It has been a while since I last posted something on my dear blog. I really have been busy with various this and that. Now with the upcoming International Week for Respecting Childbirth I thought that it was a good incentive to make my comeback.

But before discussing the Open Actions for the aforementioned International Week I’d like to take this chance and send my wishes to all mums out there the best for the recent Mother’s Day. Unfortunately I was away from my little buddy and Marysa was just too busy to realise what this day really meant for us two, so she just blew me a kiss and went on with her very busy business of make-believe with Jessy the Cowgirl and Peter Pan  :), but I guess that’s part of the fun of it too.

May we be strong, happy and cared for to give our little ones the best there is. May we be acknowledged for whatever we give and give up for our loved ones and may we enjoy it to the very last bit. Mum’s life is full of little and grand pleasures, may we always be wise enough to see them and take advantage of them cause once a mum every day and every precious moment counts.

I have taken some great pictures lately from Easter holidays that I was about to share but need to get a handy card reader for my laptop. So, no pictures yet. Instead I found this following article quite informative for any pregnant ladies who consider having a natural childbirth. So, yes, yet again another re-post. Some more food for thought.

Χρόνια Πολλά to all who celebrated Easter lately.

“Natural childbirth I: is home birth more dangerous than hospital birth?

In this series we’re going to explore natural childbirth (home birth) as an alternative to industrialized childbirth. Industrialized childbirth could also be called “disturbed birth”, which Australian family physician Sarah J. Buckley, MD defines as follows:

Anything that disturbs a laboring woman’s sense of safety and privacy will disrupt the birth process. This definition covers most of modern obstetrics, which has created an entire industry around the observation and monitoring of pregnant and birthing women. Some of the techniques used are painful or uncomfortable, most involve some transgression of bodily or social boundaries, and almost all techniques are performed by people who are essentially strangers to the woman herself. All of these factors are as disruptive to pregnant and birthing women as they would be to any other laboring mammal – with whom we share the majority of our hormonal orchestration in labor and birth.1

Buckley embraces an evolutionary perspective on pregnancy and childbirth. Such a perspective affirms the natural process of gestation and birth and recognizes a woman’s genetically inherited capacity to give birth without medical intervention.

In the same way that we evolved to eat a species-appropriate diet (i.e. paleo), we evolved to give birth in an undisturbed environment.

This innate system of birth has been refined over 100,000 generations. It involves a complex, finely tuned orchestration of hormones that prepare both the mother and baby for a successful birth and catalyze profound neurological changes that promote the bond between a mother and her new baby.

And just as we experience health problems when we stray from the evolutionary dietary template, women are more likely to experience complications and difficulty in labor when they stray from the evolutionary template of “undisturbed birth”.

Natural childbirth is in our genes

Throughout the vast majority of human history, women have always given birth in a familiar place, with family members or other trusted companions.

Even now, babies are still-born at home in most places around the world. And although the move from birth at home to the hospital began in the 18th century, home birth was the norm even in westernized countries until the 1950s.

Think of it this way: humans have been giving birth at home for 999,998 generations, and it’s only in the last 2 generations that hospital birth has become common.

This means that women have given birth at home for 99.998% of human history.

Yet in the U.S. today, fewer than 1 percent of births happen in the home. This abrupt and almost complete transition from natural childbirth toward industrialized childbirth has had profound repercussions on mothers, babies and the culture at large.

My wife Elanne and I have chosen to have a home birth with our first child (who is, as of this writing, due in about 2 weeks!) It has been fascinating to watch people’s reactions – outside of our close friends, who have almost all had home births – when we tell them this.

Some come right out and say “that’s brave!” Others are more suspect, using words like “interesting” or maybe even wondering out loud if it wouldn’t be a better idea to use a hospital midwife. Still others are more direct in their opposition to our choice.

This is evidence that the medical establishment has done a fantastic job convincing people that hospital birth is “normal”, in spite of the fact that home birth has been the default choice for 99.998% of human history.

Doctors and the medial have also managed to convince most people that hospital birth is safer than home birth. But is that really true?

Another myth bites the dust: hospital birth is not safer than home birth

In the Netherlands, where 1/3 of babies born at home under care of midwife, outcomes for first babies are equivalent to those of babies born to low-risk women in the hospital, and outcomes of second or subsequent babies are even better.

A UK analysis found that birth at home or in small family practice units is safer than birth in an obstetric hospital for mothers and babies in all categories of risk.

Other studies have shown that modern obstetric interventions have made birth more dangerous, not safer.

In fact, in terms of outcomes for mothers & babies, studies show that planned home birth has perinatal mortality levels (the numbers of babies dying around the time of birth) at least as good as – and often better than – hospital figures, with lower rates of complications and interventions.

A landmark study by Johnson and Daviss in 2005 examined over 5,000 U.S. and Canadian women intending to deliver at home under midwife. They found equivalent perinatal mortality to hospital birth, but with rates of intervention that were up to ten times lower, compared with low-risk women birthing in a hospital. The rates of induction, IV drip, episiotomy, and forceps were each less than 10% at home, and only 3.7% of women required a cesarean (c-section).

Other studies have shown that women who plan home birth have around a 70-80% chance of giving birth without intervention. And because of low use of drugs, home-born babies are more alert and in better condition than those born in the hospital.

Contrast this with the 2002 and 2006 Listening to Mothers surveys which examined 3,000 births in conventional settings. They found “virtually no natural childbirth” in either survey.

In the 2006 survey, around 50% of women were artificially induced; almost 75% had an epidural; and 33% gave birth by c-section.

Finally, in a review of the safety of home birth by the esteemed Cochrane collaboration, the study author states:

There is no strong evidence to favour either home or hospital birth for selected low-risk pregnant women. In countries where it is possible to establish a home birth service backed up by a modern hospital system, all low-risk women should be offered the possibility of considering a planned home birth…

I agree with the author’s conclusion that hospital birth is no safer than home birth. But if you consider the statistics above which suggest that having a natural, undisturbed birth in a hospital setting is exceedingly difficult, I would argue that there is strong evidence to favor a home birth.

Birth complications are more likely to occur in a hospital environment

A common defense of hospital birth by medical professionals and laypeople is the assertion that it’s necessary to be in a hospital during birth in case something goes wrong.

While it is certainly true that complications may arise during labor that require medical intervention, what is often ignored by proponents of hospital birth is the fact that such complications are more likely to occur in the hospital environment.

In other words, the distortion of the process of birth – what Buckley calls “disturbed birth” – has come to be what women expect when they have a baby and in a way has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As Buckley states:

Under this model women are almost certain to need the interventions that the medical model provides, and to come away grateful to be saved no matter how difficult or traumatic their experience.2

TV shows almost always depict birth as some kind of medical emergency, with the woman being rushed down the hallway on a gurney or connected to machines and wires in the delivery room surrounded by medical personnel. Since most people have never witnessed a home birth (or any other birth) before giving having a child themselves, their impression of what labor is like comes almost entirely from television.

It’s easy, then, to understand why people are afraid of birth and feel the need to be in a hospital setting in case something goes wrong. But that doesn’t mean giving birth in a hospital is safer. The studies I’ve presented in this article demonstrate that it’s not.

I want to be clear: no matter where birth takes place, complications may arise that require medical intervention and I am 100% in support of it in these cases.

When the mother or baby’s life is at risk, we are fortunate to have access to surgical techniques that can save lives or prevent serious complications.

The point I am making in this article, and will make in more detail in the articles to follow, is that the scale of medical intervention in birth today is not only far beyond what is necessary, but is contributing to the very of the problems it attempts to solve.

If you’re interested in learning more about natural childbirth, I highly recommend Buckley’s book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering. I’d also suggest checking out her free eBook called Ecstatic Birth and her eBook/audio package Giving Birth At Home.

Note: this series will very likely be interrupted by the home birth of my own child. Elanne is due on the 17th of July, so the baby could be coming anytime. When that happens, I’ll be taking some time off to spend time with my new family. I’ll pick this up again when I return from paternity leave.

Articles in this series:

Natural childbirth I: is homebirth more dangerous than hospital birth?
Natural childbirth IIa: is ultrasound necessary and effective during pregnancy?
Natural childbirth IIb: ultrasound not as safe as commonly thought
Natural childbirth III: why undisturbed birth?
Natural childbirth IV: the hormones of birth
Natural childbirth V: epidural side effects and risks
Natural childbirth VI: Pitocin side effects and risks
Natural childbirth VII: Cesarean risks and complications
Buckley, Sarah J. Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor’s Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices. Celestial Arts, 2009. pp. 96 ↩
Buckley, Sarah J. Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor’s Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices. Celestial Arts, 2009. pp. 96 ↩”

The original title is a bit controversial, in my humble opinion and this is why I didn’t use it in my own title. It seems that a whole article can be “tinted” solely by its title, people who read it are naturally predisposed positively or negatively according to title, trust me, I’ve had several responses lately on posts based on a certain misconception of its title. So, the reason why I am re-posting this excellent article is because it is well-founded, true and not necessarily what its title implies. One would think that by stating the “dangers” of a hospital birth, one is automatically demonizing birth in a hospital which is not, in my opinion, what the author is doing in the following article, nor my intention whatsoever. The information is valuable and I suggest that if you are like me, and prefer to give birth in a maternity rather than at home (for psychological or other reasons) you may want to read on and know what to expect and what to fight for in order to fulfil your right to the birth that you want and deserve.

“Dangers of Hospital Births: Why Birthing in a Hospital Can Cause More Problem’s than it Solves

There’s a saying that birth is as safe as life gets. There are times when birth can become dangerous for the baby or, very rarely, for the mother. This is when hospital-based maternity care really shines, and we’re able to save mothers and babies who a hundred years ago might have died. Thank goodness that there are skilled surgeons who can come to the rescue when truly necessary.

There’s also another saying: When you’re holding hammer, everything looks like a nail. Likewise, for hospital-based birth attendants, it is easy to become accustomed to treating every birth as a disaster waiting to happen. Many obstetricians have lost touch with the possibility of normal birth, so much so that even labor that includes a pitocin induction with an epidural, a fetal scalp electrode and a vacuum extraction is called a “natural” birth. Some hospital staff seem offended by the idea of minimizing interventions, as if preferring not to have a needle the size of a house nail inserted near your spine is the same as declining to have a second piece of Aunt Sally’s fruitcake. Sadly, some of today’s younger doctors may never even have seen a truly physiological labor and birth—a birth completely without medical intervention.

This is how the saving grace of the hospital can become the scourging disgrace of maternity care. In their rush to prevent problems that aren’t happening, hospital personnel may aggressively push procedures and drugs that can actually cause problems. Pitocin can cause uterine contractions so strong that they stress the baby and cause fetal distress. IV narcotic drugs can affect an infant so strongly that he might not breathe at birth— a second drug is used to counteract the narcotics to help these drugged babies breathe. There is considerable debate as to how epidurals affect the progress of labor, but they certainly diminish a woman’s ability to get into a squat, which opens the pelvic plane by 20 to 30 percent; anyone can understand that this could affect the possibility of the baby’s fitting through the pelvis. Epidurals can lower the mother’s blood pressure so that the baby isn’t getting enough oxygen through the placenta. This can cause fetal distress and the need for an emergency caesarian section to rescue the baby.

In addition to the specific dangers of individual obstetric intervention, hospital births suffer the effects of any form of institutionalized care. Perhaps the best-known risk of hospital birth is hospital-acquired infections. The people most susceptible to such infections are those with compromised immune systems, such as newborns. In particular, a baby is born with a sterile skin and gut that are supposed to be colonized by direct contact with the mother’s skin flora. If antibiotic-resistant hospital germs colonize the baby’s skin and gut instead, the baby will be at high risk of becoming very sick from infections that are very difficult to treat. The overall infection rate for babies born in the hospital is four times that of babies born at home, and these infections are more likely to be antibiotic-resistant.

Ninety thousand people die every year from hospital-acquired infections. That’s more than from all accidental deaths put together: 70,000 people die from motor vehicle crashes, fires, burns, falls, drownings and poisonings combined. An additional 98,000 people die each year from general medical error.

Division of Labor

Another obvious risk of institutionalized care arises from the piecemeal nature of the care. Because there are so many different kinds of personnel performing so many different procedures, there is a lot of potential for miscommunication about critical matters. In an astoundingly progressive admission of institutional shortcomings, Beth Israel Hospital in Boston published a paper about a tragic miscommunication that resulted in a baby’s death. To their great credit, instead of covering up this horrible mistake, Beth Israel used it as a wake-up call to revise their protocols, in an attempt to reduce miscommunication and increase safety. Unfortunately, other hospitals are slow to adopt their reforms.

One of the most dangerous aspects of hospital care is that those providing most of the direct care (i.e. nurses) are hierarchically subservient to those managing the care from a distance (i.e. doctors). This power structure can prevent knowledgeable nurses from mitigating potentially dangerous actions of a misunderstanding doctor.

Many people feel that a hospital must be the safest place to give birth because of all the equipment it has. But equipment is only as good as the people using it. In many hospitals, there are not enough registered nurses to cover all the patients, so they use medical technicians, who are trained to perform procedures but not necessarily trained to interpret fetal heart tracings. Most labors start at night, especially for women birthing second or subsequent babies. This is the time when the senior staff are off-duty, because their seniority allows them to opt for the more desirable daytime shifts. A recent study confirmed that birth outcomes are worse during the night. Even the most sophisticated equipment is useless in the wrong hands.

(For the record, many homebirth midwives now carry equipment that is as sophisticated as that in most hospital birth rooms. This includes continuous electronic fetal monitors and equipment for performing neonatal resuscitation if necessary.)

Institutionalized care also suffers from the economic pressures of running an efficient organization, regardless of how this might interfere with the normal process of labor and birth. Sometimes doctors recommend pitocin without true medical necessity, simply to hasten the birth. This may be due to a need to free up a birth room to make room for other patients, or because the doctor has other responsibilities elsewhere. Stimulating labor artificially overrides a baby’s ability to space out the contractions if the labor is too stressful. This increases the risk of fetal distress.

Hospital staff have a strong bias towards confining laboring women to the bed and requiring them to push in a reclining position. This often puts a baby’s weight on the placenta or umbilical cord, possibly restricting the baby’s supply of oxygenated blood from the placenta. In contrast, upright positions put the baby’s weight downward, toward the open cervix and away from the placenta and umbilical cord, reducing or eliminating fetal distress caused by cord compression.

A rush to clamp and cut the umbilical cord within seconds after birth is one of the most dangerous hospital practices. This premature severance of the umbilical cord cuts the flow of oxygenated blood to the baby before the baby has established the lungs as the source of oxygen. Premature cord clamping also deprives the baby of the blood that would naturally fill the pulmonary vasculature as it expands in the minutes immediately after the birth. This practice has been documented to increase the risks of neonatal hypoxia, hypovolemia and anemia, thus increasing the need for blood transfusions.

There is some very new research showing that placental tissue itself may be a rich source of pluripotent stem cells (cells which can give rise to any cell type) in addition to the blood stem cells in blood drawn from the umbilical cord. We do not yet know whether premature cutting of the umbilical cord halts the migration of pluripotent stem cells from the placental tissue into the baby’s body to repair damage from even minor birth trauma.

Separation Anxiety

Perhaps the most egregious and unnecessary interference with the normal birth sequence is the separation of mother and baby immediately after birth. Even a ten-minute separation is too long during this critical first hour after birth—it prevents the natural nipple stimulation that increases the mother’s oxytocin, which will contract the uterus and prevent a postpartum hemorrhage. Instead of baby-provided nipple stimulation, hospitals are now routinely using synthetic oxytocin by IV or injection after the birth to control bleeding.

Similarly, early cuddling of mother and baby stimulates oxytocin production in the newborn, thus raising the baby’s body temperature to help with the adaptation to the extrauterine environment. A mother’s body is a newborn’s best warmer.

Because different personnel are involved in providing piecemeal care for mothers and babies, providers do not always see how their actions in one area may cause problems in another. For example, because obstetricians are not involved in breastfeeding issues, they may not realize that cutting an episiotomy hampers a woman’s ability to sit comfortably in order to nurse her baby. Likewise, pediatricians may not realize that separating the mother and baby right after the birth in order to do a routine newborn exam also interferes with breastfeeding. Nursery nurses often do not seem to appreciate the importance of minimizing the separation of mother and baby, and thus also unwittingly interfere with breastfeeding. They tend to ignore the World Health Organization’s recommendations to delay initial bathing of the baby until at least six hours after the birth, even though bathing can cause a baby’s temperature to drop so dangerously low that they do not return him to his mother for an hour or more.

I emphasize the hazards to the breastfeeding relationship because breastfeeding is so vital to a newborn’s well-being, reducing infant mortality by 20 percent. This is a huge health benefit, and hospitals should be taking the lead in tailoring their routines to support breastfeeding. But because the functions of caring for mother and baby are separated into the roles of maternity nurses (who care for the mothers) and nursery nurses (who care for the babies), sometimes the mother and baby are also physically separated. Most of the time, there are no lactation consultants in the hospital—they are often only available during weekday business hours. But babies need to be fed around the clock, and if a lactation consultant isn’t available to help a struggling mother/baby pair, it might become necessary to feed the baby artificial breastmilk with a bottle, which further interferes with successful breastfeeding.

Because the entire model of hospital birth is based on birth as a medical procedure, hospital staff seem to miss the fact that they are interfering in a delicate time in a new baby’s life. Perinatal psychologists describe the first hour after birth as the “critical period,” during which the baby will learn how to learn and whether or not it is safe to relax and to trust the outer world. This has tremendous implications for mental health and stress-related disorders.

A Natural Process

There was a time when caesareans were acknowledged to be a risky surgery reserved to save the life of the mother or baby. Now even cesarean surgery has become almost routine. Some obstetricians and hospital administrators are advocating for a 100 percent cesarean rate as a solution to liability and scheduling problems that are inherent in providing maternity care. Unfortunately, cesarean surgeries increase risks for the mother and child. They also increase the risk for subsequent pregnancies, with higher rates of placenta previa and placenta accreta, and introduce a small but non-zero risk that a pre-labor uterine rupture could result in the baby’s or even the mother’s death.

When someone needs to be in the hospital receiving medical treatment for a lifethreatening condition, the risk-benefit trade-off comes in heavily on the side of benefit. But for women who are hoping to have a drug-free birth, it makes no sense to expose themselves and their baby to the various infection risks associated with simply being in the hospital.

Most people know that it is unwise to take a newborn baby out and about in public because of the risk of exposing the baby even to ordinary germs. It is an even worse idea to expose the baby to the antibiotic-resistant strains of germs commonly found in hospitals.

When a woman planning a homebirth needs medical care and care is transferred to a hospital-based provider, the phrase “failed homebirth” is often written in her chart, even if she goes on to have an outcome that is better than if she had started out in the hospital. I would like to propose the concept of a “failed hospital birth” as any birth where hospital procedures specifically cause more problems than they solve. When you consider hospital infection rates, surgical complications and the damage to the breastfeeding relationship caused by routine separation of mother and baby, we might find that close to 95 percent of planned hospital births are failed hospital births. They failed to support the mother in an empowering birth experience to better prepare her for motherhood, and they failed to satisfy the baby’s overwhelming need and desire to enter and adapt to the outside world as nature intended.

Our society has an obligation to improve maternity care services as much as possible. Consider that the countries with the safest maternity care rely on midwives as the guardians of normal birth, reserving risky medical procedures for cases of true need. “In the five European countries with the lowest infant mortality rates, midwives preside at more than 70 percent of all births,” reported Caroline Hall Otis for the Utne Reader. “More than half of all Dutch babies are born at home with midwives in attendance, and Holland’s maternal and infant mortality rates are far lower than in the United States…”

A Return To Midwives

The United States needs to return to a model of midwives as the default maternity care providers, reserving the surgical specialists for the highest-risk patients. We need to educate pregnant women so that they understand that the choices they make about drugs during labor affect their baby, just like the choices they make about drugs during pregnancy. We need to offer women realistic pain relief alternatives to dangerous pharmaceuticals; warm water immersion during labor provides risk-free pain relief that many women find as satisfactory as an epidural. (Mothers who are uncomfortable with the idea of water birth can easily leave the tub to give birth “on land,” while still deriving the tremendous comfort and safety benefits of laboring in water.) Hospitals need to develop new routines that protect mother-baby bonding and the breastfeeding relationship as if they are a matter of life and death, because they are.

Obstetricians would do well to practice according to the wisdom contained in the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This means supporting healthy women with normal pregnancies in birthing at home if they choose, and encouraging women planning hospital births to work with them to minimize interventions that turn normal births into risky medical procedures.

About the Author:

Ronnie Falcão, LM, MS, is a homebirth midwife practicing for twelve years in and around Mountain View, California. A direct-entry midwife trained through a homebirth apprenticeship and a residential internship at Casa de Nacimiento birth center in El Paso, Texas, she was licensed in 1997 under the California Challenge Process through the Seattle School of Midwifery. Ronnie is editor of the Midwife Archives at gentlebirth.org/archives.

Her personal web page is gentlebirth.org.”

My good friends Vanghelis and Grahi  (both virtuosi of photography) are supporting me in my quest to creating beautiful memories through the lens. After having browsed through Mamarazzi  (definition of the term here) I have started to be more and more interested in taking better pictures of my kiddos’ first tender years and got interested in experimenting with an SLR. My point-and-shoot Poweshot G10 is great but it doesn’t give that edge that I’ve been looking for (or I haven’t really looked for a way to work wonders with my G10). So Vanghelis eased things for me and endowed me most graciously with his old SLR, the Canon 300D rebel, a rebel in its time and a classic ever since. I got it repaired, bought two lenses (Canon 50mm f/1.8 and a Tamron 18-200 f/3.5-6.3) and started clicking away.

Of course I need to replace the battery pack since the original one has been worn out by Vanghelis’ years of successful shooting and won’t last more than 10 clicks in a row – and a tiny bit of browsing through the shots. I’m expecting the new battery in the mail any day now, I can’t wait.

Soon, I’ll be back with my first exhibits of little faces with this new digital pal.

Thank you Vanghelis for this wonderful gift and thank you Grahi for giving me how-to tips whenever I’m in need (quite often I must say)!

I’m a huge Rudolf Steiner/Waldorf system fan, I can’t hide it. I take my kids to the mother toddler-group in Kifissia (Karydia kinder-garden), far from our home but a very heart-warming place where we get to creatively hang out all three of us. I am thus glad to find out that there are more such groups being brought together in more lucky corners of this city. For a mother that doesn’t have the means (financial or other) to take her children to a Waldorf kindergarden everyday, participating in a Waldorf mother-toddler group is the next best thing. I am so happy there are these groups and I hope they grow and flourish. It’s the only way the Waldorf system may stand a chance to get known to a wider public and achieve its official aknowledgement by the Greek state (as you can see I’m really looking forward to the creation of a whole 12-year Waldorf school in Greece, it would be such a delight for parents and kids alike).

So, please find below, well… in Greek (I’m leaving the announcement in its original form, untouched, in any case the groups work in greek anyway) the announcement for the creation of the Kolonaki/Lycabettus toddler group. I am told that such initiatives are taking place also in Pireus and Helioupolis.  You may contact the persons below for more info.

Elina, thanks for this

Waldorf Steiner mother-toddler group

Κολωνάκι/Λυκαβηττός !

Πέμπτες  17.00-19.00 στον περιφερειακό Λυκαβηττού.

Το πρόγραμμα ξεκινάει με τραγουδάκια σε κύκλο και συνεχίζει με ελεύθερο παιχνίδι των παιδιών την ώρα που οι μαμάδες κάνουν μια απλή χειροτεχνία.  Ακολουθεί ένα απλό γεύμα και μετά η δασκάλα αφηγείται μια ιστορία με κουκλοθέατρο. Στο τέλος κάνουμε πάλι κύκλο και αποχαιρετιόμαστε.

Ιδανικό για παιδάκια από 1,5 μέχρι 5 ετών και τις μαμάδες ή τους μπαμπάδες τους. Συνήθως συμμετέχουν 8-10 παιδιά.

Ελάτε 10′ νωρίτερα για να ξεκινήσουμε στην ώρα μας, φέρτε παντοφλάκια (μικροί – μεγάλοι), και κάτι απλό και υγιεινό να μοιραστούν τα παιδιά

Τηλέφωνα για πληροφορίες και δηλώσεις συμμετοχής

 6937242254 ή 6944659632

Κόστος συμμετοχής 7 ευρώ η πρώτη φορά και έπειτα 40 ευρώ το μήνα

Θα χαρούμε πολύ να σας δούμε από κοντά.

Δάφνη Βαλαμπού & Ματίνα Αγιωργίτη

Η εκπαίδευση Waldorf δίνει έμφαση στην πολύπλευρη ανάπτυξη του παιδιού, εστιάζοντας και καλλιεργώντας τη φυσική αγάπη που έχουν όλα τα παιδιά για την μάθηση. Ο στόχος του συστήματος αυτού είναι να εκπαιδεύσει το παιδί ως ολότητα, «κεφάλι, καρδιά και χέρια», με σκοπό να δημιουργήσει άτομα που να μπορούν να δώσουν νόημα στις ζωές τους.

Η διδακτική μέθοδος Waldorf συνδέει την εκμάθηση της ακαδημαϊκής ύλης με καλλιτεχνικές και χειρωνακτικές δραστηριότητες.  Προσεγγίζοντας τα ακαδημαϊκά μαθήματα μέσα από τις τέχνες και τις δραστηριότητες αυτές, ενθαρρύνεται η ελεύθερη έκφραση και ενισχύεται η εσωτερική παρόρμηση των παιδιών για μάθηση.

Η αξία της μεθόδου είναι πλέον αναγνωρισμένη διεθνώς και ήδη πολλά σχολεία Waldorf Steiner είναι μέλη του προγράμματος της UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network, στο οποίο συμμετέχουν επιλεγμένοι εκπαιδευτικοί οργανισμοί από όλο τον κόσμο.

Η μέθοδος Waldorf - Steiner έχει πολύ συγκεκριμένα χαρακτηριστικά, κάποια από τα οποία είναι τα εξής:

- Τα υλικά που χρησιμοποιούνται στη διακόσμηση του χώρου και στο παιχνίδι είναι ως επί το πλείστον φυσικά. Τα παιχνίδια είναι χειροποίητα, ή αποτελούν πραγματικά αντικείμενα της καθημερινότητας (πχ κουζινικά) ενώ αποφεύγονται το πλαστικό και τα έντονα χρώματα.

- Έμφαση δίνεται στον προφορικό λόγο και το παιχνίδι με αντικείμενα με πολλαπλές χρήσεις, μέσα από τα οποία εξάπτεται η φαντασία των παιδιών, και κατά συνέπεια ενισχύεται η δημιουργικότητα και η μνήμη τους.

- Έμφαση δίνεται επίσης στην εκμάθηση μέσω της μίμησης – ο δάσκαλος δίνει σε κάθε στιγμή το παράδειγμα της καλής συμπεριφοράς,  ενώ τα παιδιά αντιμετωπίζονται με σεβασμό και εκτίμηση, ως άτομα υπεύθυνα και ικανά να αυτοεξυπηρετηθούν και να συνεισφέρουν πραγματικά.

-Στα πρώτα χρόνια της εκπαίδευσης (παιδικός σταθμός και νηπιαγωγείο) δεν υπάρχουν καθόλου μαθήματα γραφής και ανάγνωσης, ενώ υπάρχουν ελάχιστα τέτοια μαθήματα στην πρώτη τάξη. Η χειρωνακτική επιδεξιότητα που χρειάζεται η γραφή ενισχύεται μέσα από τις καλλιτεχνικές δραστηριότητες, ενώ, όταν έρθει η ώρα για γραφή και ανάγνωση, αυτά διδάσκονται μέσα από ιστορίες.

- Έμφαση δίνεται επίσης στη φύση και στους ρυθμούς της, στις εποχές και στις γιορτές τους. Το πρόγραμμα της ημέρας στο σχολείο ακολουθεί το ρυθμό της αναπνοής: εισπνοή (συγκέντρωση, δραστηριότητα καθοδηγούμενη από τη δασκάλα) και μετά εκπνοή (ελεύθερο παιχνίδι, αυτοσχεδιασμός), ενώ κάθε μέρα της εβδομάδας περιλαμβάνει και μία συγκεκριμένη δραστηριότητα (ψήσιμο ψωμιού, νερομπογιές, κηπουρική, κλπ.)

- Συγκεκριμένες δραστηριότητες, που στα συμβατικά σχολεία συχνά θεωρούνται δευτερεύουσες, είναι θεμελιώδεις για τα σχολεία Waldorf, όπου θεωρείται ότι βοηθούν την εκμάθηση πολύ περισσότερο απ’ότι η στείρα μελέτη και αποστήθιση.  Μερικές από αυτές τις δραστηριότητες είναι:  η ζωγραφική, η μουσική, η κηπουρική και οι ξένες γλώσσες, και μία ιδιότυπη μορφή κίνησης – η ευρυθμία.

- Στα πρώτα πέντε χρόνια της σχολικής ηλικίας (7-12) δεν υπάρχουν βιβλία ύλης. Όλα τα παιδιά έχουν το «βασικό βιβλίο μαθήματος»  το οποίο είναι ένα βιβλίο δικών τους εργασιών που το γεμίζουν καθώς προχωρά η χρονιά.  Κατά κύριο λόγο δημιουργούν δικά τους βιβλία στα οποία στη διάρκεια της χρονιάς καταγράφουν τις εμπειρίες τους και τι έχουν μάθει. Σε κάποια σχολεία τα μεγαλύτερα παιδιά μπορεί να χρησιμοποιούν συμπληρωματικά  βιβλία, ιδίως στα μαθηματικά και την γραμματική.

- Η διαδικασία της μάθησης σε ένα  σχολείο Waldorf  είναι μια μη ανταγωνιστική δραστηριότητα. Δεν υπάρχουν βαθμοί στα πρώτα χρόνια . Ο δάσκαλος γράφει μια λεπτομερή αξιολόγηση για κάθε παιδί στο τέλος κάθε σχολικής χρονιάς.

- Η χρήση ηλεκτρονικών μέσων, ιδιαίτερα της τηλεόραση, από τα μικρά παιδιά, αποθαρρύνεται έντονα στα σχολεία Waldorf.  

Κείμενο προσαρμοσμένο από το 4family.gr - επιμέλεια Δάφνη Βαλαμπού

Helena was sitting on a bench under the spring sun when I saw her. “What on earth are you doing up and about already?”. She smiled, “I have chores do be done as hard as it might be for me to move around, they have to be done”. I sat beside her, she told me her recent birth story although I roughly knew what she had been through (our moms are old classmates and close friends).

The story begins 5 years ago. Helena was expecting her first baby and has had a few contractions and aches. Her husband, having experienced some bad birth story in his family, convinced her doctor not to wait for the baby to come and perform a selective caesarean. Helena didn’t object and she had her son born by caesarean section.

Her second pregnancy was smooth until she was in her late weeks. Yet her doctor didn’t opt to allow a VBAC because she had placenta praevia (the placenta covering the opening of the cervix, a quite frequent condition for pregnancies after caesarean birth). Still it’s a common condition that indicates c-section. Helena was anxious, for no apparent logical reason, according to her doctor. She asked her doctor to be attended by two more doctors during her procedure, she had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right. She told me her story on that spring day, on that sunny bench, yet her face resembled the winter blues.

She went into surgery, her doctor expecting the best, her hoping for it. Her new baby – girl was out in a matter of minutes. The daughter was safe and sound. Yet the mother’s procedure lasted 2 hours. The placenta was incorporated on her uterine wall, there were hundreds of blood vessels connecting the two and it was very hard to separate them. She lost a whole lot of blood and had to stay in intensive care for two days, restricted in her bed, away from her baby. The doctor told her that she almost lost her uterus but luckily they were able to save it and so she was spared the hysterectomy.

What had caused this? The placenta of a second pregnancy after caesarean has the tendency to grow on the scarred uterine wall, probably trying to heal it. According to Wikipedia :” The condition affects around 10% of cases of placenta praevia, and is increased in incidence by the presence of scar tissue i.e. (…)  caesarean section.”

I dared say “well, you remember what my father says about having first-time c-sections for no apparent reason”, she replied sadly “yeah, I know, tell that to my husband… yet it was my life on the line”…

All is well that ends well. We thank God the two girls are now safe and loving each other. But there is some food for thought.

My friend Debby is scheduled to give birth today. The last time I saw her it was about 3 months ago. She was worried she wasn’t ready for motherly duties. She had conceived her baby just a while after her wedding, she was planning on getting pregnant later. She had just found out that her baby was a girl, while she had been hoping for a boy. The financial crisis was on her mind constantly. Her husband, a doctor himself, has had some financial trouble in the past but he was now about to get things going for them. She was very worried, that this “thing” would take over their life and would bring them more anxiety to their already troubled minds.

I tried to calm her down. I talked to her about the joys of motherhood. The precious first days with the new baby, even in a maternity environment. I talked to her about how maybe she would like to opt for a natural birth and breastfeeding. I tried to roughly explain why: I talked about the complex hormonal cocktail that gets everything going that can only be triggered if the birth process in left alone and not inhibited by any kind of intervention. I explained to her how many things can be missed along the way if there is some kind of intervention. Yet, I told her, even if things don’t get to go as smoothly as planned or wished for, and a mother does end up with a series of interventions, she can still make up for it by trying to bond with the baby as soon as possible (or as feasible). I talkd to her about skin-to-skin contact, rooming-in and of course breastfeeding. She kept looking at me eager to learn more, to hear more jingles and bells around the “B” word. I told her that all that was the best for the baby.

What I didn’t tell her was that all that was (mainly for her case) best for mother too. The only way to avoid possible postpartum blues and/or depression is if we let nature take its course and produce hormones that will herlp the mother bond and adore her baby. If this is not done by natural birth then breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact, is the next best thing as it produces oxytocine, the love hormone which is the reason why mommies endure and love no matter the sudden challenges in her rythm of life.

I hate to admit that I’m scared. Just yesterday I found out Debby is having a cesarean. I didn’t quite understand why but it’s already almost a month earlier than her “due date”.  Such a sudden and unexpected change for the baby… such an unexpected change for this mother who hasn’t been all bliss and blossom these past months. I’m scared that if this girl is not persuaded somehow to breastfeed she’ll go into that dark dark place … Her husband is not very fond of natural birth or breastfeeding, he is the “technical” kind of medical doctor… I’m afraid of what might follow the next few days after the birth… and if Debby does go into that dark dark place it’ll be so hard to admit to it, diagnose it, to help her get out of it. Everyone will expect her to instantly love and care for her baby, sacrifice herself totally (sleep and psycology included) to keep the baby clean and fed. And she’s going to feel depressed and inadequate and it’s not in this society’s mentality to see through a new mom in such a state. Everyone expects from her but doesn’t listen to her. A new mother needs to be mothered, especially if she has the blues.

I’m worried and scared. Should I talk again? How? To whom? I have guilt for having spoken to her before about natural birth… now, trapped in a scheduled cesarean she might feel she failed because I happened to have spoken to her about the advantages of natural birth…

I hope all goes well, I’ll try to be there for her but I can’t offer more than what she may ask for, and I know she won’t ask for much because she’s that kind of person… What is support? Yeah, I know, I wrote that but it can’t really be applied in a situation whereby one would like to save the day but no-one would want him to…

Fingers crossed and eyes tightly shut: hope for the best, hope for the best, hope for the best…

This story really got my eyes watery. There are so many such stories around! What does it really take for people to believe in the power of motherly love and skin-to-skin contact? Just as much as they should believe in the wholeness of the human body+psyche! These are real stories, these have happened to real people, at a real moment, one minute it happened the next it was history just the way I write these lines and once they’re on my screen they become part of the past. This didn’t happen in some MiracleLand, it could have happened anywhere, even in an Athens maternity. I only wish all mothers had the guts to do what this mother did, not listen to doctors and do whatever she instinctively thought best: cuddle with her baby skin-to-skin (remember my post on the importance of skin-to-skin contact? It is not in theory, it’s the real absolute truth). Why is this so relevant to my life right now? I’ll post about it later. Please read on and spread the word!

“Sometimes a preemie doesn’t need to be hooked up to 10 different machines to be given the chance to survive. When Carolyn Isbister put her 20 oz baby on her chest for a cuddle, she thought that it would be the only chance she would ever have to hold her. Doctors had told the parents that baby Rachel only had only minutes to live because her heart was beating once every ten seconds and she was not breathing. Isbister remembers: I didn’t want her to die being cold. So I lifted her out of her blanket and put her against my skin to warm her up. Her feet were so cold. It was the only cuddle I was going to have with her, so I wanted to remember the moment.” Then something remarkable happened. The warmth of her mother’s skin kick started Rachael’s heart into beating properly, which allowed her to take little breaths of her own. We couldn’t believe it – and neither could the doctors. She let out a tiny cry. The doctors came in and said there was still no hope – but I wasn’t letting go of her. We had her blessed by the hospital chaplain, and waited for her to slip away. But she still hung on. And then amazingly the pink color began to return to her cheeks. She literally was turning from gray to pink before our eyes, and she began to warm up too. The sad part is that when the baby was born, doctors took one look at her and said ‘no’. They didn’t even try to help her with her breathing as they said it would just prolong her dying. Everyone just gave up on her,” her mom remembered. At 24 weeks a womb infection had led to her premature labor and birth and Isbister (who also has two children Samuel, 10, and Kirsten, 8 ) said, “We were terrified we were going to lose her. I had suffered three miscarriages before, so we didn’t think there was much hope.” When Rachael was born she was grey and lifeless. Ian Laing, a consultant neonatologist at the hospital, said: “All the signs were that the little one was not going to make it and we took the decision to let mum have a cuddle as it was all we could do. Two hours later the wee thing was crying. This is indeed a miracle baby and I have seen nothing like it in my 27 years of practice. I have not the slightest doubt that mother’s love saved her daughter.” Rachael was moved onto a ventilator where she continued to make steady progress and was tube and syringe fed her mother’s pumped breastmilk. Isbister said, “The doctors said that she had proved she was a fighter and that she now deserved some intensive care as there was some hope. She had done it all on her own – without any medical intervention or drugs. She had clung on to life – and it was all because of that cuddle. It had warmed up her body and regulated her heart and breathing enough for her to start fighting. At 5 weeks she was taken off the ventilator and began breastfeeding on her own. At four months Rachel went home with her parents, weighing 8lbs – the same as any other healthy newborn. Because Rachel had suffered from a lack of oxygen doctors said there was a high risk of damage to her brain. But a scan showed no evidence of any problems and today Rachel is on par with her peers. Rachel’s mom tells us, “She is doing so well. When we brought her home, the doctors told us that she was a remarkable little girl. And most of all, she just loves her cuddles. She will sleep for hours, just curled into my chest. It was that first cuddle which saved her life – and I’m just so glad I trusted my instinct and picked her up when I did. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here today.” When a parent holds their baby on their chest, skin-to-skin, it is referred to as Kangaroo Mother Care. The benefits for all babies of KMC are that they stabilize faster with skin-to-skin care than in an incubator (very few stabilize in an incubator well during the first six hours of life). KMC babies also have stable oxygen rates and breathing thanks to the steady regulation of Mother’s respiration. The heart rate is stable (mother’s heartbeat regulates baby’s heartbeat). The temperature is most stable on the mother – in skin-to-skin care mothers chest automatically warms to warm a cold baby, and mothers core temperature drops if her baby has a temperature. Sleeping within an arm’s reach of baby (as long as a parent does not smoke) also regulates all of his physiological needs in the same way ~ they are kept steady thanks to Mom’s warm, even-paced body. We lose far fewer babies to prematurity, irregularity of breathing or heartbeat after birth, and SIDS all with the natural help of skin-to-skin holding, or Kangaroo Care. Read More About skin-to-skin benefits for ALL babies (full term and premature) here: kangaroomothercare.com For more stories by growyourbaby please visit their website. Story originally posted in 2007 and has been viewed more than 15,000 times on their site. Spread the word about this amazing story so that more babies can be saved!”

Most of us who have been “potty training” our babies from early on have found Pottette by Mothercare to be a life saver.

Katerina is a very big Pottette fan. She has used her Pottette so much that the plastic carry pouch included in the original package was ripped to bits. So she asked me to create something more frilly and playful to cover and host her precious Pottette. In the end she asked for three Pottette covers, so she could share her new cover delight with two more Pottette loving friends. It was a very easy and fun project to make, my own Pottette served as my muse.

This is what I came up with after talking to Katerina about the details (she needed waterproof, sturdy and cute). She even picked out the stitch design. She knew what she wanted thus making my work so much easier:

I used laminated black and white dot cotton and matched the topstitching thread with the cording.

I sure hope Katerina and her friends enjoy their new Pottette covers to the fullest.

The weather suddenly got better within the week and by Sunday it was heavenly warm. So we decided to hit the mountain! We found a calm and relatively smooth spot (so Philippe would feel free to walk around) in front of a monastery and we camped to enjoy our picnic. The kids were in bliss. There were other people around too. We met a big white dog named Leonidas who was very tempted to try our grilled lunch but obedient enough to stay in a distance. So cute! Both kids liked him. Marysa kept telling the dog’s owners that it’s okay for Leonidas to come and say hello and that he means well and Philippe kept cooing at him in delight. Then a bunch of highschool kids came to camp and obviously one of them had his birthday… they played with the dog too only to reveal in the  end that the birthday boy’s name was Leonidas too, what a coincidence that was!

I had been reading Mamarazzi lately and so I was keen on applying whatever basics I had learnt with my Powershot (I’m soon going to try with a dSLR, too excited, YEY) G10 which can only go as far.

And then Marysa asked to use the camera and I was happy to hand it down to her:

Hope you’re all enjoying spring! At last it’s here to stay