Dear First name / friend,

Wow! This was another busy month and I have a lot to share with you! 

I went to an opera play for the first time after the pandemic and that was very exciting. It feels so good to see that our social activities are coming back at last. Don't forget to check the open-air activities this month! 

I have just finished a book about resilience in children. It is a book in Turkish and not available in English but I recommend you to check the English resources about this. It provides a very good approach while raising your baby or child at any age. 

An international congress is coming on 2022 about Prenatal Psychology and I am in the country comittee. We had our first meeting and I'll share more as we proceed.

I completed the sections about the infant microbiomes in my new training and I started the sections about epigenetics. That's a whole other story and I will share you about it in my upcoming newsletters.

We completed the sessions with many of my couples this month which means two things: the babies are about to come (one of them already arrived) and it is time for me to meet new couples.

I know this was a long introduction First name / friend and now let's get started with this month's topics🤗

In today's newsletter:

🎈The Importance of Postpartum Care

🎈Indigenous Culture, Birth and Our Modern Lives

The Importance of Postpartum Care

I, as a postpartum doula try to inform the couples I work with about the postpartum period. I try to explain the importance of this period, how it is important to get prepared to after birth period and the professions they may need help after birth. One of these professions is a pelvic health physiotherapist. Some problems related to pelvis health that you may have are considered new normal after giving birth, normals of motherhood but that's not the truth. They are treatable by physiotherapists and you don't have to live with them.

My pilates instructor is a pelvic health physiotherapist, Aygül Köseoğlu @aygulkoseoglu ( who is also a dear friend) and I learned a lot from her about the importance of getting a pelvic check after birth. Therefore I am very interested in watching and reading about this area.

I want to share with you a great TEDx talk called “Rethinking Postpartum Care” by Sara Reardon. She explains perfectly how the attention that is on the mother and the baby during pregnancy shifts only to the baby afterbirth. 

“Women’s health issues are human health issues.”

Sara Reardon

Indigenous Culture, Birth and Our Modern Lives

This month, I joined one of APPPAH (Association of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology & Health) Monday Live talks. I listened to Antonella Sansone's presentation “Prenatal psychology and indigenous wisdom:​
​a global strategy for the human-earth connection and life sustainability”. It was about the Himba culture which is an indigenous culture of Northern Namibia.

The way she talked about how we lost our connection to each other and with nature because of our modern lives and how this community kept their traditions, rituals and what they got from their ancestors was so inspiring. We built our lives with fear and anxiety, trying to control everything. So we lost the connection to our past and forgot to trust our instincts, our wisdom. That's what we are trying to rebuilt with my couples during our childbirth education classes: to trust your body and your baby. 

Birth and breastfeeding are so natural for the culture because they are raised seeing women giving natural births and breastfeeding everyday. It is a normal act of life. Actually it is more than mother's feeding because women are half naked in this culture so babies can feed themselves whenever they want. 

So, as Antonella says we can't give up our modern lives because there are lots of advantages that technology brought us but then can't we use this heritage without sacrificing what we have? That brings out the question “How can we integrate their practices to our modern lives?”  We can start by practicing some meditation and mindfulness exercise to get back to our center. We can spend more time in nature, grounding and try to connect with mother earth. We can learn about empathy and be more emphatic. 

We don't have to be half naked to breastfeed naturally. Babies give signs, we just have to watch them. When we trust our instincts, it is more likely that we can understand their needs. We can provide physical contact starting with skin to skin contact and then babywearing. That would lead to secure attachment as in the indigenous cultures. 

We can raise our children by rituals, stories, songs and dances. You can even remember from your childhood. Haven't we raised by stories that had many aspects of our heritage? 

These rituals and what we do affects the next generations by epigenetics so we can actually provide a better world for our children. 

Do you have other answers to this question First name / friend? Let's share your answers with me! I think we need to find our own answers for ourselves and for the society.

Antonella has three books. I recommend you to follow her instagram account @antonella_sansone8 and check out her work.

… that the length of the umbilical cord of each baby (very few exceptions) is  from the mother's vagina to the mother's chest so that the mother can hold her baby in to her arms and have immediate skin to skin contact.