Lotus Transition & Birth

Lotus birth is a practice where parents leave the umbilical cord to naturally detach from their newborn's belly button in its own time, rather than having care providers cut it. This usually happens within the first week of the baby's life. During that time parents carry baby and placenta as one, joined by the drying cord.

Dr Sarah Buckley refers to lotus birth as "a ritual for our times," highlighting that in terms of birth practices throughout history, lotus birthing is a new phenomenon. In her article, Buckley discusses the fact that reverence for, and rituals involving placentas is nothing new. (The Placenta Benefits website also explores some of the ways different cultures honour the placenta in this article). Lotus birth, according to Buckley originates from the 1970s. The term "lotus birth" is derived from an early pioneer of the practice: Clair Lotus Day, who observed chimpanzees leaving their babies umbilical cords to naturally detach.

There are many reasons why parents might choose a lotus transition for their children (see a list here). For my family the knowledge that the cord detaches naturally was enough to question the routine severance of placenta from baby. Lotus birthing was the natural option that followed on from other non-interventionist choices research had shown us was optimal for mother and baby. (You can read our daughter's lotus birth story here).

While initial reactions to lotus birth often include questioning the practicality of caring for a baby and a placenta for a week, it was my experience that lotus birth was very practical. In the first week after birth there is really only one task mother and baby need to focus on: skin to skin bonding. Every newborn and his/her mother should enjoy a week of rest, learning to breastfeed and being waited on by their loved ones until they find their feet. It can be very hard for women to surrender to this need. We're used to running around meeting the needs of every family member, running the household, and keeping the world turning. Lotus birth forced me to slow down and take advantage of those first mothering moments. I spent the first four days of motherhood lying skin to skin with my daughter, gazing at her.

wearing babe & placenta in bag

Another benefit of lotus birth is that we were able to use it as a legitimate reason not to have visitors in the early days. We wanted to limit guests until we were confidently breastfeeding and had had some time to recover from the birth experience. Those early days were such a sacred time for mother, father and baby, and we wanted to savour that time. We explained to friends and relatives that we were not ready to receive guests because our baby and placenta were still one. This meant passing the baby to everyone who crossed the threshold for a cuddle was out of the question. This appealed greatly to me because of my understanding of the importance of skin to skin bonding between mother and baby, the difference skin to skin bonding makes to establishing a successful breastfeeding relationship and the importance of the baby's body being colonised by the mother and father's bacteria. For us this was a time for peace and quiet, just for we three, a time when the rest of the world was irrelevant.

Of course, lotus born babies reap all the benefits of delayed cord clamping, too. (For more on cord blood and delayed cord clamping see here).

Caring for our daughter's drying placenta was much easier than we had anticipated. We simply wrapped it in a cloth nappy (after the initial draining and washing off of excess blood) and kept it close to her. As the cord dried out and became brittle in the days that followed, moving her placenta became more of a challenge, so we slowed down more. Nappy changes were no more complicated than I imagine they are for babies whose cords are cut, for they still have dried umbilical stub to work with.

The belly button & umbilical cord of a four day old lotus transitioning bub

We treated her placenta with lavender oil to stave off any unpleasant smell the placenta might make. In hindsight we're not convinced treating the placenta is necessary and as we prepare for our second child, we plan not to treat the placenta unless we have to. (ETA: we did not treat the placenta in our second lotus birth, all we did was wrap it in a damp cloth and change cloths regularly. At the end of the birth the placenta still looked and smelt fresh. Read here for full details).

The assumption that the placenta should be treated, I believe, comes from our cultural discomfort with the organ. Placentas are dismissed as "gross" and assumed to omit a bad smell, it may not be the case, but how will we know if we automatically treat with oils, herbs and salt?

Salting the placenta is presumed by many to be a necessary part of lotus birthing. On retreat with Shivam Rachana, editor of the book Lotus Birth, she shared that this practice in Australia came from one of the earliest lotus birthing families, whose father was a butcher, used to salting meat. Personally salting the placenta did not appeal to my own family. We planned to plant the placenta one day and wondered how the soil and plant would thrive if salt was thrown into the mix? Further to this, for my family lotus birthing was foremost about refusing to intervene in the natural process of birth. Salting the placenta is often done with the intent to dry it out and avoid a rotting smell. We did not wish to speed up the natural drying process, so decided not to salt.

Our daughter's placenta after 3rd stage & after being lotus born (4 days & 3 nights later)

While we used cloth nappies to carry our daughter's placenta inside, most lotus birthing families are more organised than us, many sewing placenta bags. The Australian DVD Lotus Birth: the waterbirth of the Malcolm twins website includes a free pattern for families wishing to make their own placenta bag with a cord cover. The DVD also includes footage of a tutorial.

I am more organised this time and have sewn a bag to carry our second child's placenta in, but I opted not to make one from a specific placenta bag pattern (it was my personal preference not to have a cover for the cord, and I like the idea of using the bag afterwards as an everyday shoulder bag).

For families interested in having a lotus birth but not keen on sewing their own bag or who have concerns about how to have a lotus birth, Dominique Quirk, an Australian lotus birther started a business selling lotus birth kits to expectant families. Her kits include placenta bags, items for treating placenta, instructions for lotus birth, and most importantly her support and availability for answering questions parents have.

My family found lotus birth to be a gentle and practical way of transitioning into the brave new world of parenthood. Lotus birth is definitely something we recommend parents take advantage of. We're now looking forward to doing it all again in the next couple of weeks.


Why we initially chose lotus birth

Our 1st lotus birth

Our second lotus birth

Belly Casting at 37 Weeks

This afternoon my partner and I took advantage of our daughter's day sleep, by creating a plaster cast of my pregnant form. It will be a lot of fun decorating once it is completely dry and set (hours later it remains damp). It will also be lovely to have this work of art to forever preserve this moment in my body and our family's history.

Having said all that it was not an entirely pleasant experience. As the plaster began to set on my skin I felt quite ill. I was short of breath and faint. We took a break before finishing off the sides, and strolled around our backyard for fresh air. Then he finished the sides, helped me sit down carefully and while enjoying being off my feet the cast began to ease away from my body.

So for any other Summer-due Mummas planning to make a belly cast, I recommend a cool room with the AC cranked, lots of water, and assuming a seated position from the outset ;) And make your artists work at lightning speed.

For a how to belly cast guide check out this post.

Blessing The Way For A Second Journey

On the weekend some of my womenfolk gathered to throw me a blessingway. It was a divinely soul-nourishing afternoon during which I wore a crown made from flowers given to me by each of my guests. I received an herbal foot bath, followed by a foot rub, hand massages and a henna tattoo upon my belly. One guest made us all an exquisitely delicious blessingway punch, another made matryoshka cake toppers for chocolate cupcakes, and I sculpted multi-coloured yoni's for the top of my own cupcakes out of fondant. My guests each gave me a candle and some beads, the beads were then transformed into a stunning necklace for me to wear during labour, and the candles will light my birth space.

During the women's circle my guests and I created a bond with blue bamboo yarn, which we will cut from our wrists and ankles once my baby is born. There was lots of wisdom and blessings verbally bestowed upon my baby and I, and my BirthKeeper taught us all a song given to her by another BirthKeeper who was given the song by its creator, the late great Jeannine Parvati Baker. I was moved to tears while the women sang. We closed the women's circle by chanting the feminine "Ma."

My guests also hand made me a collection of multi-coloured felt yonis which will become bunting to be hung in the birth space. And one friend made a matryoshka notebook for everyone to write affirmations inside, for me to read in the future.

The blessingway was a perfect way to celebrate this pregnancy with my friends, and to start the winding-down process as I move back into that parallel, birthing universe. Thank-you to all the dear ones who made the day so complete xoxo

Medical Terminology With Glorious Gloria

Yesterday Gloria Lemay covered medical terminology in her online Midwifery 101 class. While Gloria finds the linguistics associated with midwifery fascinating, I must confess this was not a subject matter that excited me much. Having said that, of course I still learned plenty of interesting facts, which I will share.

I had assumed that the purpose of medical terminology was to make knowledge inaccessible to the public and keep the field of obstetrics exclusive to the highly educated doctors. Gloria, however, said this was not the case. In her view the purpose of medical terminology is to give birth workers shorthand expressions in order to communicate quickly and accurately. She said that accuracy when talking to a group of birth workers about a woman's body is rather important (and rather tricky, given you are speaking about someone else's body).

Gloria spoke about roots, prefixes and suffixes and the fact that most medical terms come from Greek or Latin. Some words provide us with a lovely insight into the values of these ancient cultures, the best example of which comes in the word "perineum." Peri is a prefix meaning "around" and neum means "temple." Gloria shared that in ancient times the vagina was seen as the "seat of the soul," whereas today the heart is more closely associated with the soul.

For more of Gloria's info on medical terminology you can check out this blog post: Deciphering your medical records.

In this weeks class Gloria is covering prenatal clinic visits (that's antenatal clinic visits to those of us who don't speak Canadian ;P which was another topic covered yesterday. For $7.99CAD you can join me in class.

Also, my friend Nat is blogging her own impressions from Gloria's classes here.

*Featured image source.

Notes From Pelvis Class

On Friday I gained a wealth of knowledge on the subject of women's pelvises, thanks to Gloria Lemay and her fabulous Midwifery Education Classes. Facts I acquired include:

• There are four bones in the pelvis

• The pelvis is not fixed/locked during pregnancy and birth

• The pelvis is fixed/locked in non-pregnant women

• You don't have a pubic bone, you have a pubic joint. It may feel hard, but this is cartilage, not bone.

• Pelvis is not just a pelvis, there’s a whole woman attached to it: legs and spine!

• Pubic arch narrower in a man, wide angle in a woman

• Between the pelvic bones (where sacrum and iliac crest come together and where the two sides of the pubis come together at the front and centre) there are squishy joining places like chewing gum when a woman is pregnant.
  

• During birth these chewing gum joining places of the pelvis open as wide as they need to be for the baby to pass through. It will not open so far as to be floppy, it will just allow the bones to ease out of the way as much as it needs to: will cradle the baby's head as it passes through.

• The three Ps of obstetrics: powers, passage, passenger contrast with the three Ps of midwifery: patience, patience, patience.

• Every woman alive today is the end point of evolution: we are the best that mother nature has designed for birthing babies.

• The medical model talks about two kinds of pelvises: "adequate" and "contracted". Midwifery has two models of pelvises too: "ample" and "could fit a pony through."

• NEVER judge a woman's ability to birth by the shape and size of her body. Best example of this are Pygmy women who average about 4ft in height but birth 8 pound babies. That's the equivalent of a 5ft7 woman giving birth to a 14 pound baby.

• A woman who hasn’t had any surgery on her pelvis will have a pelvis that knows how to birth perfectly.
  

Quote of the class was most definitely "The size & shape of a woman's pelvis is as relevant to birth as the size of her nose." This is because a pregnant woman's pelvis is not fixed, and during birth the "chewing gum" parts of her pelvis will move the bones where they need to go in order to fit whatever sized baby inside needs to come through.

The image above shows the section the baby travels through. You can see the pubic joint which stretches to make the opening bigger if need be.

Thinking about the joints in the pelvis as being like "chewing gum" clarified how the pelvis works, for me. I also found Gloria's timely reminder that a pelvis is not just a pelvis, it's attached to a whole woman transformed my thinking. As silly as it sounds, I did tend to think of the pelvis as a fixed bone, floating in space, hard to imagine such a thing being able to move and open. But realising it is an unfixed set of bones and "chewing gum" inside a woman who moves, made women's anatomical perfection for birth really clear to me:

We also learned about the baby's head being molded during birth and the differences between a neonate's skull and an adult skull. As well as some dos and don'ts birth attendants can take from various obstetric practices during labour.

Prior to class I had read about the pelvis in midwifery textbooks, but always felt more confused about what parts make a pelvis etc. Gloria clarified this for me and made the previously-confusing jargon accessible.

You can learn about pelvises from Gloria by reading this article: Pelvises I have known and loved

Next week we're learning about medical terminiology. For $7.99CAD you can join me in class.