Resources
Useful Tools
This tool will calculate your estimated due date based on the date of your last menstrual period (LMP), cycle length, and conception date.
Recommended Products
Not as bulky as the traditional pregnancy pillows. Has an adjustable wedge for belly support and full back support. The F shape design lets you use any pillow that you like for head and neck support.
Larger than the babybub pillow, so could be more versatile to use in early pregnancy as well for leg/hip support and also postpartum while breastfeeding.
Not like the tranditional belly bands, elastic soft fabric, so you can breath and move comfortably.
Looks like your traditional belly bands but has additional shoulder straps for addiotianal support in late pregnancy. This can help relieve the stress of walking and reduce back pain.
Reading
This website is a wealth of evidence based information just as the name implies. It is run by Rebekah Dekker, Phd and her team to provide birthing families and birth workers up to date evidence around birth topics. In practice I use this resource a lot and I refer my families to explore it because it is so empowering. I love how it breaks down research studies and explains the information in them. Learn about interventions in labor, such as pitocin use, rupturing the “bag of waters”, evidence on medications given to babies after birth etc.
Watching
Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwives captures a spirited group of women who taught themselves how to deliver babies on a 1970s hippie commune. Today as nearly one third of all US babies are born via C-section, they fight to protect their knowledge and to promote respectful, safe maternity practices all over the globe. From the backs of their technicolor school buses, these pioneers rescued American midwifery from extinction, changed the way a generation approached pregnancy, and filmed nearly everything they did. With unprecedented access to the midwives' archival video collection, as well as modern day footage of life at the alternative intentional community where they live, this documentary shows childbirth the way most people have never seen it--unadorned, unabashed, and awe-inspiring.
Pregnant In America is the true story of Steve and Mandy Buonaugurio, a young, adventurous, expectant couple, who decide to take a daring and potentially dangerous approach to having their first child--outside the modern American medical system. What they learn about hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, midwives, and home birth as they travel across the United States and Europe interviewing experts and confronting birthing situations, exposes them to some shocking and disturbing realities about America¹s maternity care system and what is happening to women and babies. Ultimately, what they learn impacts on and alters the outcome of their own pregnancy.
Birth: it's a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life. But more than anything, birth is a business. Compelled to find answers after a disappointing birth experience with her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to explore the maternity care system in America. Focusing on New York City, the film reveals that there is much to distrust behind hospital doors and follows several couples who decide to give birth on their own terms. There is an unexpected turn when director Epstein not only discovers she is pregnant, but finds the life of her child on the line. Should birth be viewed as a natural life process, or should every delivery be treated as a potential medical emergency?
Chiropractors
Childbirth Education
