendly). I mentioned the current state laws regarding midwifery and homebirth and it made sure to emphasize that there is no difference in type of care provided between a homebirth and a birth center birth.
I got a question about unassisted birth and I wish I had elaborated a little bit more with my response. I talked about vitamin k and eye ointment and hepatitis b vaccine and how each of them are offered at birth but parents have the right to decline any of them. There were a lot more questions, which I appreciated, because it's so much easier for me to respond to a question than to talk off the top of my head. I love being interviewed.
There was a pretty good turnout, which was great. There were a couple doulas who also happen to teach childbirth ed and a bunch of chiropractors and chiro students mixed in with the pregnant moms and partners.
After my "presentation" and Q&A, I opened it up for birth story sharing. Two women had very similar stories about their babies being born at 35 weeks and I'm glad they got a chance to connect. The overall stance of the crowd was that homebirth was the way to go and that the homebirths of the women who had multiple kids were radically different than the hospital births they had.
I honestly had no idea what to expect from the group, since we're so brand new, but I loved how supportive and non-judgmental everyone was. I had two former clients in the room and it was nice to know it was a friendly crowd :)
O was occupied with quietly eating her snack for the first half of the meeting, but at some point she crawled into my lap to snuggle. I was so involved in speaking I didn't really notice that it was unusual for her but then she started to softly cry and said her ear hurt.
Then I remembered that her hearing had been off for the past couple days and I had been getting so annoyed with having to repeat things for her. She had never had an ear infection before, so I didn't even think to suspect it until the meeting when she said it hurt. I checked it with my otoscope when we got home and found tons of wax and slight redness in the ear she was complaining about.
Fortunately she went to sleep right away and didn't wake during the night complaining of pain. By the next day she seemed normal and she hasn't mentioned anything since. Her hearing is back to normal, too. I picked up some homeopathic ear infection tablets just in case and I need to order some garlic oil from my herbalist so I can be prepared in case there's a next time.
I can't wait to get to know the other health care practitioners in HMN!
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