Comfort & Health During Birth – Birth Takes a Village

I’m an anomaly in the birth-professional world in that some of my favourite births to attend are those of first-time mothers. It’s quite typical of anyone who attends births for a living to prefer what we call “multips”: women who’ve given birth at least once before. It’s commonly accepted that multips birth more quickly and easily than first-timers (“primips”), taking much less… Read more →

Women and their partners are often asking about “comfort measures” for birth. There are a lot of them you can learn in prenatal classes and books and online. The truth is, the only way through birth is to do it, to feel it, to be supported in feeling it, to allow it. Here is a beautiful poem that embodies the… Read more →

I always brag that even if a woman is having trouble eating during birth, she will nearly always be able to get down chicken broth. My famous cure-all for birth is my chicken broth with egg recipe, which I learnt from an Italian family once at a birth. However, if that fails, I have another go-to to keep women nourished:… Read more →

It’s time to spill the beans on my Super Secret Birth Broth recipe! The joke among me and my friends who are medical birth professionals is that during a slow birth, they often think and epidural and oxytocin is the answer, while I often think, “Hmmm, maybe she just needs chicken broth and a nap!” The birth-broth recipe is a… Read more →