Optimal Childbirth

I remember when my water bag broke; it was August 12, 1992, and the time was 12:15am.I was very excited that I would see my new baby on her due date. I did what the child birthing book recommended. I woke my husband up and told him to call the hospital. In the meantime I decided to take a shower. I was pretty calm because I didn't have any contractions. I wore my best maternity outfit and was spruced up compared to my husband. I even put on some perfume. You see, we had just gone to bed at 11:30 that night. My husband looked a little worse for wear. We got to the hospital and then were led into the maternity room. The room looked a little dingy with its yellow light and peeling paint. The hospital bed was small and narrow. I got scared,

However, sitz baths are not encouraged until the 2nd or 3rd postpartum day, after the swelling has decreased. Promotion of increased circulation prior to this time will result in increased amounts of swelling, tissue congestion, and pain.

Due America’s legal, social, and economic situation, women who have children do need support from public policy to combine employment and family responsibilities. Public policy contributes to maintaining inequalities by instating policies that are more favorable to a dominant group or groups in society (p. 232). Race and class are also key components of public policy. Public policy instructs social laws in order to maintain inequality, such as promoting reproductive labor in order to oppress workingwomen. Reproductive labor refers to all of the work women do in the household (p. 257). Assisting women who work and have family obligations through the support of public policy is important because not only it would produce hardworking, law-abiding

Most pregnant woman imagine how their developing fetus looks like, what the developing fetus is doing at a particular point, and aspire to deliver a healthy baby. Most important, many prenatal and postpartum women are eager to know what she can do to help deliver a healthy baby and how to care for the newborn. Here are some advices and activities offered to a prenatal, postpartum, and future development of a child includes healthy foods, consumption of adequate water, exercise, medication awareness, and emotions.

In the United States, the process of childbirth is far more dangerous for African American women than it is for White women. For African American women, the path to a healthy birth is riddled with barriers. There are many health disparities between the two races. African American women face much higher low-birth and infant mortality rates; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published that although infant mortality rates in the U.S. have dropped by over 10% in the past ten years, a large gap continues to exist between the health of the races during the entire childbirth process. (World Health Organization, 2010) In the United States, Black infants are more than twice as likely to die within the first year of life as a White infant, and this disparity has not seen advancements in the last century. Many of these deaths can be attributed to low birth weight, and preterm birth among black infants.

In Karin A Martin’s article, “Giving birth like a girl” she writes that “in U.S. culture when we imagine women giving birth “she is screaming, yelling, self-centered, and demanding drugs or occasionally is numbed and passive from pain-killing medication.” Nonetheless, even though she was going through the breaking of my younger brothers arm not once did I her my mother scream out of pain or holler for drugs or yell at me or her nephew. She was unexplainably calm and followed the directions of the nurses. Martin also writes that despite Americans believing the norms that all women are angry during pregnancy, “white middle-class, heterosexual women actually worry about being nice, polite and kind.” When I questioned my mother about her

Does everybody think or feels the same about childbirth around the world? This question above is a question that has always been in my mind. Now that I got the opportunity of choosing a topic to do research. I decided to choose childbirth and culture. This research paper is going to talk about how different cultures and countries look a birth in an entirely different manner. Some look at birth as a battle and others as a struggle. And on some occasions, the pregnant mother could be known as unclean or in other places where the placenta is belief to be a guardian angel. These beliefs could be strange for us but for the culture in which this is being practiced is natural and a tradition. I am going to be introducing natural and c-section childbirth. And, the place of childbirth is going to be a topic in this essay. America is one country included in this research paper.

For postpartum women, there are many benefits of proper diet, exercise and getting enough rest. From a functional standpoint, exercises that strengthen your back and abdominal muscles will help with the additional bending, carrying and lifting you will be doing. Endurance and cardio training will help combat flagging energy levels because of strange new sleep patterns and anxieties, and eventually, keeping up with a toddler. Eating a well-balanced diet during the post pregnancy period is critical because this is the time for your body to regenerate.

Finally, the ultimate reason giving birth was my greatest accomplishment, is because all my previous complications were viewed as the worst circumstances and then realizing the toughest one had not been made yet. While in the hospital and being treated for pneumonia the nurses also had to monitor the baby by hooking him up to multiple monitors. There were straps that laid all across the floor straddled over top of me, underneath of me and linked back to my belly and they stayed like this for hours. It was about six hours after the antibiotics were inserted into my IV that the nurse informed me about the medicine affecting the baby and he was not responding as he was supposed to. Immediately stopping the administration of the medicine and assigning

The Postpartum period is considered the first 6 weeks after you have a baby, for some mothers this period is uneventful, but to some, everything can go wrong. There are some postpartum concerns that you need to be aware of so that when you experience any of the signs, you will know what to do. Many of these signs and symptoms may require urgent attention like calling your doctor, walk into the emergency room, or even calling 911. You need to pay special attention to your body at this tender and critical period.

Focused breathing practices for labor and other relaxation techniques like walking, massage, position changes, and hydrotherapy

Giving birth is one of the most amazing experiences that a woman can go through. Unfortunately, it is also the most painful, especially if there is any tearing. Torn tissue takes longer to heal than a straight incision from an episiotomy. Doctors say that it normally takes at least six weeks for a woman to heal from the damage that child birth does to her body. But especially hard pregnancies can make it take a lot longer than that, since there is more trauma inflicted on the body. Luckily, there are a few easy ways to speed up the healing process.

In Chinese, this is literally called "sitting the month," as new mothers are pretty much expected to just sit around in pajamas for a month to recover from childbirth. But there are a lot of rules, and I have been struggling with them — even though she's on my

Childbirth is a beautiful thing. After the hours of labor, there is nothing more special than having the newly mother able to hold her child the minute after it’s born. It makes the pain that you had just experienced go away because all that matters in the world is that newborn child in your arms. During labor, every woman has her own experience but one common experience is the pain. According to Kitzinger (1978) “Labor pain can have negative or positive meaning, depending on whether the child is wanted, the interaction of the laboring woman with those attending her, her sense of ease or dis-ease in the environment provided for birth, her relationship with the father of her child and her attitude to her body throughout the reproductive

Depending on where the baby is in your pelvis, high or low, you could get the urge to push early or you might have to wait a little while. This stage can take anywhere from a couple minutes to many hours. The pushing stage is said to take longer for woman who get epidurals. There are ways to cope with the pain while pushing. You can try vocalization to relax your body. This will also allow more oxygen to both the mother and the baby. A couple different sounds you can try are “oooh” and “aaaah”. You can also try focusing on how you breathe. There are many different ways to breathe from hee-ing or haa-ing to panting or deep inhaling. All of these methods have been shown to help woman ease the pain of not only pushing but also contractions. Not long after you start pushing the baby's scalp should start to become visible. This could be the excitement one needs to push through the pain. Now every time you have a contraction a little more of the baby's head will become visible. As more of the head becomes visible it is very common to feel a burning sensation. This sensation is sometimes referred to as “the ring of fire” and is due to the tissues being stretched. After the baby's head is out your caregiver will suction out the mouth and nose. Next it will be time for the shoulders and then the body. Now that your baby is finally brought into the world you are able to hold it. But, you're not quite done yet.