Featured Articles - Birthplace Magazine
Summer Edition
Married and Sexless
by Suze Keys
My husband and I decided in December 2008 that it’d be great to have our last baby and get that part of our lives out of the way. Given that we have two sons already I desperately wanted a girl, so to Google I go; looking up “conceiving girl”.
There were diets. One claimed I was to eat pretty much nothing healthy, in an attempt to acidify my body because girl sperm like a more acid environment. Another said I should eat foods high in magnesium and another that I should eat dairy products, rice, pasta and certain veges with mineral water and limited meat and potatoes, avoiding things like salt, fresh fruit, alcohol and coffee as well as tea, chocolate and mushrooms. Given that all the yummy fresh summer fruit was around at the time and the fact that acidic bodies get cancer and healthy mummies make healthy babies, not to mention coffee supposedly has antioxidants so must be good – those diets were not for me.
Spring Edition
International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative
by Denise Hynd
In 2006 an international gathering of childbirth experts, including representatives of consumer groups such as La Leche League, refined the first draft of the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative (IMBCI) as an acknowledgement that 2 challenges for the 21st century are;
- Increasing understanding of normal birth and breastfeeding,
- Decreasing the overuse of unnecessary medical interventions.
The IMBCI aims to highlight both the importance of a woman’s birth experience and the scientific evidence showing the benefits of care based on normal physiology.
Winter Edition
Babies need their mothers beside them
by James J. McKenna, Ph.D.
Throughout human history, breast-feeding mothers sleeping alongside their infants constituted a marvelously adaptive system in which both the mothers' and infants' sleep physiology and health were connected in beneficial ways. By sleeping next to its mother, the infant receives protection, warmth, emotional reassurance, and breast milk - in just the forms and quantities that nature intended.
Autumn Edition
Mothering our mothers
By: Kimmelin Hull
In the wake of conducting a survey of 130 postpartum women regarding their needs following childbirth, I had the distinct honor of traveling to Nevada to visit my best friend and her husband, while in their 35th week of pregnancy.
Having been confined to modified bed rest over the previous ten weeks, my friend was in desperate need for some company, and a little help in preparing for her soon-to-arrive baby girl. Over four days’ time, I washed baby clothes, prepared meals for their freezer, installed their infant car seat system and did a little house cleaning. But more importantly, we discussed the concept of arranging sufficient support measures for the young family after their baby’s arrival.
Last updated: 18 April 2010.