Back to Basics Birthing with Vicki Hobbs Vicki Hobbs

In this episode I discuss the role of the doula, restrictive birthing practices, homebirth, freebirth and regulations. It is important that couples understand that doulas do not replace midwives.

Why are doulas becoming so popular in Australia? I believe that this could be because maternity care has changed and become more medicalised hospital maternity care.

This is not an attack on midwives, but on our broken maternity care system and the shift to become obstetric-led care. Since the movement from home birth to hospital birth, the role of the midwife is changing in many hospitals across our country from “being with woman” to one that has become more clinically focussed with charting, documenting and performing clinical observations and this is where doulas are being hired by women to give them that non-medical support and continuity of care.

Women are choosing doulas because they want more.

As you’ve probably guessed, I’m a big fan of the placenta and the umbilical cord. The placenta really is an amazing organ and has been the lifeline of your baby for the duration of your pregnancy. Without the placenta, there can be no new life. Your baby uses the placenta as it’s lungs, digestive system and liver. Once you have given birth to your baby, that's not the end - there's more! I know , I know - you just went through all those hours of labour to birth your baby, and what, you're not done yet? That's right.....your placenta needs to be born as well. So what happens with that? 

Listen for more about physiological birth versus active management to birth your placenta. 

Immediate clamping and cutting of the cord started in the 1960’s to prevent postpartum haemorrhage, but later research found this did not reduce postpartum haemorrhage, yet the practice continued.

Delayed cord clamping means the umbilical cord is not clamped and cut immediately after birth to allow blood containing oxygen, nutrients, stem cells and iron to continue to flow through to baby.

Find out more....

You might be fearful with everything going on around you.

These are unusual times.

For some pregnant women, these are really stressful times.

It is time to change your way of thinking.

Look at what you CAN change and then see how you can best adapt to what you can’t change, or it will create so much more fear, disharmony and distress within you.

The Natural Alignment Plateau phrase was first used by Marjie Hathaway, who is an independent childbirth educator and author of several books, as well as a practitioner trainer for the Bradley Childbirth Method. She highlighted that it is not uncommon for women to get to a point in their labour where their cervix stops dilating. This usually happens before transition, but it can happen at any time, but it doesn’t mean that the cervix is broken or has failed.