• Created on 2/18/13 by Melanie Mayo

What is the best kind of birth control for you?   The answer to this question varies based on your personal family goals and your individual body--but moms who have already made their choice can provide some insights to help you find a solution that works for your life.    We asked the Mothering community to tell us what methods are working for them and here is a breakdown of the three most popular choices.    Natural Family Planning   Natural Family Planning or NFP  is by far the most recommended method of birth control in the Mothering... read more

• Created on 2/9/13 by Melanie Mayo

    Sometimes it seems that everybody wants something for nothing. Free advice all over the internet just there for the taking.  Free information.  Free samples, free printers, free encyclopedias and even religions.  I hate to rain on the parade, but I don't think there is a such thing as something for nothing.  Sadly, on this one point, my hubby just might be right- "You get what you pay for." The recent reports of that gal Jessica Simpson and her elective c-section to "avoid" labor pain (this isn't about JS so please don't comment about her.  Hold... read more

• Created on 2/1/13 by Melanie Mayo

Talk about your birth plans in our Birthing forums!   Just out from the American Association of Birth Centers (AABC):   As health care costs and the rate of cesarean births for expecting mothers have escalated over the past two decades in the United States, a new study released today shows that women who receive care at midwife-led birth centers incur lower medical costs and are less likely to have cesarean births compared to women who give birth at hospitals.   Conducted by the American Association of Birth Centers (AABC) and published in the most... read more

• Created on 1/31/13 by Sarah Clark

        Today something wonderful happened for birth in the United States of America. The American Association of Birth Centers posted an easy to read explanation of The National Birth Center Study II- a comprehensive research study detailing the clinical experience of birthing in a birth center.  The study was published yesterday in The Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health.     Oh, and that experience is truly fabulous.   When I found myself pregnant with my second baby in Dallas Texas I didn't feel that hospital birth was the best option for me.... read more

• Created on 1/30/13 by Marcy Axness

There is (rightly) a lot of buzz these days around the insidious, incremental erosion of a woman's right to choose whether she will give birth to a child she has conceived, but virtually nobody is talking about the drastic erosion of a woman's right to choose how she will give birth to her term baby. Who is talking about the shocking erosion of a woman's right to choose a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean)?   I'm inspired to post this by today's Facebook thread about a woman whose doctor has dropped her from care at 41 weeks because of her desire to have a VBAC.... read more

• Created on 1/9/13 by SKValenzuela

By S.K. Valenzuela   I was teaching a baby care class the other week and we were discussing soothing strategies for newborns. I was taking them through a scenario and asked for a mom volunteer to demonstrate. I began, "Let's pretend your baby is crying in her bassinet. What's the first thing you would do to calm her?" The mom picked up her baby as the class echoed the suggestion. "Okay, excellent," I said. "Now let's say she doesn't stop crying. Can you think of something to try next?"   And then the most wonderful thing happened.   This mom sat there,... read more

• Created on 1/7/13 by Marcy Axness

Gone are the days when we could consider pregnancy a 9-month “grace period” before the job of parenting begins. Mounting research tells us that lifelong wellbeing, including mental health, begins in the womb, and everything parents do – beginning even before conception — shapes their children in critical, life-altering ways.   I began 2013 by writing about the power of beginnings. This applies to virtually everything, from baking a pie to building a company to developing a human: the beginning contains within it the seeds of the project's ultimate success...or... read more

• Created on 1/2/13 by Marcy Axness

New Year's is the most famous (infamous??) time to make positive changes to our lives. We can turbo-charge that process -- and perhaps avoid the dreaded syndrome of NYRE (New Year's Resolution Extinction) -- when we harness the power of beginnings: the beginning of anything contains within it the seeds of its final flowering.   In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment. -- Thomas Carlyle   Every beginning of every day brings you to the present anew, and it is only in the present where real life happens. Where connection, joy... read more

• Created on 12/18/12 by Sarah Clark

(Note- this post contains references to things related to Santa such as Elf on a Shelf.  If you find this offensive you may want to skip it.)       Have you heard of the recent Elf on a Shelf phenomenon?  I was at a play date with my children the other day and there was a creepy looking elf sitting in the kitchen.  The children explained that it is a special Santa's elf that watches them and reports back.  (Apparently the usual holiday threat "I will tell Santa that you did that and you will get coal in your stocking!" just doesn't work for today's more... read more

• Created on 11/29/12 by Marcy Axness

Michael Stark, Jackie Chang, Jan Tritten, Robbie Davis-Floyd, Sarah Buckley, Peggy O'Mara, Sara Wickham, Lesley Page   A panel of some of the world's leading experts on birth shared the stage at the close of last month's Mid-Pacific Conference on Birth and Primal Health. Their assignment? Offer a vision of birth in 4012.   Here sitting at one table were such folks as Peggy O'Mara, Sarah Buckley, Robbie Davis-Floyd, Michel Odent and other heavy-hitters in the birth world -- including the president of the Royal College of Midwives, Lesley Page, and Michael... read more