Creating Optimal Birth Space

The environment in which we live and move and have our being is critical to our physical, mental, spiritual and social functioning. More and more understanding is emerging about how the environment plays a pivotal role in all aspects of our lives. From mice to (wo) men, science is demonstrating that the body's neural network is "plastic", that genes are not destiny and that the "environment" is an integral part of how living creatures function and develop. Every physiological interaction and behaviour, from the way genes are expressed in the sperm and the ovum to our health and experience across the lifecycle depends upon the environment. The environnment gives feedback which will be either nourishing and provide the stimulus to function well and grow or hostile, which disrupts our functioning, leading to disease, distress and decay.

Recognition of the way the environment is integral to optimal functioning is expanding our understanding of the role of maternity care in providing optimal environments for childbearing women. The science is also demonstrating why woman centred care, facilitating the fulfilment of woman's choices and incorporating women's rights into maternity care are so much a part of optimising outcomes for women, their babies, their intimate relationships and society in general.

My friend and colleague, the wonderful Maralyn Foureur, Professor of Midwifery at the University of Technology of Sydney (UTS) presented on this topic at the recent homebirth conference in New Zealand.  Maralyn is heading up a research team exploring birth space and has attracted a highly prized NHMRC grant for this work. 

Click the link below and it will take you to the slide share of her presentation

Creating Optimal Birth Space

I think you will enjoy and get a lot out of her research.

Why midwives and women have to stay upbeat about birth: The wisdom of herds: How social mood moves the world - 19 May 2010 - New Scientist

In the latest New Scientist (19th May 2010), an article by John Casti, Senior Research Scholar and a futurist (castiwien@cs.com) based at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria who is developing early-warning indicators for extreme events in society, informs us that

"No collective human activities or actions, such as globalisation or, for that matter, trends in popular culture such as fashions in films, books or haute couture, can be understood without recognising that it is how a group or population sees the future that shapes events. Feelings, not rational calculations, are what matter. To see what our world might be like tomorrow, next year or next decade, we need to spend time and money investigating "social mood". Put simply, the mood of a group - an institution, state, continent or even the world - is how that group, as a group, feels about the future".

How would we, as a group of people who care about what happens to women and babies during the childbearing year, be described as feeling about the future?

Are we optimistic or pessimistic? "

According to John Casti, how we feel and how we see the future, does much to create it. In the Selfish Gene, British scientist, Richard Dawkins coined the word 'meme' as a concept to enable discussion about these collective social, cultural moods/orientations and behaviours as evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena.

What's our meme? What do we want it to be?

Casti's essay is based on his new book Mood Matters: From rising skirt lengths to the collapse of world powers.

The wisdom of herds: How social mood moves the world - 19 May 2010 - New Scientist