Weekend Movie: From Womb to Womb

Biological Anthropologist Julienne Rutherford has a fascinating talk available online that is a short but nice overview of the effect of epigenetics from womb to womb. Essentially she discusses the effects on the intrauterine environment, and whether the womb that we develop in affects the womb that our female offspring produce when they reproduce. The purpose is to understand how we pass down, generation to generation, the effects of our socio-ecological environment. Put another way, how our grandmother's life affects our life, and the lives of ensuing generations.

Her talk covers how placentas play a role, how Life Course Theory is part of it, but isn't the whole picture, and how studying primates can help us get an idea of the impact of intrauterine environments on the health and lives of future offspring.

"We are more than our genes. Genes get switched on and off constantly. All the DNA in our bodies in all the cells is essentially identical, but some get turned on, some get turned off...

But even more subtley, gene expression can be affected by our environment in the now, in the lived experience. Molecules attach to the DNA, which sort of locks it down, so its inexpressible - can't get turned on. This phenomenon is called epigenetics. Epi = beyond, above. Something beyond just the molecule themselves. How are the molecules regulated.

We know from a variety of experiments and observations in humans and other animals that the lived experience of an organism can have enormous impacts on how the genes are regulated. We also know that some of these molecular locks can be inherited along with the DNA itself. So, for ex, some genes in the stress pathway of maternal ,fetal, and placental tissues are regulated differently in people who have experienced poor nutrition, poor rearing behavior... high levels of psychosocial stress, institutional racism and discrimination, and the experience of war..."

It's one more argument for improving social and economic environments in order to improve a population's health and future potential. People often think that a poor or unhealthy person can just "do better" to make themselves healthier or more wealthy, but so much depends on our socio-ecological environments, and that of our ancestors.

"The placenta contains the mysteries of the past and predictions for the future..."

You can view Dr. Rutherford's 23 minute presentation on the website for the Cusp Conference 2014.

https://www.cuspconference.com/videos/julienne-rutherford-2014/

I am a Lamaze Childbirth Educator

It's been 5 years since I did my doula training and attended my first birth, and I am finally officially adding a new service to my birth professional repertoire -- childbirth education!

I attended a Lamaze childbirth educator training a few months ago so that I can work toward becoming Lamaze certified. I have been wanting to become a childbirth educator for some time, but knew I wanted to do certify with Lamaze. Why Lamaze? Because I consider them the most in touch with birth-related research and evidence-based recommendations. I love their blog Science and Sensibility and that they have their own peer-reviewed Journal of Perinatal Education.

Lamaze isn't "all about the breathing," which is what many people who knew of Lamaze in the 20th century think of. It has come a long way to be a leading International professional organization.


Tonight I officially teach my first course as a childbirth educator (rather than "just" a doula)! The responsibility is almost greater, in a way, than my usual doula prenatal visits. At those visits we can talk about anything - what I think of, what the client thinks of - and I don't have the responsibility of being the font of all their knowledge. I can assume or hope that they have read books or been to a childbirth education class already and I can just fill in the gaps or reassure. But, as childbirth educator, I am presumably the first point of contact and information with the birth world. I have the responsibility to not forget to tell them something, and to tell them everything in the right way (don't want to freak anyone out)!

My favorite aspect of the Lamaze approach are the 6 Healthy Birth Practices. If you visit their website, you can watch easy-to-digest videos on each birth practice, or read each practice's paper, which includes the research-based for every recommendation. All of this is available here: http://www.lamazeinternational.org/HealthyBirthPractices

My scholarly heart rejoices at how evidence-based it all is!

They recently created an infographic and accompanying infographic video that outlines the Healthy Birth Practices in a simple way. They are also slowly releasing infographics for each of the individual steps. Learn more below!

6 Simple Steps to a Safe and Healthy Birth

click to enlarge

Anyone else out there Lamaze certified? 

Turns out there is only one other Lamaze-certified childbirth educator (LCCE) in my area. ONE! I hope that I can fill a need. I wasn't able to attend a training as soon as I had wanted, because there are no Lamaze trainers in my state. I'm not sure why they aren't as popular here. 

Just as an aside, I actually thought that my Lamaze seminar was kind of a waste of time. I already knew all of the content, and was hoping to learn more about teaching methods than I dd (since I'm new to teaching). It was a requirement for those of us who haven't taught childbirth education before  and want to take the certification exam sooner than we can teach 60 hours of CBE. You can get around it if you are a CBE that has taught 60 hours in in the 3 years prior to taking the Lamaze exam. The seminar would be valuable for someone very new to birth stuff. I think it was valuable for the L&D nurses who were in the training with me, too. But I learned nothing new. (But I keep up with things more than most!)

Wish me luck! :)