On Natural Birth...
The real question about safety is not whether you want a pleasant birth at home or a safe birth in the hospital ? It is, “Do you want to give birth at home and run the miniscule risk of an emergency that might (but not necessarily would) be handled better in the hospital, or do you want to give birth in the hospital and run the considerably increased risk of infection, the certainty of additional stress, and the near certainty of having unnecessary (and potentially risky interventions?”) ~ Henri Goer

Members of the home birth movement have chosen their alternative form of care not through faulty understanding of medical principles, but as a result of active and reasoned disagreement with them. ~ Bonnie O’Connor

~ MAMMA PRIMITIVA ~ International Midwifery School now OPEN! Classes Begin every Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer MammaPrimitiva.com

Post Partum Exercises

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Exercise 1:
Contract or draw up the pelvic floor, starting with the anus, then the yoni, going up to the belly button and bringing it to your back….. hold for two to four seconds, and reverse with relaxing the muscles starting with the back, belly button, yoni and anus.

Relax for ten seconds. Repeat five times. Do these three times a day. Work up gradually until you can hold the contraction for eight seconds.

If you find your muscles getting sore, do not stop doing the exercises but decrease the time you hold each contraction, and then gradually increase it again. Work up to sets of ten.

Exercise 2:
When you are comfortably able to hold the contraction for eight seconds, add three to four short, fast, but strong twitches at the end of each long contraction.

Exercise 3:
Think of your bladder and uterus as an elevator which you are trying to raise to the higher floor, and visualize pulling them up into the abdominal cavity toward your stomach. When you reach the top, go down floor by floor again, gradually relaxing the muscles in stages. When you reach the basement, let go of all the tension and think release. Then come back up again to the first floor, so the pelvic floor is slightly tense and able to hold the organs firmly in place.

Exercise 4:
Raise the entire pelvic area, as though sucking water into the yoni. Relax and repeat five times. This series of five contractions may be repeated four to six times a day, building up to twenty to thirty contractions a day.

Find time to do these exercises every day. You can do them at any time that is convenient- for instance, while stopped at a red light, watching TV, or doing dishes.