Want to know more about the Silent Birthkeeper course?
Are you interested in learning more about the Silent Birthkeeper one-year online immersion with Ruth Ehrhardt? The one-year online course is limited to a small group of people, as it is a personal journey we take together. It is an opportunity for you to spend time with yourself, delving into your relationship with birth, what it means to be a guardian of birth and what it means for you to attend births. The course is held within a tightly held container, and we do our best to honour the unique journey that each person undertakes. One of the beauties of the Silent Birthkeeper space is the diversity of the participants, not only from a cultural perspective, but we have people joining us from all corners of the world and so we get to gather in a monthly virtual circle from different seasons, time zones and hemispheres. The course begins on the 14th of November 2024. Early bird pricing closes on 30 September 2024. Bookings close on 4 November 2024. For more information see...
Read MoreTrue Midwifery is a safe space for ALL birth attendants…
True Midwifery is the home of The Silent Birthkeeper One Year online Immersion and a variety of other courses and workshops are offered online and in person in countries around the world. One of the visions of True Midwifery is to offer a safe space for birth attendants around the world. In a similar way that we want to offer safe spaces for mothers, and babies True Midwifery endeavours to be a safe space for those who guard and protect birth. Sadly there is a lot of fractioning, disparity and othering in the birthing world and the True Midwifery learning spaces endeavour to bridge that gap and to honour that no matter in what capacity we are attending births, we hold at the centre of our calling, the guarding and protecting of the mothers and babies. So we welcome anyone who is interested and feels a connection to birth. Part of what we celebrate in the True Midwifery space is the diversity of the community, not only cultural diversity but also the diversity of what the participants bring into the space. To find out more about the Silent Birthkeeper course see...
Read MoreCome and Join me for a Doula Course with Michel Odent and Liliana Lammers
Michel Odent & Liliana LammersONLINE 28, 29, 30th of October 2022 “Birth is an involuntary process and an involuntary process cannot be helped. The point is not to disturb it”– Michel Odent Twelve years ago or so when I was a student midwife, I was invited to attend the birth of my sister-in-law in Edinburgh. At the time I was in my second year of doing apprenticeship-based midwifery training and working as a doula, having done a local South African doula course. At this stage, I was feeling disheartened about birth work. The coach-orientated approach in both the doula and home birth midwife modalities that I was witnessing left me questioning my calling and instincts. Although there was talk of trusting birth, there was a deeply ingrained belief that birth could not happen without the assistance/coaching/help of others. Around this time I was also rediscovering the books of Michel Odent and I felt the contradiction between what he was describing in his books as well as what I felt intuitively, and what I was seeing and being encouraged to do as a doula and student midwife. I decided to look online to see if Michel had written anything about doulas. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he held doula courses in London along with a doula called Liliana Lammers and that one was being held a few days before I was due in Edinburgh! So with some minor adjustments to my travel plans, I found myself in a circle of women and Michel, sharing 3 days of intensive sharing and learning. This course would change the direction of my birth-keeping journey from then on onwards. I remember sitting and listening to Michel and Liliana share their wisdom, science, and stories and feeling a lightbulb of excitement and illumination lighting up inside me, an irrepressible bubble of joy at ‘finding my tribe’ as I tried to scribble down each moment in the hope of capturing the valuable information and beautiful stories, whilst still capturing the essence. The Original Inspiration for my Book From this experience, the little book, The Basic Needs of a Woman in Labour was also born – an attempt at capturing the essence of what I had learned from these two wonderful guardians of birth. I have been blessed to teach and present alongside Michel over the years but I have not seen Liliana since we were all together all those years ago. We have kept in touch – I have reached out to this incredible mentor over the years when I have needed to feel reinspired or not feel so alone in this way of approaching birth. I have had every intention of returning to one of their courses, to fill my cup as they say, but have never made it back to London. A Unique Event and Opportunity So I am especially pleased that the Paramana doula courses are now happening online and I am excited to be joining the next one as a participant from 28 – 30 October 2022. A Special Discount if you book through True Midwifery This event is organised by Sarah Bertin of Doula Douce and she is offering a 50 Euro discount to those booking through True Midwifery. You can redeem your discount using this unique discount code: TrueMidwifery50 when booking your ticket through this link Free Book Promotion We are also offering a free book promotion of my book, The Basic Needs of a Woman in Labour to those who book for the course between today and Monday (13-17 October 2022) I personally feel this is a...
Read MoreThere is hope…
Two weeks ago I came back home to South Africa after a full and busy tour of teaching and presenting in various countries in Europe. I don’t think I quite realised what I had signed myself up for when I said yes to all the commitments I had made but for three weeks I ended up either teaching or travelling every single day. This was my itinerary: 14-15 May, Additional Skills and Information Session Weekend for Doulas at DO-UM in Istanbul, Turkey 17-18 May, Helping Babies Breathe and other obstetric emergencies for home birth at Da a Luz, in the Alpujarras, Spain 20-24 May, An Introductory Course to Midwifery at Vale dos Homens, Portugal 26-31 May, book launch of Italian translation of my book, The Basic Needs of a Woman in Labour, in Rome and various towns on the island of Sardinia. I flew to Istanbul mid May to teach doulas and student doulas at DO-UM, a space run by Nur (the first ever doula in Turkey) and Sima. These two doulas are pioneering and bearing the torch of birth through education and birth attendance in Turkey. Turkey has a rising caesarian rate which matches our own here in the private sector in South Africa. The majority of births are attended by doctors and most end in caesarans. But DO-UM and other places are trying to shift this by offering doula courses, as well as childbirth classes for expectant couples. Then I went on to Spain where I spent two days teaching the last workshop of Da a Luz Midwifery School’s second year in operation. The school, is the vision and idea of Vanessa Brooks, a British home birth midwife residing in Spain. It is still a work in progress but what I have seen in visiting the place twice in the last two years, is that it is coming together very nicely, and growing as a course which supports women in choosing the path to true midwifery. Students sign up for a year’s apprenticeship and have the added challenge of having to provide completely for themselves in terms of accommodation (living in tents, vans, yurts, caravans, and one student even building herself a little cob hut), living off the grid and living communally. The school building, is slowly being built and has gone from being a pile of stones to taking on a majestic presence of its own. I look forward to seeing it when it is done but for now, classes still take place mainly outdoors, on rugs, on the grass, under the olive tree. I am very inspired by what Vanessa is doing at Da a Luz because we all know that there is something lacking in midwifery training nowadays, and that is often a lack of trust of the birthing process. Da a Luz aims to instil a sense of confidence and faith in birth. Last year I taught the Helping Babies Breathe course to a group of doulas in Portugal. After that course, there were numerous requests to build on that and for me to provide a longer, more detailed course, exploring some of the skills of midwifery. Hence,An Introductory Course to Midwifery was born. At the beautiful venue at Vale dos Homens we spent five days discussing, exploring and mostly laughing our way through basic midwifery skills, sharing birth stories and discussing what birth and midwifery meant to us. You can see more pictures from the course on the True Midwifery FaceBook page. After the course in Portugal I had to catch a plane to Rome where the Italian translation of my book, The Basic Needs of a Woman...
Read MoreHello Darkness my old friend
So the uterus, amongst all the other marvellous things it does (“There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ they would brag about it. So should we.” – Ina May Gaskin), apparently ALSO has melatonin receptors attached to it. These receptors work in conjunction with good ol’ oxytocin, aiding the contractions of the uterus, which dilate the cervix and, if undisturbed, will elicit a foetus ejection reflex . Melatonin is the hormone that anticipates the daily onset of darkness and cannot be secreted when it is light. Which is why we need to switch off lights and screens, to fall asleep. Seems we need darkness to go into labour too…which is probably why most labours begin at night and why most call outs for midwives are during the witching hour. It is important that there are no bright lights around a labouring woman. Drawn curtains, candles and other dim lighting will help aid in the stimulation of oxytocin. How do other mammals prepare for birth? They will find a quiet, dark place, far away from anyone, somewhere where they will feel safe and secure and know that they will be undisturbed. We often forget that we humans are mammals too. We are above all of that by now aren’t we? What with all our technology and higher thinking and sophistication? But when a woman goes into labour, her body responds like every other mammal who seeks safety, comfort, protection, warmth and darkness to give birth. A birth I attended recently, saw me arriving to a woman in labour in her bedroom. Her two year old son slept on her bed while her husband sat and watched television in the next room. The bedroom light was on, a stark, white light from a naked bulb. There was no bedside light or a dimmer light available. I asked the father if he had any candles in the house and we made some makeshift candle holders using stainless steel cups and sand and set those up in the bedroom. And then we turned off the lights. It was as though the room breathed out all its tension as the room warmed with the golden glow of the flickering candle light and the mother was able to go into that mammal state that she needed to be in to birth her baby. She had a mattress on the floor and now lay down there and began to moan softly. Labour sped up.Ten minutes later her waters broke and five minutes after that I was handing her her daughter. So simple…and yet so overlooked. Isn’t it interesting the way most labour wards are still so brightly lit, and all for the convenience of the caregiver? For what other purpose does it...
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