PRENATAL PLANNING: CHOOSING HOME BIRTH
Ask yourself the following questions if you are considering giving birth to your baby at home. The more times you answer yes, the more appropriate home birth is for you.
- Are you having a healthy, low-risk pregnancy?
- Do you trust your body's natural ability to give birth?
- Is your primary motive for home birth a strong desire and commitment to birth at home? (Though home birth can save money, thrift should not be a primary or even secondary motive.)
- Are you secondarily motivated by a desire to avoid episiotomy, cesarean section, or epidural; a wish to be surrounded by loved ones; a desire for freedom to move around, change positions, take a shower, and eat freely during labor; and/or a yearning for the comforts of home and familiar surroundings?
- Are you willing to devote time and energy to finding the right birth attendant and assembling all the necessary gear, knowledge, and contacts?
- Do you feel comfortable taking charge of not only your birth experience, but also your health and your baby's health?
- Does your partner fully support your decision to give birth at home?
- Do you have a birth attendant who has attended many home births and is experienced and well informed in matters relevant to your circumstances?
- Do you have a fail-safe plan for transfer to a hospital, if necessary?
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ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE IN PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH: MISUSE
Originally, when Alexander discovered that he was stiffening his neck and pulling his head back, and creating tension throughout his body, he thought that he was the only person to do this, but his investigations confirmed that this pattern of 'misuse' is common to the vast majority of people.
The effect of this misuse is that it interferes with the head/neck/back relationship, which means that a high degree of muscular tension is needed to maintain upright posture and for movement. This muscular tension is distributed unevenly through the body, with an excessive amount in some areas and too little tension in others, and there is a lack of interaction between the muscle groups. Obviously this brings about the very opposite of what we find with good use: being upright becomes an effort, there is a limited range of movement, the joints are stiff and breathing is impaired.
As with good use, misuse refers to our 'thinking'. It involves performing activities in a habitual and automatic way that is harmful to overall use and functioning. This could mean that we allow our emotional state to affect our musculature adversely, for example if we are worried about something we let tension build up in the neck muscles. Or it could be how we perform everyday activities. Observing people in action, we often see a great deal of effort being used, in parts of the body that are not directly involved in the activity. Check for yourself how tightly you hold your toothbrush while cleaning your teeth - or how tightly you are holding this book right now! You will probably find that, like most people, you are using an excessive amount of effort in holding what is a very light object, and in a task that actually requires a minimum of force.
People misuse themselves in different ways. Broadly speaking, a person may hold himself up with too much tension - the 'sergeant major' approach - or he may 'collapse', with over-relaxed muscles. In practice, of course, it is not as clear cut as this; both forms of misuse involve a combination of excess tension and over-laxity. For example, even in someone with collapsed posture, only some muscles are 'over-relaxed', and therefore others have to work all the harder in compensation, and are over-tense.
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Womens health
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