Essentials of Maternal-Infant Care

425pregnant.jpgJoin Gloria Lemay, celebrated traditional birth attendant and childbirth educator, in a series of 12 online programs for professionals and students who wish to expand their knowledge and skills, and delve into issues that arise repeatedly in clinical practice. This series is also valuable for parents who want to be fully informed about their choices in pregnancy and birth.

Each session is 90 minutes in length.

Cost: $7.50 per presentation.

Certificates of Completion: $7.50 per session  (completion of post-session questionnaire required).  

 

Gloria’s twelve online workshops cover the following topics:

Nutrition for Two. Women want to feed themselves and their babies in utero well, and they often make lifestyle changes in pregnancy that they would not have the discipline to make if they were not pregnant. This presentation focuses on how to help women achieve excellent nutrition through fun, inspiring and effective coaching.


 

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The Well Woman Check Up.  What is the experienced care provider looking for when she’s doing those urine strips, palpating the uterus and taking blood pressure/pulse? This presentation dissects the prenatal checkup and explores the rationale behind each routine test.


 

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Prenatal Diagnostic Tests. As the number of possible prenatal tests continues to climb, care providers must be able to discern which ones will lead to productive action and which ones will only worry and detract from the woman’s pregnancy experience. This presentation enables participants to better advocate for their clients by articulating which prenatal diagnostic tests are reasonable, and which tests can cause more harm than good.


 

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Medical Terminology. The keys to the obstetric kingdom lie in the language. Learning medical prefixes, suffixes and root words will give you the tools to interpret the language. You’ll be able to use extra long, impressive words like “neurofibromatosis” in no time, and have fun doing it!


 

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Induction of Birth. If only one change happened in North America – the end of 41 week inductions – the cesarean rate would immediately drop. This workshop will explore the history, the misinformation campaign, and the tools needed to end the routine practice of labor inductions.


 

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Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension. Most prenatal care is designed to identify the small number of pregnant women who will develop Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension. This condition can be prevented and treated. In this workshop, we will discuss how the diagnosis is made, how to identify the symptoms in the early stages, and which clients are at risk.


 

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Gestational Diabetes. Because gestational diabetes can be deadly, it is critical that care providers understand it, and know which women are at risk. This workshop will provide valuable insight and information about how to screen for and help prevent this condition.


 

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Herpes Simplex II. One in five North American adults has Herpes Simplex II. After attending this workshop, care providers will know how to care for women with this condition, assuring that every woman they care for is healthy and lesion-free on the day of birth.


 

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Water Birth & Lotus Birth. The most exciting ideas in obstetrics come from the women themselves. Water Birth and Lotus Birth are grass roots innovations that have endured for decades. When your clients have questions about these practices, you’ll be ready with answers that address the safety and beauty of these birth innovations.


 

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Vaginal Birth after Cesarean (VBAC). The VBAC client will have emotions and fears about giving birth that are justifiably heightened. She and her partner will require more time and patience than your other clients. This workshop will focus on advanced planning techniques for changing psychological patterns in the mother and father, and tips for avoiding pitfalls and safely supporting families through this most satisfying and empowering of childbirth experiences.


 

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Pediatric Exam of the Newborn. Knowing what the midwife or pediatrician is looking for in the examination of a newborn will enhance your ability to assist with the care of the baby after the immediate post partum period. In this workshop, you will learn to distinguish between normal parental concerns, (e.g., “Is it normal for the baby to turn bright red?”) and signs that the baby should be seen in a hospital emergency ward (e.g., “The baby isn’t feeding and seems lethargic”).


 

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Business Promotion and Professionalism. Prosperity and business responsibility are matters of integrity. Let’s marry your spiritual calling with the practical reality of paying bills and building a business. This workshop is a realistic and practical guide to the entrepreneurial side of caring for others.  Although the focus will be on the birth business, this ideas raised in this session will be applicable to all care providers.


 

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How Circumcision Affects Sexuality

Circumcision is a primal wound that causes pain and trauma to an infant’s penis–his organ of pleasure and procreation. Initially, circumcision interferes with the maternal infant bond, disrupts breastfeeding and normal sleep patterns, and undermines the successful completion of the baby’s first developmental task of establishing trust. Even when analgesia is used, circumcision causes pain to the penis, and every experience of that organ, from then on, is overlaid on a neuronal background of pain.

Circumcision removes the foreskin, with its 20,000 – 70,000 specialized, erogenous nerve endings, replacing the penile accelerator that allows a man to ride the wave to orgasm with an on/off switch that offers sensitivity and immediate relief without the ride to orgasm and the full symphony of sensation.  This is why the most common complaint of circumcised men in the USA is premature ejaculation.  At the other end of life, circumcised males complain about sexual dysfunction, including loss of sensitivity and impotence. Many women wonder why sex with a circumcised man is not fulfilling for them. They do not understand the role the foreskin plays in female sexual pleasure, including the gliding mechanism and lubrication.

This session, the third in the Intact Boy series, is led by Marilyn Milos, RN, Executive Director of NOCIRC.  Hear Marilyn’s exploration of the effects of circumcision on an infant and on the man he becomes. The dynamics of circumcision, sex, and compensation for the trauma and loss is discussed.

This presentation is 90 minutes in length.

Cost: $7.50

Continuing Education Units available for some professionals.  Click here for more information.

Prenatal Diagnostic Tests

As the number of possible prenatal tests continues to climb, care providers must be able to discern which ones will lead to productive action and which ones will only worry and detract from the woman’s pregnancy experience.  This program enables participants to better advocate for clients by articulating which prenatal tests are reasonable, and which tests can cause more harm than good.

One of Gloria Lemay’s twelve Essentials of Maternal-Infant Care presentations for professionals and students who wish to expand their knowledge and skills, and delve into issues that arise repeatedly in clinical practice. This series is also valuable for parents who want to be fully informed about their choices in pregnancy and birth.

This session is 90 minutes in length.

Cost: $7.50

Certificate of Completion: $7.50 (completion of post-session questionnaire required).

Continuing Education Units are available for some professional groups.  To view a listing of CEU opportunities, click here.


Select One…




The Well-Woman Checkup

The Well Woman Checkup (Unedited Prerecorded Program)

What is the experienced care provider looking for when she’s doing those urine strips, palpating the uterus and taking blood pressure / pulse?  This presentation dissects the prenatal checkup and explores the rationale behind each routine test.

One of Gloria Lemay’s twelve Essentials of Maternal-Infant Care presentations for professionals and students who wish to expand their knowledge and skills, and delve into issues that arise repeatedly in clinical practice. This series is also valuable for parents who want to be fully informed about their choices in pregnancy and birth.

This session is 90 minutes in length.

Cost: $7.50

Certificate of Completion: $7.50 (completion of post-session questionnaire required).

Continuing Education Units are available for some professional groups.  To view a listing of CEU opportunities, click here.


 

Select One…



Healing from Birth Trauma Series

postpartum-image.gif

Artwork provided courtesy of Birgit @ http://cesarean-art.com/

Conscious Woman is committed to providing women with accurate, helpful information on methodologies that will assist them in addressing and healing traumatic childbirth experiences. This kind of healing requires a multifaceted approach, and one methodology alone is generally insufficient to overcome all of the issues that arise. The goal should always be to enable women to integrate their experience(s) into a new and improved sense of self.

Medical doctors in our society tend to provide women with antidepressants and ignore the underlying causes of postpartum depression and/or Traumatic Birth Syndrome (aka “Post-Traumatic Stress Responses”). Although medications may be useful in extreme life-threatening situations, in general they have limited utility, serving as a mere band-aid that cannot heal wounds that exist on many levels. Traumatic stress responses are often misdiagnosed as postpartum depression; although birth trauma can include depression as a symptom, it is much more than that.

Most therapists have little or no understanding of normal birth and its importance in establishing a healthy bond between mother and baby; they simply do not have the skills to properly treat postpartum depression because they fail to recognize one of its primary underlying causes.

At the physical level, many women live for years with sexual dysfunction and/or severe pain after cesarean surgery and/or episiotomies – ignored by care providers who are not knowledgeable in nor trained to address the aftermath of modern obstetric birth practices. Most wellness (complementary and alternative health care) providers, although well-intentioned, also have insufficient understanding of birth trauma and its underlying systemic issues. By failing to adapt their modalities to the unique needs of childbearing women, they rarely succeed in affecting the degree of healing that their patients require.

The Conscious Woman Healing from Birth Trauma resources consists of online resources, references and a selection of pre-recorded webinars by outstanding, experienced healers to the internet, each of whom  introduces their modality of choice and how it can be used to re-awaken, restore and enhance the conscious, empowered woman that resides in every one of us.

* * *

Healing from Birth Trauma Resources

Go to our Resources Section

 

Healing from Birth Trauma Pre-Recorded Programs

Moving From Pain to Peace with EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), with Eileen Sullivan

Restoration: Treating Adhesions, with Tanya Tarail, PT, MsT, CST

Helping Children Find Resilience and Balance After Trauma, with Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

 

Birth Announcement and New Years Greetings

We are pleased to announce the newest addition to our family,

GABRIEL ASHER
“strength” “happiness”

Gabriel Asher
Born into his father’s loving hands on December 22, 2008 at 10:17 p.m.

Weight: 7 pounds
Length: 19 inches
Head Circ: 14 inches
Most Importantly: nursing like a champ

* Raquel’s second VBAC and first homebirth *

Big sisters Amelia and Sofie are thrilled with their little brother, and mom is thriving as all (new) mothers should.

Gabriel Asher will be the first male child in our longstanding Jewish family tradition to remain intact.

A special thanks to Gloria Lemay for her phenomenal care during the labor, delivery and postpartum, and to our local backup midwife Kristine Lauria for her support and encouragement while Gloria was on her way to Colorado.

Happy (Belated) Holidays
and
Happy New Year!

NLP: A Birth Model for Change

The current model of birth is as deep a belief structure as the structure of our very nature. Trusting your body, trusting your mind and trusting your baby are entirely new concepts in the birthing world today. Making changes at this very core level takes skill and dedication.

In this two-part workshop series, Kathy Welter-Nichols introduces participants to a number of new technologies and science models that support gentle birthing practices, and explain why fear is so deeply enhanced through suggestion during birth.

In these two experiential online workshops, Kathy:

  • Reviews the effects of adrenaline and stress hormones and how these triggered responses are the foundation for the setting and seeding of misdirection during birth through the simple use of language; she also explains the use of language as a positive influence on a mother’s sense of well- being and the resultant effect on the brain’s chemistry.
  • Demonstrates how fear and the suggestion of something going wrong interrupt the limbic brain function; and when the limbic brain function is clouded or in retreat, how the fight or flight responses in the reptilian brain take over and slow and delay labor.
  • Presents the latest evidence from leading scientists and biologists that support a change in the brain chemistry, and how this will change the person’s belief about that experience.
  • Explains why women fall captive to the idea of pain and suffering and loss through mere suggestion during the intense experience of pregnancy and labor.
  • Examines the affect of positive suggestion, and how helping a woman remain calm, focused, relaxed and in touch with her body and her baby, encourages the natural responses in the woman’s body to release her infant in shorter times with less intense discomfort.
  • Shows how by utilizing the concepts of “mirror neurons” to connect with the infant, the mother both participates and guides her infant through the birthing process.
  • Teaches care providers, mothers and fathers to release whatever might be blocking them from achieving their birth experience, their way.

Listen to Kathy Welter-Nichols’ NLP Beach Induction in mp3!

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) refers to language (words, as well as other symbol systems, such as physical posture, gestures and related non-verbal forms of communication) as a function of the nervous system and its transformation into ‘subjective experience’. Put more simply, it focuses on the way we use our five senses to create an internal map of our reality, which we then use to navigate our way through the world. It is a basic premise of NLP that the quality of our ‘maps’ dictates the quality of our lives.

The findings of this workshop series are based in the training Kathy has provided for women and in her own in depth study of the triune brain system, archetypal studies, and the myths of our feminine and masculine that are playing out today in the birthing dramas we see on television and in the labor rooms in hospitals and birthing centers.

Get certified as an NLP practitioner! Click here to learn more.

Midwives, nurses, obstetricians and parents that Kathy has birthed with have seen the difference and remarked at the presence of the mother, the control she has during the birth experience and ultimately the incredible bonds that occur with both mother and infant un-medicated through relatively short labors. Science as the partner in birth takes on a whole new relevance in support of this model for change.

Time after time, mothers under this kind of guidance give birth with success and empowerment. If these techniques are that effective, why aren’t more women choosing this path to birth?

This presentation is 180 minutes in length (90 minutes for Part I, 90 minutes for Part II).

Cost: $15.00

Certificate of Completion: $7.50 (completion of post-session questionnaire required).

Continuing Education Units are available for some professional groups.  To view a listing of CEU opportunities, click here.

Select One…

 

Helping Children Find Resilience and Balance after Trauma

This presentation by Stephanie Mines, Ph.D., founder of the TARA Approach for the Resolution of Shock and Trauma, focuses on teaching language and energy medicine that can be used immediately and safely by parents and care providers.

The TARA Approach for children combines subtle, specific touch on meridian pathways with healing stories. A simple map of the body is provided with clearly identified locations that stimulate innate healing responses. Story structures designed to encourage neurological sequencing blend with this energy medicine treatment for the complete resolution of shock and trauma.

In this presentation Dr. Mines focuses on the following situations:

  • Babies’ experiences of prenatal and birth trauma;
  • Medical procedures;
  • Severe accidents;
  • Sexual abuse;
  • Adoption;
  • Divorce, separation; and
  • Loss

Dr. Mines is known for her remarkable capacity to evoke the healer and storyteller in everyone. She developed Jin Shin TARA, an acupressure like system that swiftly and gently sends messages of relaxation and balance to the nervous system. Stephanie’s storytelling protocols for children are now being tested in clinical trials and have been shown to be effective for children with cognitive struggles resulting from early shock. She is the author of The Dreaming Child: How Children Can Help Themselves Recover from Illness and Injury (Dom Project, 2003).

This presentation is 90 minutes in length.

Cost: $7.50

Certificate of Completion: $7.50 (completion of post-session questionnaire required).

Continuing Education Units are available for some professional groups.  To view a listing of CEU opportunities, click here.


Select One…




Kathy Welter-Nichols, CHT, HBCE

Kathy Welter-Nichols, CHT, HBCE, is a Master Hypnotist, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner, & Licensed Trainer of NLP.  Design Human Engineering (DHE) Specialist, Certified HypnoBirthing Educator, and Certified Doula and IEMT practitioner. Profoundly focused on taking women back into their personal place of power, Kathy is the co-owner of Thought Models, Ways of the Wise Woman  & Just Be Well Canada. Her recent programs include “Bulimia Breakthrough” a three day intervention for women suffering from Eating Disorders.  She is the co-creator of Shaman Inside, and Mastery of Deep Trance States ® programs for individuals seeking to know themselves at the deepest levels. These programs are available in the UK, Italy, Peru as well as in Canada. She has received the Volunteer of the Year Award – Spirit of Community for her contributions to her community in selfless giving to those experiencing life threatening illness.

Kathy’s writings include:  Bulimia Breakthrough; Soul Maps the Overlay of Consciousness; Shaman Inside;  Mastery of Deep Trance States® ; My Birth, My Way;  Meditation, the Way of Effortless. In addition, Kathy has an extensive number of CD’s & MP3’s for personal improvement, birth preparation, increasing self esteem, reducing stress, and targeting specific issues like smoking, habits and OCD.

Kathy’s attends her births as labour support and uses NLP and Hypnosis to assist mothers in preparation for birth and during birth – advancing mothers into states that enable them to go beyond their belief maps; their own internal fears are set aside and they experience birth and themselves in an entirely new way. Doctors and midwives alike have remarked on Kathy’s skill and calming presence in the birthing room assisting mothers and fathers to create remarkable birth experiences.

In addition to training couples in hypnobirthing, Kathy offers programs for VBAC moms and for those experiencing postpartum depression. She sees clients one on one in Vancouver, and has an active practice providing treatment for a variety of issues that are easily resolved in 3-4 sessions.  She lives and works with her husband Harry Nichols in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. They have two children and three granddaughters!

All training dates are available on : www.thoughtmodels.com, www.bulimiabreakthrough.ca www.waysofthewisewoman.com www.shamaninside.com www.deeptrancestates.com

To contact Kathy:   welterk@shaw.ca,  1.604.421.1722;  SKYPE, or on the websites

Kathy’s Presentations:

NLP: A Birth Model for Change

The current model of birth is as deep a belief structure as the structure of our very nature. Trusting your body, trusting your mind and trusting your baby are entirely new concepts in the birthing world today. Making changes at this very core level takes skill and dedication.

In this two-part workshop series, Kathy Welter-Nichols introduces participants to a number of new technologies and science models that support gentle birthing practices, and explain why fear is so deeply enhanced through suggestion during birth.

In these two experiential online workshops, Kathy:

  • Reviews the effects of adrenaline and stress hormones and how these triggered responses are the foundation for the setting and seeding of misdirection during birth through the simple use of language; she also explains the use of language as a positive influence on a mother’s sense of well- being and the resultant effect on the brain’s chemistry.
  • Demonstrates how fear and the suggestion of something going wrong interrupt the limbic brain function; and when the limbic brain function is clouded or in retreat, how the fight or flight responses in the reptilian brain take over and slow and delay labor.
  • Presents the latest evidence from leading scientists and biologists that support a change in the brain chemistry, and how this will change the person’s belief about that experience.
  • Explains why women fall captive to the idea of pain and suffering and loss through mere suggestion during the intense experience of pregnancy and labor.
  • Examines the affect of positive suggestion, and how helping a woman remain calm, focused, relaxed and in touch with her body and her baby, encourages the natural responses in the woman’s body to release her infant in shorter times with less intense discomfort.
  • Shows how by utilizing the concepts of “mirror neurons” to connect with the infant, the mother both participates and guides her infant through the birthing process.
  • Teaches care providers, mothers and fathers to release whatever might be blocking them from achieving their birth experience, their way.

Listen to Kathy Welter-Nichols’ NLP Beach Induction in mp3!

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) refers to language (words, as well as other symbol systems, such as physical posture, gestures and related non-verbal forms of communication) as a function of the nervous system and its transformation into ‘subjective experience’. Put more simply, it focuses on the way we use our five senses to create an internal map of our reality, which we then use to navigate our way through the world. It is a basic premise of NLP that the quality of our ‘maps’ dictates the quality of our lives.

The findings of this workshop series are based in the training Kathy has provided for women and in her own in depth study of the triune brain system, archetypal studies, and the myths of our feminine and masculine that are playing out today in the birthing dramas we see on television and in the labor rooms in hospitals and birthing centers.

Midwives, nurses, obstetricians and parents that Kathy has birthed with have seen the difference and remarked at the presence of the mother, the control she has during the birth experience and ultimately the incredible bonds that occur with both mother and infant un-medicated through relatively short labors. Science as the partner in birth takes on a whole new relevance in support of this model for change.

Time after time, mothers under this kind of guidance give birth with success and empowerment. If these techniques are that effective, why aren’t more women choosing this path to birth?

This is a 3-hour prerecorded program.

Cost: $15.00

Certificate of Completion: $7.50 (completion of post-session questionnaire required).

Continuing Education Units are available for some professional groups.  To view a listing of CEU opportunities, click here.

Select One…