Natural Births A Major Cause Of Post-Traumatic Stress? Wrong!

A Tel Aviv University researcher has linked natural birth with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Natural Births A Major Cause Of Post-Traumatic Stress

Interestingly, some people consider that PTSD is a very modern trauma

According to the Tel Aviv study, 1 in 3 postnatal women in their study sample showed signs of PTSD while a small percentage were severely affected.

What causes PTSD?  A posting on medical news today in 2009 states that PTSD is triggered by a traumatic event and that:

"The sufferer of PTSD may have experienced or seen an event that caused extreme fear, shock and/or a feeling of helplessness".

"a woman is four times more likely to develop PTSD than a man. Psychiatrists say this is probably because women run a higher risk of experiencing interpersonal violence, such as sexual violence"
Traumatic events that commonly trigger PTSD in women - these include rape, sexual molestation, physical attack, being threatened with a weapon, childhood physical abuse.

Given that labour and birth are innately highly emotional, vulnerable times for women - and that is to enable the liberation of the 'love hormone' oxytocin - the emotional 'fixative' for attachment, bonding and breastfeeding - the feeling is a natural 'high' - the reward for labour and birth;  care needs to be respectful, supportive, kind and competent for labour to go well.  Women need to feel in control, to have agency and feel safe during labour and birth.   Numerous studies have found that women labour and birth well when they have caregivers they know and trust.

Photo of joy filled mother with newborn

Women who have their emotional needs met in labour and birth enter motherhood feeling awesome!

Feeling good after giving birth is not about whether it was natural or not, it is not about whether you coped with the pain or not, although labour is much harder to handle when you are not in a good environment or in control of what's happening to you - it's about how you are treated, how well supported you are, how protected and private your birth territory is and how well you feel in control of what's done to you.

I think the good doctors need to investigate what is going on in their hospitals! They are 'barking up the wrong tree'.

Stress, Telomeres and Health

Our chromosomes have protective sheaths and caps at their ends. These caps are known as telomeres and protect the ends of the chromosomes. An analogy is the little plastic ends on shoelaces. The length of these little caps has been found to indicate the health of our cells. Shortened caps are associated with advanced cellular aging.

Telomeres and the enzyme telomerase are responsible for protecting the chromosomes which take care of  the replication of our cells. Chromosomes which are unprotected are associated with cancer and other mutations of cells. Shortened or damaged telomeres have been found in women who are chronically stressed in caring roles (Epel, Blackburn & Lin 2004).

Researchers at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) were calling for volunteers to take part in a trial to look at the role of stress on telomere length and health. 

I volunteered, because I figured it would be a good thing to be part of this research looking at whether knowing the length of these cell replication protection units would be useful as a health  marker.  I got an email back today telling me they were fully subscribed for the study. Many women had responded to the newspaper article. I'm delighted that so many people saw the value in this research.  What really impressed me was the note the researcher included in her email.  She said and I quote:

"Just a side note --we can try to keep our telomeres healthy, without having to have them tested. To keep healthy  telomeres, it seems the same factors that protect the heart also protect the telomeres- regular vigorous activity, healthy diet with lots of fruit and vegetables (antioxidants from foods) and less processed meats, and to reduce stress, feeling socially connected and being mindful and relaxed when we can.  My own favorite stress buster is yoga.

With best regards,

Wanda Truong, Clinical Study Coordinator
Elissa Epel, PhD, Principal Investigator (head of the study)"

I was invited to reply if I was interested in being part of further studies and of course I am, so I replied and told them so.  I figure that if these researchers are suggesting ways to keep our telomeres healthy, then that's worth listening to!

By the way, Dr Elizabeth Blackburn has been seeking to find ways to enhance life as we age and her efforts led to her winning, along with two of her colleagues the 2009 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of “how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.”


Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress. by E. S. Epel, E. H. Blackburn & J. Lin, et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), 2004, 101(49)

What you don't say can hurt you!

The vital importance of speaking up and saying how you feel to your health and wellbeing is demonstrated in a post by this young woman, Fiona Hollis.

You can visit Fiona’s website and read more about her journey here: http://www.iloveraw.co.uk/

The post was part of an email newsletter I found in my in-box this morning from The Raw Divas, one of my favourite health and wellness sites.

The Raw Divas are entertaining and informative and I always enjoy their take on life and food. Their articles are often enlightening and I have fun with their recipes. Their approach suits my interests and understanding because my move to a vegetarian way of life, as a result of being employed as a nurse in an abattoir in the early 70's, has lead to an increasing interest in the power of food, especially raw food, to function as medicine for all sorts of ailments.


Fiona writes:

"My name is Fiona, and I wanted to share with you how raw greens have helped transform my health. January was my one year anniversary of healthy thyroid function. Woohooo!

In December 2008, I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. To my horror, I was told by my GP that surgery would probably be needed to remove 3/4 of my thyroid gland, leaving me dependent on medication for the rest of my life. This didn’t feel like a road I wanted to go down at all".

Having a baby had been life transforming for Fiona. Her birthing experience caused her to think differently about life and health. Fiona now believes that:

"... all illness or dis-ease is caused by energy blockages within our bodies where emotions get trapped and repressed. I have not always thought this way - but since having my son my eyes have opened to the magical possibilities that are open to us if we dare to believe and see for ourselves"

She explained her belief that our bodies are able to heal themselves when they are working properly and how she:

"... knew deep down the goiter in my neck was blocked expression - clearly affecting my throat chakra. There was a key issue that had been bubbling to the surface of my mind for the last few months and the fear of expressing it to those around me was too great. I denied the need to confront it. The ‘thing’ I least wanted to say - had now backed me into a corner and was testing how much I was willing to stay in denial.

I now had no choice - and I could feel it in every painful cell. The emotions surrounding this admission were HUGE. The waves of shame, self-hatred, and despair I experienced as I spoke my truth was clearly what I had been avoiding. The day after I spoke my truth my goiter went down & I started my healing - and believe me it was the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me".

According to Fiona, her remarkable healing and overnight reduction in her goitre occurred when she 'spoke her truth' and dealt with difficulties that she had been suppressing.

Fiona's experience resonates with what happens for childbearing women having one to one midwifery care. Anyone who observes the results of one to one midwifery care for childbearing women will find that among that cohort of women, more births are normal, more women and babies are well and breastfeeding successfully, there are less occasions of preterm labour and birth, pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes compared to what happens for women who access the standard, run of the mill maternity 'care'.   

Midwives who work in a genuine continuity, one to one, relationship based model of care provide a safe place and develop a relationship of trust with the woman within which the pregnant woman can feel heard and respected and able to discuss concerns, fears and troubles. Putting words to troublesome feelings enables emotional release. The role of unrelieved and unexpressed stress on inflammatory processes and the involvement of inflammatory processes in the aetiology of disease is becoming more widely recognised.

As stress is expressed and released, health and wellbeing go up.

Awareness is so crucial to living a full, healthy and happy life. The importance of paying attention and acknowledging how you feel cannot be overemphasised. Midwives have a real role in supporting women to become aware of and express their feelings. Asking 'how are you today' in a meaningful way and waiting for a genuine answer, being present and acknowledging any discomfort for the woman, enables her to feel heard and cared about - the ultimate stress reduction exercise.

Not saying how you feel, as Fiona's experience demonstrates, can be toxic to the bodymind.

Another important point to note in Fiona's remarkable story is that she also embraced a nutritional approach to improving her health and used raw food to suppress thyroxine release.

The Reinvention of the Self § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

"Elizabeth Gould overturned one of the central tenets of neuroscience. Now she’s building on her discovery to show that poverty and stress may not just be symptoms of society, but bound to our anatomy".

Brilliant article about the role of the environment in making us who we are:

"Subsequent experiments have teased out a host of other ways stress can damage the developing brain. For example, if a pregnant rhesus monkey is forced to endure stressful conditions—like being startled by a blaring horn for 10 minutes a day—her children are born with reduced neurogenesis, even if they never actually experience stress once born. This pre-natal trauma, just like trauma endured in infancy, has life-long implications. The offspring of monkeys stressed during pregnancy have smaller hippocampi, suffer from elevated levels of glucocorticoids and display all the classical symptoms of anxiety. Being low in a dominance hierarchy also suppresses neurogenesis. So does living in a bare environment. As a general rule of thumb, a rough life—especially a rough start to life—strongly correlates with lower levels of fresh cells.
Gould’s research inevitably conjures up comparisons to societal problems. And while Gould, like all rigorous bench scientists, prefers to focus on the strictly scientific aspects of her data—she is wary of having it twisted for political purposes—she is also acutely aware of the potential implications of her research".

The environment shapes us, from the very beginning to the very end.

"...As Nottebohm has said, “Take nature away and all your insight is in a biological vacuum.” Nottebohm discovered neurogenesis in birds learning to sing in their natural habitat". If he'd studied birds in cages, they would have been too stressed to sing and therefore wouldn't have grown new neurons.

The Reinvention of the Self § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

The implications for midwifery work with childbearing women is that midwives create the right environment within which women can explore becoming mothers in an optimal way.

Cognition in pregnancy and motherhood: prospective cohort study -- Christensen et al. 196 (2): 126 -- The British Journal of Psychiatry

Cognition in pregnancy and motherhood: prospective cohort study -- Christensen et al. 196 (2): 126 -- The British Journal of Psychiatry

Background
Research has reported that pregnant women and mothers become forgetful. However, in these studies, women are not recruited prior to pregnancy, samples are not representative and studies are underpowered.
Aims
The current study sought to determine whether pregnancy and motherhood are associated with brief or long-term cognitive deterioration using a representative sample and measuring cognition during and before the onset of pregnancy and motherhood.
Method
Women aged 20–24 years were recruited prospectively and assessed in 1999, 2003 and 2007. Seventy-six women were pregnant at follow-up assessments, 188 became mothers between study waves and 542 remained nulliparous.
Results
No significant differences in cognitive change were found as a function of pregnancy or motherhood, although late pregnancy was associated with deterioration on one of four tests of memory and cognition.
Conclusions
The hypothesis that pregnancy and motherhood are associated with persistent cognitive deterioration was not supported. Previous negative findings may be a result of biased sampling.


This study is interesting on many points. One interesting point is the way the researchers concluded their paper by stating:

"Obstetricians, general family doctors and midwives may need to use the findings from this study to promote the view that ‘placenta brain’ is not inevitable, and that perceptions of impairment may reflect emotional or other unknown factors. Not so long ago pregnancy was ‘confinement’ and motherhood meant the end of career aspirations. Our results challenge the view that mothers are anything other than the intellectual peers of their contemporaries".

 An important point to make!

 The researchers state that:

"one of the weaknesses of our study was our inability to link cognitive change with biological changes associated with pregnancy"

What would have been really interesting is to see the neurological changes that were taking place in women's brains as they were questioned by the researchers.  Emerging insights from neuroscience indicate that different attentional networks are operating, depending upon the task at hand.  Different attentional networks trigger different autonomic nervous system 'states' with correspondingly different biochemical responses and levels.

Pregnant women do not suffer cognitive 'impairment' that much the research has demonstrated, however, the researchers dismisses the fact that many women do forget things in pregnancy, relegating the 'forgetting phenomenon' to the basket of emotionally related factors.  Dismissing women's experience as merely emotionally driven is, in my view, dangerous thinking.

Emotions are powerful chemicals for one thing and have a great deal to do with day to day health and long term wellbeing for both mother and baby.

A far better conclusion is that the pregnant woman's body and subconscious processes are very busy building a baby.  Our innate intelligence has a way of rerouting attention from less important to more important activities. Nothing, in terms of nature's agenda (healthy reproduction) is more important than building a healthy baby.

With an understanding of neuroscience and attentional networks, the fact that a pregnant woman becomes forgetful about 'boring' tasks and 'work' related activities is perfectly understandable and has nothing to do with her intellectual ability and cognition. When a woman's attentional networks are triggered to pay attention, she will, demonstrating, as this study shows that her intellectual ability is 'normal'.

Pregnant women can be assured that forgetting mundane, wordly things is actually very normal and very understandable. Their body intelligence is very consumed in growing a baby and is not bothered or very interested in outside worldly pursuits.

How Childhood Trauma Can Cause Adult Obesity - Yahoo! News

"Early adverse experience can disrupt the body's metabolic systems," says Shonkoff. "One of the cornerstones of biology is that our body's systems when they are young are reading the environment and establishing patterns to be maximally adaptive."
Researchers also posit that high levels of stress hormones caused by Adverse Childhood Experiences, known as ACEs can wear down the body over time. A temporary spike in blood pressure in response to a stressful event may be useful to power an adaptive fight-or-flight response, but over the long term constant high blood pressure could raise a person's risk for heart attack and stroke. Studies have also found that consistently elevated levels of stress hormones, like cortisol, can lead to permanent damage in certain brain regions linked to depression.
Recently, scientists have discovered that these changes can themselves be passed down from one generation to the next - a burgeoning new area of study called epigenetics. Such research may have significant and long-term implications for the prevention of obesity, addiction and other illnesses related to early life stress. After all, reducing childhood exposure to trauma in one generation may further benefit that generation's children and grandchildren.
If, for instance, a modern child's early life experience - in the womb and during the first five years, particularly - is constantly stressful, it would be incredibly energy-consuming, says Dr. Bruce Perry, senior fellow at the ChildTrauma Academy. "If your genes get the message that you are entering a stressful world, it makes complete adaptive sense to take the existing metabolism and tune it up to deposit fat and store energy to prepare for what the body is expecting will be a challenging and stressful life," he says".

How Childhood Trauma Can Cause Adult Obesity - Yahoo! News

Epigenetics is one of the fields of science that is demonstrating the importance of one to one midwifery care throughout the childbearing period for women and their families. Unmitigated stress leads to genetic, inflammatory and physiological changes that can be permanent. Homeostasis is disrupted and a process called Allostasis is triggered. Allostasis is when body systems are upregulated to cope with unrelieved stress and stress hormones.

Genes

When women feel cared about and valued and have a midwife to talk to about the day to day, moment to moment anxieties, fears and challenges that life and pregnancy brings, their stress response is dampened and their connection response is triggered. Discussing feelings, nutrition, exercise, relationships and changes with a midwife who cares and is interested is capacity building.

The human brain may contain up to one trillion neurons. These nerve cells are interconnected, as shown in this microscopic image, so that they can transmit electrical impulses—and information—to other cells. Image by 3D4Medical.com/Getty Images: National Geographic

When women feel in control, their stress hormones are down, their wellbeing hormones are up and they feel better about themselves. When women are informed and feel in control, they are more likely to do the self care things that help grow healthy babies.

YouTube - Ignorance Meets Knowledge (extended breastfeeding)

A delightful video normalising extended breastfeeding. Nutrition and health are hot topics at the moment. This video is a great message for our times.




YouTube - Ignorance Meets Knowledge (extended breastfeeding)

Mother, baby revived after 'dying' in labor - Heart health- msnbc.com

What a blessing that this young mother and her baby revived and survived.

Mother, baby revived after 'dying' in labor - Heart health- msnbc.com

What I found particularly interesting is that the woman had an epidural minutes before the circulatory collapse. Her husband noticed her colour was blue and when the nurses checked her, she had no pulse.

The fact that an epidural had been administered had not made it into any of the news reports that heralded the story about the miracle of this woman and her baby's survival.

The doctors are at a loss to explain what happened to this young woman.

Yet, there are several possible explanations with the administration of an epidural in labour:

1. The anaesthetic agent could have been inserted into a vein by mistake causing cardiogenic shock
2. The epidural block may have been too high, causing paralysis of the intercostal muscles and respiratory arrest and then cardiac arrest
3. Allergic reaction to the anaesthetic agent

None of these possibilities have been explored in the news. What this story does of course is add to the general fear cascade around 'birth' in western culture. The 'problem' in this story is not with labour, it is with the intervention, the epidural administration. The problem needs to be attributed to where it rightfully belongs. Where most of the problems with birth lie is with the interventions that are 'done to' birthing women. Instead of providing every childbearing woman with one to one midwifery care that enables a woman to feel valued and cared about, work through her feelings about becoming a mother and then supported to give birth in her unique way, according to her own body biorythms, women are fed a steady diet of fear and problems, anaesthetised, poked, prodded and pushed. The way that the normal natural process of birth is tampered with is what leads to the problems that women experience.

Fear is a powerful force for shaping women's experiences of birth. The trouble lies in our cultural conditioning and media portrayals of birth. Fear makes us compliant and anxious. Instead of women perceiving the birth of their babies as something special and transformational, they are encouraged to rush to take 'whatever' modern medicine provides for deadening the feelings associated with the experience.

Unfortunately the 'cure' can often be far worse than the experience itself.

This story should have read " Mother, baby revived after 'dying' post epidural"

Want to live well? Harvard experts offer pragmatic pointers on getting healthy and staying there

"The long-running Nurses’ Health Study shows that as much as 80 percent of heart disease, 70 percent of strokes, and 90 percent of diabetes — three of the nation’s top 10 killers — are related to just four lifestyle factors: avoiding smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly, and embracing a heart-healthy diet.

“They are absolutely astonishing numbers,” said Manson, who is beginning a large trial of vitamin D’s role in preventing illness. “Studies demonstrate the powerful role of lifestyle factors in preventing chronic disease. One of the most important prescriptions doctors can write is to prescribe regular physical activity.”
One area where knowledge has advanced rapidly in recent years involves the importance of maintaining a healthy body weight, which Willett said is understood much better today than even a decade ago and is linked to heart disease, diabetes, and many cancers".

Other aspects to what constitutes a healthy and rewarding life are explored in this article.
Getting enough quality sleep, saving money, being kind, taking time to reflect and be still to name a few.

The article continues:

"Though people make individual decisions that affect their well-being every day, people are at their core social animals. Recent research has detected those social underpinnings in their personal behavior.
Nicholas Christakis, professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, explores the effects of social networks on health. His research indicates that everything from obesity to smoking to happiness to loneliness can spread through social networks.
Still, Christakis cautioned that someone looking to live healthier should not just avoid friends who have unhealthy habits. Social networks are important, providing companionship and support even from those who smoke or eat junk food. There’s far more to gain, he said, in lending a hand to struggling friends than there is from cutting them off."
Want to live well? Harvard experts offer pragmatic pointers on getting healthy and staying there

Bacteria offer insights into human decision making

Fascinating! Provides insight into why good communication skills are important with childbearing women and ensuring true, informed choice. Application of the learning from simple bacteria to the way medicine approaches maternity care could revolutionise the way women are provided with information and supported to make choices about what is right for them.

As the researchers note:

"We learned a simple rule: Anyone who needs to make a decision under pressure in life, especially if it is a possible death decision, will take its time. She or he will review the trends of change, will render all possible chances and risks, and only then react."

Bacteria offer insights into human decision making

Study links genetic variation to individual empathy, stress levels

Researchers have discovered a genetic variation that may contribute to how empathetic a human is, and how that person reacts to stress. In the first study of its kind, a variation in the hormone/neurotransmitter oxytocin's receptor was linked to a person's ability to infer the mental state of others.

Hmmmmm, can't help but wonder what sort of birth and early upbringing the folks with the gene variation had. The environment has a huge impact on which genes get switched on which ones get switched off. How the genes get tinkered with and altered too depends upon the environment. Epigenetics is the field of science exploring genetic behaviour in response to environmental cues. The issue of the early environment on the person's oxytocin's receptor variation would be good study.

Study links genetic variation to individual empathy, stress levels

BBC NEWS | Health | Music 'nurtures' premature babies

Music 'nurtures' premature babies
Music may help block pain

Hospitals that play music to premature babies help them grow and thrive, mounting evidence suggests.

The benefits are said to be calmer infants and parents as well as faster weight gain and shorter hospital stays.

A Canadian team reviewed nine studies and found music reduced pain and encouraged better oral feeding.

Music also appeared to have beneficial effects on physiological measures like heart and respiratory rate, Archives of Disease in Childhood reports.

BBC NEWS | Health | Music 'nurtures' premature babies

and of course, an even better solution is to provide one to one midwifery care to women as the rates of premature birth drop when women have midwifery care.

Early life stress has effects at the molecular level

More evidence of the need to keep mothers and newborn babies together and ensure skin to skin uninterrupted time at birth. Maternity service providers, midwives and doctors take note

Early life stress has effects at the molecular level

Bioethics for clinicians: 12. Ethical dilemmas that arise in the care of pregnant women: rethinking

Bioethics for clinicians: 12. Ethical dilemmas that arise in the care of pregnant women: rethinking "maternal?fetal conflicts"

This article was written in 1997. The ideas about ethics that are expressed here need to be reaffirmed today. 

Fish oil in pregnancy linked with reduced allergy risk fo children

A new study from Sweden published in the journal Acta Paediatrica [Acta Paediatr. 2009 Jun 1 ePub ahead of print] found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19489765 has found that Omega 3–rich fish oil supplementation during pregnancy and lactation may reduce the risk of food allergy and eczema in children.

The randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study, followed 145 pregnant women who had allergies or had partners or other children with allergies [which makes this group at high risk for having children with allergies.

From the 25th week of pregnancy until between 3 and 4 months breastfeeding, the women were randomly assigned to receive either:

1. daily fish oil supplements providing 1.6 g of eicosapentaenoic acid
(EPA)and 1.1 g of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)
2. or placebo.

Children born to the group of mothers who were given Omega 3's had a 2% incidence of allergy, compared to a 15% rate for the babies in the control/placebo group.

Another finding was that the incidence of allergic eczema was reduced by 2/3rds (8% in the omega-3 infant group, compared to 24% in the placebo group).

How this works is because Omega-3 fatty acids compete with the Omega-6s therefore lessening the release of arachidonic acid (AA) and inflammatory prostaglandins, which create havoc in our cells.

Another example of how important nutrition is and how nutrition must be the first line of primary health care!

Great song to start the day!

50 Qualities of Successful People

If you stroll along the bookshelves of any book store, you will find hundreds of books telling you how to be successful in many, diverse fields. When you analyse what the books are saying, they all point to the ability to maintain an optimistic attitude in the face of difficult and/or challenging circumstances, as well as the ability to self manage/regulate as foundational requirements for success.

For parents and midwives, success means happy healthy mothers and babies. Happy, healthy mothers and babies are more likely when stressors are managed well. The enormous changes that pregnancy can bring can be challenging and lead to feelings of stress and even distress for some people. The reality is that for all of us, stressful reactions involves chemical messengers which can play havoc with our physiology. Anything we can do to learn to manage stressors in our lives well is a vitally important thing to do for our health and wellbeing.

I found this list of qualities of successful people on Lifehack. When I looked at the list, I realised that the qualities I read there were those of midwives I really admired. I also recognised that the women and men who moved into parenting in the most optimal way displayed these qualities. It seemed to me that all of us could use the benefits these qualities bring and that steady, consistent adoption of these qualities in our lives can make our lives really wonderful.

1. They look for and find opportunities where others see nothing.

2. They find lessons while others only see problems.

3. They are solution focused.

4. They consciously and methodically create their own success.

5. They may be fearful, but they are not controlled or limited by fear.

6. They ask the right questions -- the ones which put them in a positive mindset and emotional state.

7. They rarely complain.

8. They don’t blame, and take complete responsibility for their actions and outcomes.

9. They always find a way to maximize their potential, and use what they have effectively.

10. They are busy, productive and proactive.

11. They align themselves with like-minded people.

12. They are ambitious.

13. They have clarity and certainty about what they want.

14. They innovate instead of imitate.

15. They don’t procrastinate.

16. They are life-long learners.

17. They are glass half full people, while still being practical and down-to-earth.

18. They consistently do what they need to do, regardless of how they are feeling on a given day.

19. They take calculated risks.

20. They deal with problems quickly and effectively.

21. They don’t believe in, or wait for, fate, destiny, chance or luck.

22. They take action before they have to.

23. They are more effective than most at managing their emotions.

24. They are good communicators.

25. They have a plan for their life and they work methodically to turn that plan into a reality.

26. They become exceptional by choice.

27. They work through the tough stuff that most would avoid.

28. They have identified what is important to them and they do their best to live a life which is reflective of those values.

29. They have balance. They know that money is a tool and ultimately, it’s just another resource.

30. They understand the importance of discipline and self-control.

31. They are secure in their sense of self-worth.

32. They are generous and kind.

33. They are happy to admit mistakes and apologize.

34. They are adaptable and embrace change.

35. They keep themselves in shape physically.

36. They work hard and are not lazy.

37. They are resilient.

38. They are open to, and more likely to act upon, feedback.

39. They don’t hang out with toxic people.

40. They don’t invest time or emotional energy into uncontrollable things.

41. They are happy to swim against the tide.

42. They comfortable with their own company.

43. They set high standards for themselves.

44. They don’t rationalize failure.

45. They know how to relax, enjoy what they have in their life and to have fun.

46. Their career is not their identity, it’s their job.

47. They are more interested in what is effective than in what is easy.

48. They finish what they start.

49. They realize that not only are they physical and psychological beings, but emotional and spiritual creatures as well.

50. They practice what they preach.

Lifehack May 12, 2008

Women rallying across Australia for 1-2-1 midwifery care and The Age misses the point!

Women rallied across Australia today in support of 1-2-1 midwifery care in the wake of the close of submissions to the National Maternity Services Review.

The Age newspaper runs a story with the headline "Huge rise in obese mums-to-be"
Jill Stark November 16, 2008

The article says

"A RISE in the number of obese women becoming pregnant has sparked calls for more vigilant monitoring and weighing of expectant mothers, amid fears babies' lives are being put at risk.

Specialists at leading Melbourne hospitals have told The Sunday Age that women with pre-pregnancy weights of 150 kilograms or more are increasingly common, with some then adding up to 30 kilograms before giving birth — around three times the recommended weight gain of 7 kilograms to 12 kilograms.

The mothers' excess fat is posing serious challenges for medical staff, who are struggling to detect babies on ultrasound machines and monitor their heart rates. Many of the women suffer obesity-related diabetes and high blood pressure, with their size tripling their babies' risk of sudden death or birth defects.

Pregnancies for very large women are considered so risky that most hospitals are turning away expectant mothers with a body mass index higher than 35 or 40. A healthy BMI is 20 to 25."

That's all true of course and worthy of concern. However, two things are of interest here. One is that this story was run when, on the same day, there was a women led rally for better maternity care options. This article could be seen as an effort to keep women in their place and interestingly, the article was written by a woman!

The other interesting and not mentioned fact is that circulating and unremitting levels of stress hormones are part of the problem in the obesity epidemic. Stress hormones interfere with healthy physiology and disrupt growth and repair mechanisms. This means that women are more likely to become fatter as high stress hormone levels interfere with glucose and insulin pathways.

Pregnant women and their babies are vulnerable to the stress caused by ever increasing social pressures. When childbearing women feel loved and cared for, and are able to talk with their midwife about the things that are bothering them, their stress hormones are lower, they feel more in control with what happens to them and their clinical outcomes are improved.

One to one midwifery care, where the focus is on the woman and her needs and wants, has far ranging health and wellbeing benefits for mothers and babies.

Thank goodness Nicola Roxon appears to be listening to good science, rather than scare mongering, power plays and sensationalism.