There is (rightly) a lot of buzz these days around the insidious, incremental erosion of a woman’s right to choose whether she will give birth to a child she has conceived, but virtually nobody is talking about the drastic erosion of a woman’s right to choose how she will give birth to her term baby. Who is talking about the shocking erosion of a woman’s right to choose a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean)?
Posts Tagged ‘birth’
Vaginal Birth Triggers Brain Boost, C-Section Doesn’t: Part of Nature’s Plan for Intelligence?
Along with the cascade of benefits that most Mothering readers already know comes with vaginal birth, new research from Yale has identified yet another: vaginal birth triggers the expression of a protein in baby’s brain cells that optimizes development of the hippocampus — an area central to such “complex behaviors in the adult” as learning, memory, and stress response. C-section delivery may actually impair this protein’s expression.
I find it of interest that earlier this year another study came out linking early nurturing by mothers with larger hippocampal regions in school-aged children. And while the Yale study is very preliminary — using mice, not humans — to me it all points to a notion I hold dear: Nature has an elegant plan for the unfolding of optimal human intelligence (including the required brain structures to mediate that intelligence), and it involves such quaintly natural things as birthing through the birth canal and letting mothers closely nurture their young ones! {Please continue reading at mothering.com}
On Birth & Parenting, ARE We Independent…Yet?
Moms and Dads, Who Is The Boss of You?
The Force of Culture on Birth & Parenting Choices:
As we celebrate our nation’s independence from oppressive rule, I want to explore an all-encompassing issue: the status-quo of today’s culture — media, medicine, education — exerts tremendous pressure on well-meaning parents to make choices that simply aren’t good for kids. This is where some knowledge can be a very empowering thing! The more we know about where our decision-making “blind spots” are, the more we can free ourselves from the prevailing fear-based group-think, and become capable of making positive choices that are in the true best interests of ourselves and our children.
Let’s begin where it begins — how we ourselves are born, how we birth our children, and how we perceive the choices involved. {Read this entire post at mothering.com}
A Sober Look at Neonatal Care ~ Foundations of Violence?
With barbeque grills across the country barely cooled off from Father’s Day, I’m reflecting on the pre-release screening I attended last week of Janel Mirendah’s film The Other Side of the Glass — a birth film for and about fathers. Its chilling glimpse of hospital neonatal care protocols has important implications for the idea of raising a generation of peacemakers.
The U.S. mentality for every problem is to go to war: the war on poverty, the war on cancer, the war on drugs, the war on child abuse, the war on terror, begins with the experience of birth imprinted in our neural system. –Janel Mirenda, filmmaker
To read more of this post, please see it at mothering.com.
