Bubs + You with Tracey Fisher

09/11/2022

Let’s help this soon to be 4th year midwifery student able to continue her studies

Help a student midwife finish their degree

12/09/2022

I have seen great benefits using the TENS machine. Here is a great explanation,

TENS stands for “Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation” and provides a drug-free kind of pain relief.

A TENS machine sends small, safe pulses of electrical current via leads to electrode pads which are held your skin and held in place by a firm gel.

💎 The electrical pulses block pain signals from reaching your brain.

💎 The pulses stimulate your body to release natural, feel-good substances called endorphins.

💎 It helps you to feel in control of your labour.

💎 It offers a distraction from your contractions.

💎 The intensity of pulses can be increased or lowered based on the pain being experienced.

💎 Keep mobile. Moving around during labour helps you to feel in control and will make TENS more effective.

💎 Don’t give up straight away if you think TENS isn’t doing anything. You may need to keep using it for at least an hour before it starts to work for you.

25/08/2022

ACC are likely to start covering some birth injuries as of 1st October 2022 🙌🏼

If the bill passes, these ☝🏻are the injuries that ACC will likely cover for treatment.

I’ll go through these different diagnoses in separate posts, so you have some language and knowledge to take to your health care provider.

Please be aware that if passed by Parliament, cover will only apply for injuries which occur on or after 1 October 2022. It is not retrospective.

There are still lots of unknowns: which healthcare providers will be able to submit claims, how much money ACC will put towards treatment, how many treatment sessions will be provided etc etc, so we wait patiently (or impatiently, in my case) until more information is bought out.

Bear with me whilst I figure out how to make reels to explain the different injuries on this list 🥴

09/08/2022

A wonderful animation.

23/07/2022

Scientists have discovered an odorless scent molecule called hexadecanal, or HEX, that is released by humans and impacts aggressive behavior. The HEX molecule is the most abundant molecule released on the newborn baby's head. The researchers found that this molecule reduced aggression in males (biologically important as infanticide is a relatively common event in the mammalian world) and increased aggression in females (key to infant protection). We have shared with parents that when they are skin to skin with their newborn they should remove the baby's hat to allow them to inhale the scent of their newborn as it elicits an entire range of activity in the parental brain. This is one more reason to take a deep sniff! (Mishor et al., 2022)

Source: Eva Mishor et al, Sniffing the human body volatile hexadecanal blocks aggression in men but triggers aggression in women, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abg1530

06/07/2022

Während der Schwangerschaft wandern die Zellen des Babys in den Blutkreislauf der Mutter und kehren dann in das Baby zurück, was als "fetal-mütterlicher Mikrochimärismus" bezeichnet wird.

41 Wochen lang zirkulieren und verschmelzen die Zellen und nach der Geburt des Babys bleiben viele dieser Zellen im Körper der Mutter und hinterlassen einen bleibenden Abdruck im Gewebe, in den Knochen, im Gehirn und in der Haut der Mutter, wo sie oft jahrzehntelang bleiben.
Jedes Kind wird einen ähnlichen Abdruck hinterlassen. Studien haben auch Zellen eines Fötus im Gehirn einer Mutter 18 Jahre nach der Entbindung nachgewiesen.

Untersuchungen haben gezeigt, dass, wenn das Herz einer Mutter verletzt wird, fetale Zellen zur Verletzungsstelle eilen und sich in verschiedene Arten von Zellen verwandeln, die auf die Reparatur des Herzens spezialisiert sind. Das Baby hilft, die Mutter zu reparieren, während die Mutter das Baby aufbaut. Das ist oft der Grund, warum bestimmte Krankheiten während der Schwangerschaft verschwinden.

Es ist unglaublich zu sehen, wie der Körper der Mutter das Baby um jeden Preis schützt und das Baby seine Mutter schützt und wieder aufbaut - damit es sich sicher entwickeln und überleben kann. Wenn Sie eine Mutter sind, wissen Sie, dass Sie Ihr Kind intuitiv spüren können, auch wenn es nicht da ist ...

Nun, jetzt gibt es einen wissenschaftlichen Beweis dafür, dass Mütter ihre Kinder über Jahre und Jahrzehnte hinweg tragen, sogar nachdem sie sie geboren haben.

Text: Netzfund
Bild: Amanda Orleander

24/06/2022

"There is a phase in labor, appropriately called transition, where a wahine will reach her breaking point. She'll feel as though she can't go on. She's right. The kōhine (maiden) in her is not strong enough for the task at hand. It's during this time the kōhine dies so that the wahine can be reborn as a māmā, with her pēpi. A new, more capable version of herself with far more strength than she has ever known. From Kōhine to Māmā."

🎨
👸🏾 Jonea .pregnancy_free.birth

31/05/2022

Walk with intent. Sat 28th June @ 2pm xx

Birth Centre for Wellington Project

07/02/2022

Brilliant!

Awesome art by

The uterine fibers “hugging and tugging” upward during contractions which creates an opening to allow your baby to be born.

We are fixated as a culture on the Cervix as Crystal Ball but really, the cervix opens as a response to adequately strong, closely spaced contractions of the uterus and it “pulls” the cervix up into the heat of the uterus and the hole gets bigger. Like… baby-head sized.
Not surprising, since that’s all part of the body’s beautiful design.

06/02/2022

"The rhombus of Michaelis (sometimes called the quadrilateral of Michaelis) is a kite-shaped area that includes the three lower lumber vertebrae, the sacrum and that long ligament which reaches down from the base of the scull to the sacrum.

This wedge-shaped area of bone moves backwards during the second stage of labour and as it moves back it pushes the wings of the ilea out, increasing the diameters of the pelvis.

We know it’s happening when the woman’s hands reach upwards (to find something to hold onto, her head goes back and her back arches.

It’s what Sheila Kitzinger (1993) was talking about when she recorded Jamaican midwives saying the baby will not be born ‘till the woman opens her back’.

I’m sure that is what they mean by the ‘opening of the back’. (Wickham and Sutton 2002).

Jean Sutton and I first wrote about the rhombus of Michaelis in 2002. Since then, many thousands of midwives and birth workers have learned about this physiological feature of birth from our article and the conversations that it has sparked.

The original article has been available on my website for several years and I have recently updated it. I’m re-sharing the link to the article today in the hope of spreading this information more widely.

You can read it at https://www.sarawickham.com/articles-2/the-rhombus-of-michaelis/

I hope you’ll find it useful.

Yes, please feel free to share and repost this social media post, with the words and credit intact.

29/01/2022

“Dear husband,

There’s a life in the future with little faces in photo frames instead of before our eyes, artwork and ABC magnets won’t adorn our fridge, and these leggings I’m wearing right now will be long gone.

There’s a bed big enough, where little elbows and knees won’t prod us in our sleep and only our feet will swing out in the morning.

There’s a vase placed in reach of little arms because there aren’t any, and mugs will daringly sit on the edge of the table.

There’s a bank balance that looks a bit more forgiving, a bag I leave with that isn’t overflowing, and it will only take us 10 seconds from the door to the car.

There’s a free calendar that isn’t packed with swimming lessons, dance classes and muddy sports shoes. And we’ll get to know each other for a third time, before them, with them, and then when only two jackets hang at the door.

There’s a clean car, the only noise is the hum of the radio. There will be no endless questions in a high pitched voice from the back seat, there may even be days we don’t hear from them at all.

There’s a date night with no curfew, my mums not needed for babysitting, and we aren’t sleeping with one eye open waiting for the shuffle of feet down the hallway. A type of freedom that feels heavy.

There’s a house that’s clean, maybe our couch is new, and we aren’t stepping on Lego or toy cars either. In fact there’s not much colour anywhere, remember how we hated all the colour? Remember how it came with so much happiness?

There’s a dinner table that feels big, we aren’t negotiating bites of vegetables or wiping little hands and mouths. But sometimes there’s a knock on the door and the table is full once more.

There’s a shower that doesn’t sound like baby cries, a coffee that is warm and my body will be my own. We won’t wear tired the same way but time will have aged us anyway.

There will be hard moments to come that will make these moments look easy, but we’ll remember.
We’ll remember the first words, the curls, the “I love you’s” the moments we almost broke, and how we held each other through it. We’ll laugh and we’ll cry just like we did then.

There’s a life in the future and it’s coming for us every day. So let’s get swept up in the beautiful chaos in front of us.
Let’s make the future wait a little longer.
Because I love this life with you so much,
this one right now.”

Words: Jess Urlichs, Writer
Art: angelica.ch.r

13/01/2022

Everyone knows how I talk about this 💜