Returning Home with Salt in My Hair and New Seeds Planted
After a meaningful trip to Spain, I’ve just arrived home—blessed with a stretch of warm weather that gently welcomed me back. The heat of early Spanish summer is still lingering in my body, but the cooler air has helped soften the transition. My time in Málaga was precious. The Birth First Aid course we held there was small, intimate, and deeply connecting. I felt that we weren’t just learning skills, but weaving threads of something much larger—something that may blossom into future collaborations and community roots. Before heading home, I took my first-ever swim in the Mediterranean. As I floated in that salt-laced water, I imagined it absorbing into my skin like a protective layer of amniotic fluid from Mother Earth—a sacred cloak for the journey home. Breech as a Variation of Normal: A Study Spiral The first birth my mother ever attended was a breech birth. It was the experience that sparked her path as a local birthkeeper and wise woman for the women in our community. Years later, when I was 28 weeks pregnant with my second daughter, I was told at a routine hospital check-up that she was breech—and that I would need a caesarean. I was shocked.“What?” I exclaimed. I’d never heard of this variation of normal being met with such rigidity and invasive intervention. With time, support, and gentle encouragement—using inversions and homeopathics—my daughter turned head-down at 36 weeks. She was born sunny-side up at the Southern Spring Equinox, a radiant and powerful entrance. These experiences will guide our next Study Spiral on 26 June, where we’ll explore breech birth as a variation of normal. I’m honoured to be joined by wise woman Joy Horner, whose presence is sure to ground and inspire us. Learn more or book your place here The Self Sufficiency in Childbirth Course – Begins 3 July This 4-week online course was born in response to a deep call from our community:A longing for a space where pregnant couples can truly connect, explore, and prepare for autonomous, soulful birth. This isn’t just another antenatal class. It’s a guided journey of self-inquiry, awareness, and connection—where your inner knowing is honoured, and your questions are held with care. We’ll explore topics such as: What self sufficiency in childbirth means to youAligning as a couple during this transformative timeProtecting your birth space and making empowered choicesEngaging with systems (when needed) with clarity and strengthSharing stories, learning birth basics, and weaving community Limited to 6 couplesLive Zoom sessions on Thursdays: 3, 10, 17 & 24 JulyRecordings available for a month afterwards€240 / $250 USD / £205 / R2500 per couple Book your place hereQuestions? Write to us at truemidwife@gmail.com Birth First Aid: Blossoming with Every Circle After hosting two Birth First Aid workshops in Europe, I feel newly inspired by this ever-evolving offering. What I love most is how each person brings something of their own—how each session feels like a living organism, shifting and growing with every new group. As we prepare for the next online series, I feel excitement and curiosity for who will gather this time—and what wisdom will unfold. Join the next course Thank you for being part of this ever-growing circle. Whether you’re walking beside us already, or feeling the pull to join, you’re held with warmth and reverence. With love,Ruth True...
Read MoreAdvanced Doula Workshop in Portugal
Alex and I connected for the first time around nine years ago and the reason we connected was around birth and midwifery. We are not quite sure where and when it was that we first heard of one another but I do remember hearing via various whispered sources about this brave young French woman who was living very simply on a very isolated farm in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and who had chosen to give give birth unassisted to her first baby. (You can read the story of Alex’s second birth, also a free birth, outdoors in the Eastern Cape, here). Alex and I first chatted online. I was pregnant with my third child. We discussed our births and shared our dreams of one day becoming midwives. Alex was the first person to ever tell me about Lotus Birth and highly recommended I try this for my next birth. I imagined birthing in a room filled with scented flowers, visualising myself opening like a flower for the sun to birth my baby. I have to admit, I was slightly disappointed to find out that all a Lotus Birth required was not cutting the cord of the baby and waiting the 5-7 days for the cord to naturally fall off. Alex, along with her husband Yan, and their good friend Ole, pioneered the intentional community Khula Dhamma, initially founded on Vipassana principles. Over the years, our families met regularly, both in Cape Town and at Khula Dhamma and needless to say, Alex and my conversation would steer towards birth and midwifery. We shared our stories and experiences and always, we strongly resonated regarding birth and our implicit trust in women’s abilities to unlock (when given the opportunity) something deep and powerful within themselves. Four years ago, Alex and her family left South Africa and lived in Brazil for two years before finally settling in Portugal. Alex has been inviting me to come and visit for a long time and when she heard I was going to teach in Spain she invited me to come and teach some of the doulas in her area too. So after my ten-day teaching stint at De-a-luz in Spain, I traveled on three busses to the Algarve in Portugal. So this last weekend, doulas from Portugal came and we discussed mostly our experience of birth(amazing how birth-y people never seem to tire of this subject!), spoke about creating the optimal environment for a a fetus ejection reflex and physiological birth, and learned some skills around resuscitating babies as well as some basic but essential obstetric emergency skills. The question was asked as to why these would be skills a doula should learn since a doula’s role is to provide non-medical support to the mother. The answer is quite simple: The World Health Organisation states that one million babies die each year from birth asphyxia (an inability to breathe at birth) and recommends that every birth have an attendant skilled in neonatal resuscitation. If you are attending births regularly, you may find yourself in a situation where a baby is not breathing, or where a mother is bleeding more than usual, or has a prolapsed cord…You may be alone with her, or you may be at a home birth with a midwife, or driving in a car, or even be in a hospital. You may be the only one who can deal with that situation right then and there before the mother and baby can be transported to hospital, or you may need to assist, or you may just need to support a mother and her family during...
Read MoreMichel Odent Reviews my Book…
I asked Michel Odent to review my book, The Basic Needs of a Woman in Labour. Who is Michel Odent? Dr. Odent started his medical career as a surgeon and became involved in birth when he was put in charge of a hospital in Pithiviers, outside Paris. He soon realised that hospitals were not conducive to a woman in labour. They were too bright, sterile and uncomfortable and lacked privacy. He was the first person to introduce low beds (easier for a labouring woman to climb in and out of), dim lighting, beautiful home-like rooms, and eventually water as a form of pain relief, in a hospital setting. The hospital in Pithiviers was so successful that many people came specially to have their babies there. Dr. Odent was there from 1962 to 1985. He worked with six midwives and oversaw approximately 1000 births per year. The hospital’s maternity section had excellent statistics with low rates of intervention. He eventually moved to London and became a home birth midwife there. Again, he was able to make many interesting observations through his experience there. Later he founded the Primal Health Research Centre He works with a doula called Liliana Lammers. Together they run the Paramana Doula course in London. Liliana is a quiet and unassuming woman who holds an incredible strength in doing very little at a birth. She is able to hold a space with her presence alone, a quiet strength. She must make a woman feel very safe in labour. Through his many years (more than half a century) of attending births (around 15 000 births) in both hospitals and at home, Dr. Odent has come to the conclusion that a labouring woman needs not much more than to be left alone, simply to be attended to by a quiet, non-invasive and low profile midwife. The little 24 page booklet I wrote is a summary of what I have learned from attending Michel Odent and Liliana Lammer’s course in December 2010, by reading Michel’s books, and from my own experience and work with pregnant and labouring women. I received his feedback a few days ago…I am honoured and humbled by his feedback and it took me a few days to process the immensity of his review before I could bring myself to share it. Here it is: There are two important published documents about birth physiology and the basic needs of labouring women. The first one is an enormous book written thousands of years ago. In the very first pages of this bestseller, there are some lines suggesting an association between the consumption of the fruit of the tree of knowledge (translate knowing too much or having developed a powerful neocortex) and the difficulties of human birth. At the end of this book, we can read about the birth of a legendary man whose mission was to promote love. His mother found a strategy to overcome the human handicap: with humility she gave birth among non-human mammals, in a stable. The second document is the opposite of the first one in terms of size. It is a booklet by Ruth Ehrhrardt. To bring together what is important in such a small number of pages is a feat. I hope that, on the five continents, all pregnant women, midwives, doulas, doctors, etc. will take the time to assimilate the contents of this chef d’oeuvre: it will be a turning point in the history of childbirth and therefore in the history of mankind. – Michel Odent...
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