Gentle Birth Is Possible - A Public Forum - happening today!

Planning for breastfeeding success starts with planning for your birth.  While I did not have a home birth for my children, I am happy to be part of the Homebirthing group in the Philippines which advocates for informed birth choices available for mothers.   I am alarmed by the increasing rates of caesarian births in the Philippines and even more by mothers who schedule C/S births based on lucky dates, appointments, without any medical indication.  Click here for my learnings from Erik's birth.

Thus, I was happy when Nanay Ines of Arugaan pushed for the creation of a gentle birth public forum and excited to announce that it is happening today in UP Diliman!

Giving Birth God's Way at The Cathedral of the King

Among the articles I share in my Facebook page are those pertaining to natural birth.  Out of the blue, one of the moms, Lala Espina messaged me.  She had experienced natural birthing at a birthing facility provided by her church in Mandaluyong City.  I was very curious because Lala shared that the set-up was very much like birthing at home.

Lala invited us to visit her church's birthing facility to meet their midwife, Mama Chato.  I went with my breastfriend, Velvet Roxas and her husband, Atan.  Velvet had recently been certified as a birth doula and I will write more about her in a future post.

Blog Giveaway: So that's what they're for! + Birth Pack

It's time for a blog giveaway! It's been 2 months since I went back to work and things have been quite hectic.  My top priority now is de-cluttering our home - you wouldn't believe the amount of stuff we've accumulated in 5 years (marriage, having N, then now E).  De-cluttering is good because we've been finding things that we thought we had lost.  I also found some books which I realized I had bought 2 of - so I'm going to be giving away one of the copies I have!

The Placenta Diaries

I first heard about ingesting the placenta from a friend who was trying to get pregnant.  She had been trying to conceive and was informed about the benefits of placenta encapsulation.  She contacted a good friend and obtained this friend's placenta for encapsulation.  She ingested this friend's placenta pills and true enough - eventually naturally conceived her first born.
I had been toying with the idea of encapsulating my placenta and already contacted several specialists before I gave birth.  However, when I brought up the idea with my doctor, she told me that she was unsure of the hospital policy about it.  Further inquiries made by myself and my doula had no results.  We could not find out whether the hospital where I was going to give birth at allowed the release of placentas. I then decided not to book an encapsulation specialist until I could get my hands on my placenta.