Planning a Day To Remember
People spend years imagining their weddings. Months go into planning every detail. We invest our time, money, and energy because this will be an event to remember for a lifetime. We don’t often think of it in the same way, but our child’s birth is also an event that you will remember forever. It makes [...]
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Choosing a Maternity Care Provider
Choosing a care provider for your pregnancy and birth is the first, and often the most daunting, task in pregnancy. Here in the Spokane/CDA region we are lucky to have many wonderful options. And yet, it’s surprising how often I meet women who pick the first OB or midwife recommended to them without an interview. [...]
Why I Chose a Home Birth
I never imagined myself having a baby at home. In fact, I was pretty sure home birth was something only hippies did. However, it turns out home birth is on the rise and there are many reasons to give birth safely at home. After the birth of my daughter, which was a wonderful hospital birth, [...]
Delivering a Baby: Just as Easy as Catching a Ball but Way Scarier
We had planned on our second son being born at a home with an experienced midwife, and a friend to babysit our firstborn (18 months at the time of the birth). But the best laid plans being what they are, I had the joy of delivering our new baby while our older son watched Blue’s Clues [...]
Pregnant With Twins? Now What?
Being pregnant with twins is hard. It’s hard on your body and your mind. During my twin pregnancy, I found it to be most difficult mentally (once the puking stopped around week 15 anyway). The medical establishment, and therefore most people, expects a woman pregnant with twins to have an elective cesarean section around week 38. This is not what I wanted, so I spent a lot of time researching my options. I am also a birth doula, so I went into pregnancy with a lot of knowledge.
The first thing to remember with any pregnancy is that you MUST be flexible. I wanted a natural, unmedicated birth. I did not get that. I spent my time finding a doctor who was supportive of the birth that I wanted, but he did lay out some guidelines. [...]
We Need Your Birth Photos
Bloom Spokane is about to produce it’s first promotional video that will be used as a PSA (Public Service Announcement) on our website and other local media outlets, including TV. Our aim is to reach a wide audience of childbearing families in the Spokane/CDA region and encourage them to use our amazing, free resources. And we know that video is the way to do it.
Corner Booth Media, a Spokane video and film production company, has graciously offered to create a professionally-produced video that will tell the story about our organization and the families we have impacted. They do amazing work. Have you seen the “STCU is Me” ad campaign? These guys know how to tell a story!
Spokane Midwives Birth Center
MARCH 23
As Bloom Spokane works to educate our community about mother-friendly birth options, we encounter parents who are surprised to discover that Spokane has a freestanding birth center—an independently owned and operated (non-hospital affiliated) facility run by midwives who provide prenatal, childbirth and postnatal care, incorporating family-centered maternity care concepts and practices.
Spokane Midwives is the private practice of Washington State licensed midwives Beth Morrill and Linda Morgan located just north of downtown Spokane at 127 East Euclid Street. The birth center provides a comfortable, home-like environment where families attend their prenatal appointments and can choose to give birth. Spokane Midwives’ patients are also cared for by the two student midwives in training at the birth center—Terri Young and Amber Morrill assist in prenatal checkups and attend births with the midwives while preparing to become licensed midwives themselves. [...]
New Study on Home Birth is Skewed
All of my birth-obsessed friends on Facebook have been buzzing about a recent home birth study published by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG). Everyone, including the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS), is outraged that the publishers of the study “accepted a poorly designed and methodologically unsound study in which authors concluded there is a 3-fold increase in neonatal mortality in planned home births compared with planned hospital birth.” You can read CIMS’s full response to the study on their website. [...]
Oprah.com Reports on Alternative Birth Options
I am always beyond excited to see a non-sensationalist article about natural birth appearing on any mainstream website, television program or other media outlet. Though natural birth at home has been the norm throughout history, in recent times it has become a radical, outsider and even legally-banned practice in the U.S. That’s why I’m giving Oprah.com a gold star for raising awareness about the subject and letting American families know that they have other options besides hospital birth attended by obstetricians!
A recent article appearing on Oprah.com, by Fritz Lenneman, begins “With Caesarean section surgeries occurring in nearly one in three pregnancies and traditional hospital births by obstetricians costing an average of $8,000 to $10,000, some pregnant women are exploring other options. And the future of childbirth in America might start looking more like the past.” He then describes the roles of midwives and doulas in the birth process and talks about the legal challenges faced by some home-birth midwives. “Though about half of states allow at-home birth, it remains uncommon in the United States—just 1 percent of births occur in nonhospital settings including home births and birthing centers.” He also discusses alternative methods for inducing labor such as acupuncture, acupressure, walking, eating spicy foods and sex. Yes SEX! [...]
Pediatric House Calls
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Brenda Stoudt, a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (PNP) who makes house calls in the greater Spokane area. Having given birth to her own children at home, she understands the needs of home-birth families who wish to remain at home after the birth of their babies rather than running to a doctors office for newborn checkups. As well, she is a lactation counselor who works with moms and babies to ensure successful breastfeeding is established.
Beyond the newborn phase, Brenda provides preventative care and makes sick calls for children of all ages within the comfort of your home. What’s best…these house calls are not any more expensive than the average visit to a doctors office and can be covered by your health insurance. [...]
