Farrah Sheehan Perinatal Professional Services

07/17/2025

Birth professionals and parents in NH and VT - current study recruitment underway to understand birth trauma - you may share this text and info with the public. Thank you!

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Did you have a traumatic birth experience? Do you now have nightmares, flashbacks, or avoid memories of the birth? Does remembering your birth experience make you feel angry or sad?



We are conducting a study titled “Traumatic Childbirth and Opportunities for Improvement in Maternity Care” to understand traumatic childbirth in Vermont and New Hampshire, with an aim to create recommendations to improve maternity care and birth experiences for mothers.



We are looking for adult mothers who gave birth in VT or NH who are between 3 months and 2 years postpartum; had a traumatic experience which has resulted in distress for 3 months or longer (defined as having flashbacks, nightmares, avoiding memories of the birth, anger, sadness, and other distressing emotions). This study has received ethical approval by the Queen’s University Health Sciences and Affiliated Teaching Hospitals Research Ethics Board



What to Expect:

Participation involves an eligibility and demographic survey, and a confidential interview about your experience. We will also be conducting a focus group after maternity care improvement recommendations have been drafted. We expect this may take between 1 to 3 hours of your time. All of your information will be kept private.



To see if you are eligible, you will need to complete a survey, which may take between 10-15 minutes to complete. To get a survey link, please contact Kristen at 20kbt@queensu.ca.

07/17/2025

🌿 Birth Trauma Awareness Week – Day 2
Why “At Least You Have a Healthy Baby” Hurts

You survived. Your baby survived.
That should be enough, right?

That’s what people say—
“At least you have a healthy baby.”
As if that one sentence should wipe away everything else.

It’s meant to comfort. But it often silences.

Because here’s the truth:
You can be deeply grateful your baby is alive and devastated by what you went through.
You can love your baby and grieve how you were treated, what was taken, or how scared you felt.
You can be holding your newborn in your arms and carrying a heavy ache in your heart.

Pain doesn’t get erased by gratitude.
And suffering isn’t softened by survival alone.

This phrase often shuts down the story before it’s even begun.
It says, “Don’t speak of that. Be thankful. Move on.”

But healing begins when someone says:
🫶 “That sounds like it was really hard. Do you want to talk about it?”
🫶 “You matter, too.”
🫶 “Tell me what you needed and didn’t get.”

✨ We need to do better—for each other, for future mothers, for ourselves.
Because your wholeness matters just as much as your baby’s.

🔹 What did you really need to hear after your birth?
We’re listening. 💬

DM us for more info about booking a Birth Story Medicine session, or to enquire about training to become a Birth Story Listener.

07/09/2025

🌿 A heartfelt shout-out to doulas everywhere 🌿

To the ones who walk beside families in the raw, holy moments of birth…
Who whisper strength when things get hard.
Who protect the space when the world gets loud.
Who know that birth is not a medical event—
but a rite of passage, a story being written.

Your presence matters.
Your intuition, your advocacy, your quiet anchoring…
These things change lives.

At Birth Story Medicine, we’re honoured to walk with many doulas who are deepening their offerings—learning how to support clients after the birth too, when the story doesn’t sit quite right.
When integration is needed.
When healing calls.

💛 If you’re a doula ready to add another dimension to your work—or to create another income stream with depth and meaning—Birth Story Medicine might be for you.

Thank you for all you do. Truly.
We see you. And we’re cheering you on.

Find out more: https://birthstorymedicine.com/birth-story-mentoring-course-part-i/

07/09/2025

"Midwifery models of care are models of care in which the main care providers for women and newborns, starting from pre-pregnancy and continuing all the way through the postnatal period, are educated, licensed, regulated midwives who autonomously provide and coordinate respectful, high- quality care across their full scope of practice, using an approach that is aligned with the midwifery philosophy of care, which:

i. promotes a person-centred approach to care;
ii. values the woman–midwife relationship and partnership;
iii. optimizes physiological, biological, psychological, social and cultural processes; and iv. uses interventions only when indicated.
In midwifery models of care, midwives provide integrated care, addressing the needs of each individual woman and newborn, within functional and enabling health systems, equipped with necessary resources and streamlined consultation and referral processes. They collaborate within networks of care as part of interdisciplinary teams characterized by equality, trust and respect. This approach guarantees that every woman and newborn receives personalized care, tailored to their health needs.

Midwifery models of care are adaptable to all levels of care and contexts, including home-, community- and hospital-based settings; the public and private sectors and public–private partnerships; resource-constrained environments; and humanitarian and crisis settings. This ensures wide accessibility, equity and relevance across different cultural contexts for women, newborns, partners, families and communities."

Read More: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240098268

07/09/2025

Would you like another income source and service to add to your postpartum offerings?

Learn exactly what to say when you hear a traumatic or upsetting birth story with our one-of-a-kind Birth Story Medicine® process.

Imagine a birth story session where parents turn their pain into profound meaning and healing. Enhancing your professional skills can make a significant difference in their journeys.

Join us at the Birth Story Medicine School, where we equip you with essential skills and framework, allowing you to provide invaluable support to mothers, fathers, and birth professionals. With our unique process, you can help families move from confusion and disappointment to a place of understanding and peace of mind.

Don’t miss this opportunity to deepen your impact on the lives of those you support. Discover our philosophy that inspires hope and facilitates transformative, lasting change. Enroll in our courses today and be the guiding light for parents seeking to navigate their birth experiences with clarity and self-compassion.

We have another Part 1 (of 3 parts total) starting in August/September.

Start your journey and make a difference today: https://birthstorymedicine.com/birth-story-mentoring-course-part-i/

07/06/2025

And me too!!!!

07/06/2025

So excited to share a much needed resource to mamas in the greater Manchster area!! Sweet Melodie’s womb wisdom and healing hands!! Mayan abdominal massage, herbal medicine, perinatal massage 💜

https://www.yoursacredvessel.com/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwLXmvlleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHmMtK5LbamET0BrubGioHBdQOJu5jX7_Jsu6ZW0Hg8pK8Gs5tn1xszAAncUN_aem_-5kjczxPEKWbesRA05M4sw

Specializing in bodywork for abdominal therapy, thai massage, pregnancy. Herbal consultations, pelvic steaming and cycle balancing techniques. Birth and postpartum doula support.

07/06/2025

So proud to be a part of WOMB Initiative Nursing Nuk this year!!

06/11/2025

How a Critical Thinking Mindset Will Empower You

In a world that often feels chaotic, navigating the diverse opinions on childbirth can feel overwhelming. It’s perfectly normal to experience confusion and anxiety when faced with such emotionally charged perspectives.

During pregnancy and labor, you will encounter a myriad of decisions. Choices are shaped by personal beliefs, the influence of social media, the thoughts of others around you, and evidence-based information. Yet, in a time when you’re encouraged to “trust birth” and “trust your body,” it’s crucial to take a step back and move beyond decisions made more in reaction than reflection, rooted in emotions or unfiltered anecdotes.

A crucial task of pregnancy is to adopt a mindset of critical thinking; and to learn and practice how to think critically. This means pausing to reflect on and question what you heard or read, and thoughtfully examining a problem, opinion, or proposed solutions from multiple angles, including acknowledging flaws or gaps in reasoning. Critical thinking is about balancing different points of view and breaking down details into smaller parts to form a clear understanding. Allow yourself the space to ponder a decision, even taking time to "sleep on it," allowing your unconscious mind time to sort through various, even opposing pieces of information or assumptions and reveal unexpected insights.

Also, wonder about your motivations. For example, what part of you is drawn to or resonates with an approach or opinion? Understand that critical thinking is not about clinging to a single ideal outcome or shying away from alternatives. Critical thinking empowers you through knowledge and understanding to make choices — sometimes challenging, sometimes surprising —that ultimately align most closely with your values and self-care.

There is a pervasive misguided assumption that being informed leads to making the best or right choices, and right choices leads to our desired outcome. Oh, were that true--how wonderful it would be! Our next task is to make the best decision we can, with what we know in the moment, and see what happens next--without judgment. We are after all, only human.

Pam offers prenatal sessions: https://birthstorymedicine.com/prenatal-story-sessions/

05/30/2025

Birth peeps - finding out what the first birth story was can help you validate and understand the experience of a traumatic birth. And it’s often so overlooked in research. We are very focused on the intrapartum experience and its relationship to traumatic birth. But miss inquiring - what was the story of birth before pregnancy was even imagined.

🌱 The Birth Plan You Wrote When You Were 7

Part 1: Your First Birth Story

Most people think they write their birth plan during pregnancy.

But the truth is... you started writing it when you were about 7 years old.

You didn’t do it consciously, of course.
It happened the moment you first realised there was such a thing as birth.
Maybe you caught a scene in a movie or overheard someone talk about their labour.
Maybe you heard about your own birth story in passing.
Or saw someone in a hospital bed and connected the dots.

Pam England calls this your First Birth Story —
the first 1–2 highly charged impressions you formed about how birth happens.
And because childhood minds are beautifully simple and dramatic,
we tend to build black-and-white rules from what we witness.

We might decide:
🧠 “Birth is the most painful thing that can happen to a person.”
🧠 “Birth is easy. Just breathe.”
🧠 “Doctors save you from danger.”
🧠 “You have to be strong and quiet to do it right.”

We don’t even know we’ve decided this.
These beliefs become a hidden blueprint — our first birth plan.

And decades later, when we’re preparing to give birth ourselves,
we unknowingly seek out ideas, methods, and people that match this plan.
We may reject anything that doesn’t fit.

👉 If our actual birth matches this internal plan, we might feel proud, empowered — even superior.
👉 If it doesn’t, we might feel disappointed, betrayed, or deeply shaken — without really knowing why.

This is why holistic birth preparation must include unpacking our first birth story.
Not just learning coping techniques but getting curious about what we unconsciously believe birth is supposed to be.

Then we can learn how to embrace the journey as the initiation that it is.

In Part 2, our tutor Nicole will share her first birth story — and how it shaped what she thought she wanted when she gave birth.

But for now, I invite you to pause and ask:

✨ What’s the earliest memory you have of birth?
✨ What messages did it carry? What conclusions did you draw?
✨ How might those early seeds still be shaping your expectations now?

Let’s shine a light on the plans we didn’t even know

Pam offers prenatal sessions here: https://birthstorymedicine.com/prenatal-story-sessions/

05/30/2025

⏰ There's still time to submit your story! Submit by June 1.

Have you breastfed a baby in the last five years? The Global Breastfeeding Collective is collecting 30-second videos about your experiences with healthcare workers during your breastfeeding journey. What support helped you succeed? What support did you wish you had?

Your insights will help guide policymakers in creating sustainable, accessible systems that truly support families' breastfeeding goals.

It's easy to participate:
🔷 Record a 30-second video on your phone here: https://qr.link/9gpJzR
🔷 Answer: "What help from healthcare workers supported your breastfeeding, or what help did you wish for?"

Your story will be featured during World Breastfeeding Week 2025. Together, we can build systems that provide reliable support for ALL breastfeeding families.

05/23/2025

Still time to sign up!!

"Compassionate and Culturally Sensitive Breastfeeding Support for All Communities"