Month: September 2014

Doula W’S- Who, When, Why And What To Ask

Deciding to have a baby is the first step into a lifetime of decision making for your child.  Hopefully using BabyPlus was one of the first decisions you made to give your baby every advantage.  Moving forward parents then have numerous decision to make before the arrival of their child.  One of those decisions is who you want to be a part of your delivery experience.  One such choice is- Do you want to enlist in the services of a doula?

Who is a doula?

The word doula is a Greek word that translates into women’s servant. A doula is a certified person that attends to the family before during and just after the birth.  This person does not provide medical care, but rather emotional, informational and physical support.  A labor doula is the focus of this blog, but you can also enlist antepartum and postpartum doulas.

When do you use a doula?

A doula’s services usually begin a few months before a baby is due.  She will help you make decisions about what kind of delivery experience you want to have.  A doula can be used for any type of delivery, planned or emergency, natural or not, vaginal or Cesarean.  There is rarely a pregnancy situation where you cannot use a doula although many insurance companies do not yet cover their services.

Why would you choose to use a doula?

Including a doula during your pregnancy gives you an advocate during the delivery of your baby.  She can provide support and ease transitions between home, the hospital and back home again.  While hospital staff will change regularly during your stay, a doula will provide you consistency.  She can help makes your wishes clear and can provide labor coaching, techniques for pain relief, relaxation, massage, breathing and labor positions.  Post delivery, she can even provide breastfeeding assistance and facilitate bonding with family members.

What questions should you ask when selecting a doula? 

I reached out to a contact of mine at Birth Coach Method/Mama Center in San Jose, CA to get her top 4 questions parents should ask when interviewing a doula.  She was gracious to send me the following response:

1. What kid of training do you have, and what did you learn that has prepared you to support me in childbirth?

2. How experienced are you in terms of number of births and different types of experiences?

3. In what ways do you make sure to get to know me and my partner and adjust your doula support to meet our unique concerns, needs and wishes for the birth?

4. What makes you unique as a doula?  What are your strengths, characteristics and skills that we should hire you for?

Whatever you choose- We wish you a happy, healthy pregnancy!

INFORMATION FOR THIS ARTICLE COLLECTED FROM: NERI CHOMA, FOUNDER AND MENTOR, BIRTH COACH AT BIRTH COACH METHOD, BIRTHSOURCE.COM, LIFELOVEDOULA.COM  AND AMERICANPREGNANCY.ORG.

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Lessons From Nine Months Inside The Womb

When does learning begin? Some people say they remember their first day at a daycare center, or have flashes of moments as a baby. However, research on fetal origins suggest that a child do start to distinguish impressions, particularly sound, while still in the mothers’ womb.

What can a fetus learn in a span of nine months while inside the womb? British physician David Baker hypothesized that mothers are already teaching their babies important lessons on survival during this critical stage, and these include:
1.Food. Experiments performed suggest that babies at weaning take easily to the food that they have been exposed to from what their mothers liked to eat while pregnant, or from the flavors familiar to them through their mother’s breastmilk.
2. Trust. Since the mother’s voice is the most audible sound that the fetus can hear, it is not surprising that, upon birth, it is the only sound that could calm the child, or the sound to which it would respond in a trusting way.
3.Expectations. Mothers expose themselves to many different impressions during pregnancy—the air she breathes, the food and drink she consumes, the impact of thought and emotions—all these are somehow passed on to the fetus in their womb; these impressions may form the matrix upon which the child growing up will build to form his or her own survival tools.

These are some of the crucial ideas that babies are said to absorb even before they are born. Some studies even suggest that that these early impressions may hold the answers as to why people become who they are as adults.

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Why BabyPlus Needs You!

As we work tirelessly week after week to spread the word about why parents should choose to use BabyPlus we are reminded over and over that our best, most-effective marketing efforts are derived from parents who have used BabyPlus during their pregnancy and experienced the results first hand.  We can place online and print ads, launch SEO campaigns and attend Baby Expos worldwide, but those efforts can’t compare to hearing from a parents who has witnessed the birth of their child and observed the alertness and open palms of their new arrival only minutes into life outside the womb.  Only after spending time with a BabyPlus baby that is so engaged and calm do others begin to compare a BabyPlus baby to others they have been around and begin noticing the attributes that BabyPlus parents rave about in testimonials.  Neislen tabulates that 84% of consumers trust recommendations from their friends and that they trust recommendations from friends 7X more than traditional advertising.  Clearly traditional advertising cannot compare to the value of real experiences of parents around the world.

As we grow and expand the BabyPlus brand we are working toward meeting the needs of the BabyPlus consumer base.  Our goal is to provide tools to help parents with decision making throughout a child’s life, not just during the months that our product can be utilized.  We strive to be connected to families around the world and to connect families to one another and to provide insight and information on the issues that challenge us as parents everyday.  The first step in this process is staying connected.  With the ability to communicate with BabyPlus parents everywhere we can provide answers and ask questions that will serve all of us going forward.

Staying connected with BabyPlus families and developing our Word of Mouth Marketing strategy are two of our most important goals.  You can help us with both.

1. Like us on Facebook and interact with postings.

2. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

3.  Opt-In to participate in surveys from the BabyPlus Company

4. Post a review on the site where you purchased BabyPlus

5. Write a testimonial about your BabyPlus experience with outcomes on our site, FB or email it to me at robinm@babyplus.com.

6. Tell moms-to-be about the benefits you saw in using BabyPlus and encourage them to look into it.  (Mommy groups are a great place to do this. )

In exchange, we will continue to blog on interesting child/pregnancy related issues, bring you articles from the web that might interest you, post recipes, decorating ideas share photos of your BabyPlus children and much more on our various social media outlets.  We will also keep you up to date on new products we are planning to launch.

Thank you for being our brand ambassadors around the globe!

 

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Are You Raising Creative Kids?

When we think of characteristics of creative people we often think of the idealized version of an artist or musician.  Although these can be examples of obvious creativity, it’s the characteristics of the highly creative that matter to the shaping of our lives over time.

In 2012 Adobe conducted State of Create survey among a group of 5,000 adults.  Interestingly enough, Japan and the U.S. are the first- and second-most creative countries, respectively, among a global audience.  Around the globe, more than half of Adobe’s respondents said creativity is being stamped out rather than nourished by the education system.  “One of the myths of creativity is that very few people are really creative.” Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D.  Many experts feel that one of the problems is that too often educational systems don’t enable students to develop their natural creative powers.  Most schools instead promote uniformity and standardization.

It is by asking questions, wondering and being curious that creative people come up with spontaneous ideas.  Rather than simply collecting information, creative brains play with it.  This can’t happen in an environment of extreme structure and rigidity.  In fact most studies show that creativity is about using both sides of the brain to solve problems.  The highly creative child does not focus on left or right brain but instead relies on both to begin divergent thinking.

So how do you raise creative children?  First, suspend the idea that creativity is inherited.  While creativity is inherent in every human being, parents can nurture and strengthen a child’s creative abilities:

  1. Provide children an enriched environment early on. Products like The BabyPlus Prenatal Education System® can provide baby with a developmentally appropriate environment.
  2. Provide unconstructed playtime. Resist the temptation to overschedule your child with activities.
  3. Get outside! Children often find the outdoors as a source of inspiration even from the stroller.
  4. Look for preschools which encourage creativity and allow for contemplation of abstract ideas.

Your child has the capacity to be creative.  It’s empowering when you understand just how important your role as a parent can truly be!

“The brain can be developed just as a set of muscles.” ~ Thomas Edison

 

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Putting Babies To Sleep: Music And Mother’S Voice

Putting their babies to sleep is probably one of the toughest challenges mothers face throughout their lives. Often, this ordeal results to sleepless nights, lack of social life, and even feelings of fatigue, anxieties, or depression. Many mothers rely on self-help books and blogs for solutions to this and to get an idea how they should sleep train their babies, but what they may not know is that training can be done even before the child is born.

Studies have shown why infants have such strong bonds with their moms and many attribute this to the nine months babies have spent their lives living inside their mother’s womb. During those crucial times, mothers provide their unborn child with food, shelter, and sense of security. Researches also reveal that the sound of mom’s voice soothes children while they are inside the womb. Many child care experts even reveal that appropriate music mothers play to their kids during pregnancy also relaxes children and can induce their sleep.

Parents should think about getting more knowledge on how prenatal practices affect their children as this enables them to do their parental responsibilities better. Putting babies to sleep should not eat up a lot of what can be productive time for mothers and fathers. By using simple prenatal techniques and trainings, parents can make sure that it’s not only their child who gets the much-needed rest, but them as well.

 

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