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The Mum’s The Word podcast is such an amazing resource for mums & mums to be, I’ve been loving listening to an array of experts & am so thrilled that I have been given such a wonderful opportunity & platform to talk about my passion project; My Birth Wishes app & of course so much more.

You can check out my chat here & be sure to check out the other awesome episodes as well!

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So it’s not that this isn’t sage advice because absolutely, change the dirty diapers, do the dirty work that’s awesome! But what I’m struggling with is this demarcation within parenting roles, very often perceived but still very much part of our vernacular. Another example is when Dad’s are considered to be babysitting their children. Hmmmm no, they are caring for their child, on their own, this is not babysitting, this is parenting! Just as it is when Mum has the kids on her own.

This is not necessarily something that Dad’s are bringing upon themselves. I’m surrounded by amazing parents day in day out who are absolutely smashing this parenting gig as a team. There might some very specific roles that each parent takes on, breastfeeding & settling are some big commonalities, but there’s no point scoring going on. There’s no antiquated ideologies that Mum does all the rearing while Dad goings hunting & gathering, then comes home & changes a pooey nappy & ‘Woo Hoo I’m a hero’!  That’s just not happening in the world that I’m living in.

So is Ryan’s advice to new Dads relevant? I guess, it’s OK to remind them that there’s some ‘shitty’ work coming up & the birthing mother was just a total goddess but what about saying; “hey man, this parenting gig is hard work, there’s lots of big changes going on here, be kind to yourself because it’s going to be an awesome ride.” Or even; “Dude, your relationship is going to change big time, but you guys just created LIFE, so ride out the waves & know that you have never known a love this big & it’s going to be an awesome ride.” Or just; “You’re probably going to make mistakes, lots of them, you both will. Changing a nappy won’t be one of them, but just know that you’re doing an awesome job even when you don’t think you are & it’s going to be an awesome ride”.

The post Ryan Reynolds advice for Dad’s, it got me thinking… appeared first on Acacia Wellness.

I live on top of a very very steep hill & when Grace announced that I was to carry her the rest of the way I was slightly regretting my decision to take such a long walk! So here I am, pushing a bike, carrying a 2 year old & waddling my very very pregnant belly up this huge hill (the dog thankfully knows his own way home)! I was feeling those familiar tightenings & texted my husband to let him know to think about making his way home from the city soon.

I popped the slow cooker on & sat on my birthing ball playing with Grace.I had spent much of my pregnancy thinking about the logistics of this birth, as I was birthing at home. I had thought that it would be nice to go into labour in the evening so that Grace could be asleep & we would not need to organise a babysitter & I could just birth in my own space. Richard arrived home, they ate dinner (I was full from my curry & possibly baby)! We put Grace to bed & I continued to sit on my ball watching Big Brother (yes I love terrible reality TV)! I texted with my Midwife keeping her abreast of how I was going & when my surges were about 5 minutes apart I decided to get to come over.

I switched off the TV & headed into my birth space, where I swayed in the warm of the fire & watched the embers glowing, one of my favourite relaxation tools, the hypnosis of fire! When my midwife & support midwife arrived we spent about an hour chatting & laughing (in between my breathing) & around midnight I decided to hop into the birth pool. The midwives sat at the other end of the room doing paperwork or knitting while Richard supported me as I birthed, quietly & calmly in the warm water in our lounge room.

The room was filled with a warming glow from our candles & lamps, a beautiful warmth from the fire, with an occasional crack or pop & a feeling of trust & love. I felt myself get hot & knew that my baby was about to arrive, the moment was here & I was ready. This great energy filled me to every edge of my being & beyond, this immense strength & power, a feeling like no other. I smiled at my husband as he told me how beautiful I was, tears in eyes as he held my arms & I felt his love move through me. With two, long, loving breaths Oscar was born into my own hands, swimming up into my arms, as I got to see his beautiful face as he emerged from the water, all 9 pounds 6 ounces of him!

Filled once again with that natural birth high, there was no way that I could sleep. I held him close to my chest & breathed in every molecule I could & I continue to do so every day!

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2. “Don't worry, I have small fingers”

3. “You are not a hero, have an epidural”

4. "Are u regretting this now?"

5. “Cry on the inside, like a winner “

6. "You wouldn't get a tooth pulled without pain relief so why are you being so stubborn now?"

7. "I hope your birth goes as well as YOU think it will"

8. 'Suck it up princess'

9. “You can’t do this by yourself, I’m going to have to do this for you”

10. Whilst stitching after birth, the Dr said to my husband 'have you seen this? It's a dogs breakfast'

Something that all of these women say: “I've never forgotten that day or those words.”

Reading a list like this you might be surprised with how such small comments, that might not usually affect someone can derail a birth in a dramatic way. In fact, it’s not even the birth itself but the disempowering of women that is the travesty here. It doesn’t matter what ‘type’ of birth a mother is hoping for or requesting, the bottom line is that women are to be respected during this most life changing experience. Belittling, disempowering or bullying is NEVER ok, especially to someone bringing life into this world!

If these are the memories that women are recalling about their births, then how is this impacting their ability to travel through motherhood with the confidence & trust in themselves that they should have. What impact do their stories have on the other women that hear them & their journey’s?

We need to respect women in their birthing space, plain & simple!

Want to know my top 10 things that MUST be said to a women in labour? Stay tuned!

The post The 10 worst things Obstetricians have actually said during labour… appeared first on Acacia Wellness.

I could feel her getting ready for her arrival for a few days now, actually I thought she had decided that Tuesday was going to be her birth day, but as it turns out she wasn’t quite ready. When Thursday rolled around & those well-meaning, but slightly annoying phone calls to see if she had decided to make her appearance became more frequent, I thought maybe this might be time.

The previous night I ran myself a nice warm bath & poured my birthing oil in & my ipod ready with my birth tracks playing. I thought of my baby, I talked to her through my belly & told her it was safe to come meet us now. I envisioned how things would play out once she was ready & how I would bring her into this world. She moved a bit, tickled my ribs with her foot. I knew she’d heard me. At around 11pm I began to feel tightening in my abdomen as I went to sleep. I slept soundly until around 3am when the tightenings were a little more regular & I was too excited to sleep because I knew I was going to meet my baby soon. So I got up & watched a few hours of Jersey Shore before the sun started to rise & managed to get comfortable enough that I could drift off for a little while & get a few more hours sleep.

When I woke I told Richard that we might have our baby today but that everything was very slow, might not be for another day or 2, in the back of my mind thinking about my mothers marathon labours. We went along to my regular acupuncture appointment where my tightening were about 25mins apart upon arrival & 15mins apart when we left less than an hour later. We continued on to our obstetrician appointment, because I still didn’t believe that I was in labour, surges were still regular at around 15mins apart. The Obstetrician was happy, she called the hospital to let them know they would be seeing us at some stage tonight & sent us home to keep doing whatever I was doing because it seems to be working.

So we headed home, called Mum to pick up our dog, Ari, & she stayed for a cuppa & an episode of Bold & The Beautiful ! She was stunned that every 10mins I would gentle close my eyes, breathe deeply, slowly & calmly & then open them again when the surge was over. This was not what birth looked like to her!

After she left I decided to really go within, I wanted to connect with what was happening in my body & to my baby & just let nature take its course. After a little while based on my husband’s observations he thought it was time to go to hospital. I was not convinced as I honestly thought this couldn’t possibly be it! After about half an hour he ignored me & just called the hospital anyway!

The midwife wanted to speak to me so I hopped on the phone, I assured her I felt great & was in no pain, she thought it was probably not time to come in yet but just hang on the phone while I have some contractions so she can be sure we were timing them properly. Only seconds into the second contraction she said, ‘Emily, they are much closer than I thought, as soon as this one is over I want you to come straight into the hospital’. Hmmmm I thought, maybe this is it!

So we headed into the hospital through the pouring rain & Friday peek hour traffic listening to my Nirvana Rock-A-By-Baby CD (Nirvana songs played on glockenspiels, very relaxing)! When we arrived they were pleasantly surprised at how well I was doing, we chatted for a bit but as I had declined any examinations they said they would leave me to it & check on me in a few hours unless something changes....”what sort of change am I looking for” I asked, confused.....waters breaking or you feel like pushing.....I thought to myself that I felt a little pushy now, but hey what do I know! So off they went & we settled in with our dimmed lights & relaxation music. I had this desperate need to be outside, I wasn’t a fan of the room, I had felt much more comfortable mentally at home, but physically I felt great.

I spied a large cushy chair underneath a window so I straddled it, pressed my forehead against the glass & felt the rain tap on my head through the window. I was completely & utterly relaxed, connected with my body & my baby. A little while later I felt my baby moving down & out, I got down on the floor & breathed my baby down. A midwife stuck her head in to see if the room was free & was surprised when she realised that I was just about to have my baby. ‘Stop pushing’, she said, ‘we’re not ready yet’.....They frantically wheeled trolleys around, squeezed on gloves & threw on some wet weather gear (my waters had not broken yet) whilst I calmly continued to breathe my baby down. No time for my private obstetrician to arrive & with a few minutes my beautiful little  Grace was born earthside.

I was in established labour for 6 hours, my birth was painless, calm, positive & empowering. That night I lay so utterly awake, completely wired & full of energy that I could not even entertain the thought of sleeping even though I knew my body so desperately wanted that warm release when your muscles relax & that gentle haze of sleep fall over your eyes & drifts you off to another world. I was in a another world already, I could hear her  tiny little breaths as she slept, swaddled in her cotton wrap & those tiny breaths are the most amazing sound I had ever heard. I left the light on the bathroom so I could see her  through the darkness, I couldn’t possibly bear to tear my eyes away from her. We had finally met today, face to face. I had talked to her for so long, rubbed her little bottom through my tummy, tapped her little feet as they burrowed away inside me while she got comfy. Then she was here, this perfect little girl. This beautiful gift that I was able to bring into this world, so peacefully, so calmly. Finally I had my calling, I knew this feeling, this experience needed to be shared. And so Acacia Wellness was born!

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The amount of money that I see parents spending on prams & cots (not even the most expensive ones) is far above how much it would cost finically for them to attend an independent childbirth education program, but the value that they would receive far outweighs, I believe, any financial investment.

I’ll give you another perspective. According the a survey by Bride to Be magazine earlier this year, the average cost of a wedding in Australia is over $65,000! For one amazing & happy day, but still only ONE day. Birth whilst it still might only be one day in your life, you are pregnant for 9 months & a parent for the rest of your breathing days. Your birth will shape you into the person you become, it will imprint your baby in so many important ways. This birth is the only chance you have for THIS baby, you might have other births but you can never change what happened for this one.

Don’t get caught up in all the ‘stuff’, think about what a baby really needs; a safe entrance into the world, somewhere warm to sleep be it a cot, your bed or your arms, something warm to drink be it from your breast, from someone else’s or from a bottle & more love than you can ever imagine. So make this birth good, make it positive, make it something you want to remember with a smile across your face, do it for you & do it for your baby.

The post Independent Childbirth Education – It’s worth every dollar! appeared first on Acacia Wellness.

That old adage of walking in another person’s shoes rings true for me. If I cast my mind back before the time when I knew how fabulous & amazing HypnoBirthing was, when I was more close-minded. How would I have reacted to someone who told me they had a pain-free birth? What would I have thought if someone told me they had an amazing birth experience, that they felt euphoric? It is very likely I would have raised my eyebrows, smiled & changed the subject, maybe I would have scoffed. I hope that I would have been gracious & accepting of their experiences & advice, but really I don’t know.

In my BH life (Before HypnoBirthing), I had heard so many birth stories. From family, even my own mother, to those of perfect strangers & not once did I walk away from a story & think that it sounded like an amazing experience. Not once did I think, “WOW I want to do THAT”! Sure I thought I might like to have a baby one day, I’ll admit I seriously considered adoption as opposed to birthing my own child, I was THAT terrified of birthing. There’s every chance that had my husband not wanted to have children of his own that this may very well have been the path we would have gone down. But when the reality of having my own child, birthing it out of my body, through my vagina dawned on me, I was truly & utterly terrified. Pooing my pants, sweaty arm pits, dry mouthed terrified.

Fortunately at the time I was studying a Nutritional Medicine degree & was exposed to a multitude of ‘alternative’ therapies & HypnoBirthing came highly recommended. On paper it seemed to address all of my issues: fear, anxiety, a need to be informed, calmness, tools for my husband. In practice it delivered. We walked away from our classes filled with excitement, trust & empowerment about the birth of our first baby. I felt confident that I could birth this baby the way I was designed to & that my husband had all the confidence & skills to support me.

So what is my confession? Well, I still had a seed of doubt in my mind. Yes I was confident I could birth my baby. Yes I knew what my body was capable of doing. Yes I trusted the birthing process & all the amazing tools that we had learned, together as a couple, as parents. Yes I was still not sure if this would actually work! So I just had to take a punt. What was I going to lose right? I was going to have the baby one way or another, so why not give it a red hot go? So I completely threw myself into the practice, I understood that I needed to condition my mind & my body, but I could do this, I can do this, I will do this. I did it!

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Needless to say we had the travel bug & a few years later for our honeymoon we embarked upon a 3 month overland adventure in Africa. Overlanding across the barren desserts showed me, in a way that few other things have, that there is something bigger than me out there. There’s nothing quite like the hypnotic experience of being in a moving vehicle & just being with yourself. I didn’t have the knowledge of hypnosis back then, but I knew that there was more to this life than just sitting in my office back home. So upon my return I started further education in Nutritional Medicine & waited to find my calling.

In 2010 filled with excitement about being pregnant with our first baby, Richard & I looked forward to enjoying what would likely be our last holiday together as a twosome. My long awaited dream to go to the Splendour in the Grass music festival & a relaxing few days in Noosa were just what we needed. Whilst enjoying lunch with some friends I was smacked in the head with a major migraine, I left them to enjoy the sun while I went for lie down in our hotel. After a short, restless, painful sleep I woke & used the bathroom to discover pink blood on the toilet paper. Panicked I rang my Mum. Concerned but reassuring she said this sometimes happens but if I’m worried to see a Dr. We decided it was best to investigate & were sent for an ultrasound where we saw tiny heartbeat, we left feeling relieved but exhausted.

The next morning, I awoke with excruciating stomach pains, after visiting the bathroom I discovered a significant amount of blood & I was fairly certain I was losing my baby. We had earlier been instructed to head straight to the hospital if things changed. Our arrival was the beginning of a series of events that significantly changed me as a person & I left that hospital 2 days later without my baby & without a huge piece of myself.

Later that year we were once again thrilled to discover we were having another baby!  My miscarriage filled me not only with an often unbearable amount of grief but also when I then became pregnant again this horrendous amount of fear & anxiety. There wasn’t a visit to the toilet where that toilet paper was not checked, I was constantly living on the edge, I was enjoying this experience but also terrified of losing it all again.

In addition to this fear I was terrified of birth as well. I have spent my entire life hearing my own birth story from my Mum & women’s birth stories in my life & I always felt there was this element of ‘one day you’ll know what it’s like’ & an assumed understanding that ‘this is just what birth is like’. But really? Is this really just what birth is like? It sounds horrendous. Why would anyone do that? And then do it again & again?

But evolution is a fascinating thing & it got me thinking. We are on this earth because women birth their babies, how can it be that the very thing we are designed to do according to many women, including my own mother, was the most painful & excruciating experience of their lives. I didn’t want this for my birth.

My husband had also experienced a great tragedy that caused him to have a physiological response to hospitals. As soon as he stepped inside he would feel hot, nauseous & faint. Knowing that my own father fainted during my brother’s birth he didn’t want that for us. He wasn’t sure how he would be able to support me during one of my most trying experiences if he was feeling so terrible himself or worse flat on his back on the floor.

So I started asking questions & researching like a crazed pregnant woman! I’m a fixer, I like to find solutions, that’s what I’ve always done. We discovered Calm Birthing & HypnoBirthing. This sounded like exactly what we needed. We left our course filled with excitement, trust & empowerment about the birth of our first baby. I will admit that there was this little seed of doubt in my mind but mostly I felt confident that I could birth this baby the way I was designed to & that Richard had all the confidence & skills to support me. I completely threw myself into the practice, I understood that I needed to condition my mind & my body, but I could do this & I DID!

I will share my birth stories with you another time but it was through these beautiful entrances of my children into the world that were so peaceful & empowering that it compelled me to want to share this amazing gift with other families, guiding them to achieve a calm beginning, whatever that looks like for them.

Of course my experiences have been put down to flukes or a high pain threshold, someone even said to me ‘well you’re obviously just built to birth’ ..... uh yeap, I am....we all are! Fear, Pain, Doubt, Trauma – these are the most common concepts forming peoples belief systems around birth & to be honest parenting & life in general. Birth should be the celebration of life & then living life itself. It should not be this terrifying & painful experience if it doesn’t have to be.

We are living in a world that has never been more connected, through social media & the internet & it is FULL of stories. Stories are absorbed by our minds, the emotions that we feel when hearing these stories create a chemical change within our bodies. These little moments in time are forming our belief systems & creating our future for us, determining how we are going to respond physically & emotionally. So when it comes to birth the worst thing we can do is fill our belief system, our memory bank, with fearful, painful, traumatic stories.....we need positivity, calm, happy stories....because this is what we want our reality to be.

So Acacia Wellness has been created to help other families have beautiful stories. I am so grateful to be a part of their stories, to help them have these amazing, powerful, sometimes healing but always life changing experiences & that’s why I love what I do.

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