Giving Birth With Confidence

Here in the Netherlands, unlike the US, there are no princesses and vampires and super heroes going from door to door “trick or treating”.  I kind of miss it. So, I’ve spent the morning thinking of tricks and treats of another sort.
First, the treat. It was a real treat to read what the Wall Street [...]

I’m with my husband in the Netherlands for a few weeks. The Netherlands is famous for flowers and frites (the best french fries in the world) and, of course, home birth. Happy hours wandering the cobblestone streets and sitting in the lovely sidewalk cafes in the medieval city of Maastricht have got me thinking. One [...]

I’ve told you about my wise, now nine year old granddaughter Nora before. She’s been at the births of three of her little sisters, the latest in March this year. She was confused, and then shocked, last winter when she overheard a woman say she was being induced because the baby might be too big. A week later Nora told me “Nanie, that lady ended up [...]

New Jersey mother, writer, parental advocate Tina Nocera hosts a site called Parental Wisdom where a gathering of “experts” weigh in on questions and concerns sent in by parents – sort of a it-takes-a-village-at-a-distance chat, an exchange that would ideally have happened across a kitchen table with a trusted friend but can’t so much anymore [...]

I love Judy’s summary of the “mommy makeovers” article from the New York Times. And, really, it makes sense to me that in a culture where a third of our women have their babies removed surgically (from what some refer to as an artificial vagina – something cleaner and less sexual than the real one) [...]