Heart’s Work & What’s New

On June 3rd, 2010, posted in: Newsletter by Ginny Phang

In this issue:
– Heart’s Work
– What’s new at Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary — LOADS!! Scroll down to find out!
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An invi­ta­tion to fly up to Sri Lanka again this week­end left me feel­ing both torn and grin­ning from ear to ear. I was just there 2 weeks ago.

I have recently returned from an 8 week sab­bat­i­cal (Mar/​Apr) from trav­el­ing to Viet­nam, Bangkok, Jakarta , Bali and back in Sin­ga­pore to teach Hyp­no­Birthing to expec­tant moth­ers, train peers to be Hyp­no­Birthing Prac­ti­tion­ers and DONA Birth Doula cer­ti­fi­ca­tion work­shop as I am a trainer for both orga­ni­za­tions. Whilst it wasn’t a sab­bat­i­cal in its truest sense as I was work­ing through the 8 weeks, it cer­tainly was for me and it was such an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence from both a per­sonal and pro­fes­sional front, an oppor­tu­nity to grow and fur­ther develop myself even more. And more inter­est­ingly, was learn­ing about the dif­fer­ent birthing cul­tures and meet­ing peo­ple from the birthing com­mu­nity in these coun­tries. It was almost like “United Nations”, birthing as the com­mon theme that weaves all our lives together.

After 5 weeks on the road in 5 dif­fer­ent cities, I went on to Bali to vol­un­teer for Anthony Rob­bins in his Date with Des­tiny sem­i­nar. Hav­ing attended Date with Des­tiny in 2007 which lib­er­ated me in many ways and took my life to the next level, I went to vol­un­teer with an objec­tive to serve. Never did I expect that the gift of giv­ing would be returned to me a thou­sand fold, if not more – I left Bali with the walls of my heart torn down. And with more avail­able space, allowed even more good things to hap­pen in my life.

That was when I received word that I received par­tial fel­low­ship for my Post­par­tum Doula Trainer appli­ca­tion from DONA. I was both elated and dis­ap­pointed that I did receive par­tial fel­low­ship and not full fel­low­ship for the DONA post­par­tum trainer, yet it turned out to be a bless­ing in dis­guise. I was also at a point where there were sev­eral doors opened for me, so I had to choose which door I wanted to walk through. True to my heart, I decided that I was going to going to the annual DONA con­fer­ence and within 24 hours of decid­ing, I received full spon­sor­ship to cover the rest of the fel­low­ship. I was over­whelmed by immense grat­i­tude and joy and was in tears as my heart opened and cried. I was touched beyond words and actions by the love and sup­port I am given by oth­ers as I basked in grat­i­tude. The expe­ri­ence was sim­ply amaz­ing. As I trusted the Uni­verse, it gives you what you need and what you ask for.

In less than 2 weeks, I was off again to Sri Lanka with a good friend for a loca­tion research trip for my busi­ness, as well as some rest and relax­ation and vol­un­teer work. I went to meet the child of whom I spon­sored under www​.smileon​sri​lanka​.org and that expe­ri­ence itself, ripped my heart so wide open that I took on the role of being the Sin­ga­pore rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the orga­ni­za­tion and man­aged to get 18 spon­sors in a week at US$180 per child. One of the spon­sors, an ex-​client (I was there for both her births) was going through a mis­car­riage and bleed­ing nat­u­rally and she wrote in to spon­sor two chil­dren. I broke down in tears. Lit­tle would I have known that tak­ing on a project like this, I was touch­ing the hearts of so many lives, and my heart opened up even more, filled and over­flow­ing with love and grat­i­tude for all beings.

Not a day has passed since that I do not shed tears of joy and grat­i­tude daily. As I kick-​start my day ask­ing myself daily: “How can I sense the grace & divin­ity in myself & those around me even more so as to mag­nify the love that we have within our­selves & oth­ers?” — the Uni­verse has kindly guided me through my inter­ac­tions daily with the lessons I need to learn, the expe­ri­ences I need to have, and a posi­tion to inspire, empower and trans­form lives – mak­ing a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in every way!

So here I am, left feel­ing both torn about leav­ing because of my clients AND grin­ning from ear to ear with the idea of fly­ing up to Sri Lanka again this week­end to attend the cer­e­mony of the kids receiv­ing their cer­tifi­cates of spon­sor­ship and the oppor­tu­nity and plea­sure of expos­ing my 9 year old son, Kieran, to the good­ness of this project and share the fruits of our labor with my team in Sri Lanka. The Uni­verse shows me the answer in my every day experiences.

I was with my client at the clinic to meet her doc­tor, some­one whom I have not worked with before. They’re first time par­ents who are fac­ing some preg­nancy com­pli­ca­tions and I was there to intro­duce myself to her doc­tor and explain what my role would be and estab­lish rap­port. As the doc­tor was doing the scan to see the baby and mea­sure if there are ade­quate waters in the womb — which is an indica­tive to mea­sure which road my client needs to take – the com­bi­na­tion of the ten­sion & fear from my clients, the sound of the baby’s heart­beat and the antic­i­pa­tion of the results, came the answer.

The events that played out the entire day was sim­ply a dec­la­ra­tion of my pri­mary ques­tion and my val­ues. It’s no won­der that con­tri­bu­tion ranks num­ber two on my val­ues’ list, and what I am will­ing to forgo in place to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence, mag­nify and inspire lives. My heart’s work is here for now. I trust that every­thing is as it should be and what­ever will be, will unfold at the right time.

Namaste, Ginny

Smile on Sri Lanka
If you would like to spon­sor a child on www​.smileon​sri​lanka​.org, feel free to drop me an email to find out more. Here are some pics of the kids who are spon­sored:
http://​www​.face​book​.com/​a​l​b​u​m​.​p​h​p​?​a​i​d​=​2​0​3​7​7​6​&​a​m​p​;​i​d​=​5​9​1​1​4​6​1​7​9​&​a​m​p​;​l​=​3​d​4​5​d​a​1​06f

“Hi Ginny, will research on it first. Frankly, we are very cau­tious where our money goes. But just want to share this with you — your spirit of giv­ing is infec­tious. It brought me and my fam­ily to think about giv­ing and for a start, we have cho­sen The World Food pro­gramme. If you have not posted, donat­ing to the less for­tu­nate, is just a thing at the back of out minds. U know the love of God, it takes a spark to pass it on … and u are that spark.”

“Your spir­i­tu­al­ity shines through in every moment of every day in every thought, word and action you do. It’s who you are Ginny! You are BEAUTIFUL and you SHINE. It’s so much more than your 10 mins of med­i­ta­tion in the morn­ing. It’s who you are to the core of your being! And I love you for that.”

All events require reg­is­tra­tion. To enquire or reg­is­ter for any of the events, please con­tact Ginny at (+65) 9475 1585 or drop her an email at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com with your name, hp num­ber & email.

All events require reg­is­tra­tion. To enquire or reg­is­ter for any of the events, please con­tact Ginny at (+65) 9475 1585 or drop her an email at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com with your name, hp num­ber & email.

FREE Hyp­no­Birthing Taster
A FREE pre­view on Hyp­no­birthing to get a taste of what is it all about.
Sat­ur­day, 12 June, 11.30am – 12.30pm
Sun­day, 4 July, 9.30 – 10.30am

Sun­day

Hyp­no­Birthing Ante­na­tal Classes sched­ule for June – July 2010

A com­plete ante­na­tal pro­gram using mind-​body tech­niques to enable par­ents to have an easy, short, relaxed & com­fort­able birth to wel­come their babies into this world as gen­tly as pos­si­ble. $495 per cou­ple for the course See sched­ule here:

Hyp­no­birthing classes — Sin­ga­pore
• Sun­days, 11am-​6pm: 6 & 13 June 2010 (Inten­sive)
• Sat­ur­day & Sun­day, 11am – 6pm: 19 & 20 June 2010 (Inten­sive – 1 week­end)
• Sat­ur­days, 2 – 6pm: 3, 10, 17 & 24 July 2010
• Sun­days, 11am-​6pm: 4 & 11 July 2010 (Inten­sive)
• Sun­days, 11am-​6pm: 18 & 25 July 2010 (Intensive)

Hyp­no­birthing & Par­ent­ing classes – Jakarta, Indone­sia
• Hyp­no­birthing classes: Sat­ur­day & Sun­day, 11am — 6pm: 26 & 27 June 2010
• Breast­feed­ing & Par­ent­ing classes: Mon­day, 9am – 2pm: 28 June 2010

Par­ent­ing Classes sched­ule for 2010
The objec­tive of the Par­ent­ing Classes is to pre­pare par­ents for the first 6 weeks of life and there­after. Con­sist­ing of 2 ses­sions of 4 hours each, we focus on breast­feed­ing, how to help baby in sleep health­ily, and how to soothe a cry­ing baby. We also dis­cuss par­ent­ing styles, chang­ing dynam­ics of the rela­tion­ship and post­par­tum care and changes. This course comes with a CD and mate­ri­als and cost $195.
• Sat­ur­days, 9-​1pm: 17 & 24 July 2010

Lunchtime Sup­port Group every Tues­day, 11am — 1pm – bring a potluck! *Resume 1st June 2010*
A free lunchtime sup­port group for expec­tant & new par­ents to gain peer sup­port, ask about breast­feed­ing, baby-​related & par­ent­ing ques­tions. We also have a weigh­ing scale avail­able, max­i­mum 10kg though!

Infant Baby Mas­sage Class with Mar­lene Parker
Sundays,6, 13 & 20 June 2010 from 9-​10am
3 ses­sions 1 hour each — $150.00 per couple

Baby Sign­ing Time Sign­ing Course with Ali­cia Tan
Sat­ur­days, 12, 19, 26 June & 3 July from 9 – 11am
4 ses­sions 1 hour each — $320 per per­son; $450 per couple

www​.lit​tle​sign​ing​hands​.blogspot​.com
Would you like to com­mu­ni­cate with your child before they can talk? Do you want to increase your child’s read­ing and lan­guage abil­i­ties?
Sci­en­tific stud­ies sug­gest that “typ­i­cal” chil­dren who learn to sign:
• have higher IQ scores
• are bet­ter adjusted
• read at an ear­lier age
Many par­ents observe that by learn­ing to com­mu­ni­cate ear­lier, the “ter­ri­ble twos” are not so ter­ri­ble—chil­dren can use a sign instead of throw­ing a tantrum to express their needs. For the first time, Baby Sign­ing Time course is avail­able here in Sin­ga­pore! Ali­cia Tan is the first Baby Sign­ing Time Instruc­tor in Sin­ga­pore cer­ti­fied by the Sign­ing Time Acad­emy. She is a sign­ing mum and has been sign­ing to her child for more than a year. She decided to embark on teach­ing it to share the ben­e­fits of sign­ing she has enjoyed, with other par­ents. In the course, you will learn age appro­pri­ate signs such as “milk”, “more”, “ball”, “hurt”, car”, etc., which enables you to com­mu­ni­cate with your baby. This course spans over 4 ses­sions, 2 hours each. Expect the class to be inter­ac­tive and learn through songs as you learn to sign sign sign away!

Love & Logic Par­ent­ing Work­shop with Paula Hug­gins
Tues­days, 15, 22, 29 June 7 & 6 July from 7–9.30pm
4 ses­sions 2.5 hours each — $265 per per­son; Bring another Friend/​Relative/​Spouse and pay $250 per per­son.
To reg­is­ter: http://​events​.con​stant​con​tact​.com/​r​e​g​i​s​t​e​r​/​e​v​e​n​t​?​o​e​i​d​k​=​a​0​7​e​2​w​u​b​x​n​j​7​5​a​0​f​807

The joys of par­ent­ing… Most par­ents would agree that par­ent­ing is pos­si­bly the most reward­ing and inspi­ra­tional jour­ney they’ve ever taken. At the same time, it can be the most frus­trat­ing and stress­ful role expe­ri­enced in adult life leav­ing them won­der­ing if there is a light at the end of the tun­nel! With­out a doubt, the major­ity of par­ents take their role seri­ously and would do any­thing humanly pos­si­ble to ensure that they raise respon­si­ble kids who are capa­ble from within them­selves of meet­ing life’s chal­lenges as they arise. But we all have days when we won­der if we will ever man­age to achieve this – or whether we’ll sur­vive the stress of get­ting them there!
So how should par­ents go about this daunt­ing task of rais­ing respon­si­ble and resilient chil­dren? How can they appro­pri­ately equip their chil­dren to move from total depen­dence to inde­pen­dence in a mere 18 years
The Love & Logic approach pro­vides par­ents with a prac­ti­cal tool-​kit that empha­sizes pos­i­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, devel­op­ment of healthy rela­tion­ships using empa­thy and nat­ural con­se­quence. It is applic­a­ble from tod­dler­hood to teenage years. Take this oppor­tu­nity to hone your par­ent­ing skills and come along to learn, laugh and share your expe­ri­ences with other parents.

DONA Birth Doula Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Work­shop
Inter­ested in becom­ing a Doula? Come join us for a life-​changing expe­ri­ence and be in a posi­tion to inspire, mag­nify and make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in people’s lives. Next course will be held some­time Aug/​Sep. Dates to be confirmed.

Four Trimesters Library Books
Bor­rowed a book from us or have books to donate? Kindly have it returned by hand or by reg­is­tered mail to: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd, 33 Taman Warna Sin­ga­pore 276369, so that we can have our annual inven­tory count and loan the books to the other moms. More than 50 books are loaned out at this moment, so kindly help them find their way back to where they belong.

To reg­is­ter for any events or classes (seats are lim­ited), please email Ginny at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com the fol­low­ing:
Name:
Partner’s name:
Esti­mated due date (if applic­a­ble):
Hand­phone:
Email:
Event attending:

Wish­ing you and your fam­i­lies a Happy Vesak Day!!!

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Four Trimesters on Medi­a­Corp Radio

On May 22nd, 2010, posted in: BirthTalk!, Newsletter by Ginny Phang

Hear Ginny on Medi­a­corp radio with Anita Kapoor!

Down­load the pod­cast (right click and save as) here!
:)

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Ginny fea­tured on Click​net​work​.tv

On January 18th, 2010, posted in: BirthTalk!, Newsletter by Ginny Phang

A hilar­i­ous inter­view with Shan & Ross on Click​net​work​.tv

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In Mem­ory of Max­ence — Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary Decem­ber 2009 Newslet­ter 13

On January 18th, 2010, posted in: Newsletter by Ginny Phang

In this issue:
– In Mem­ory of Max­ence
– What clients say
– What’s new at Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary — LOADS!! Scroll down to find out!
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Dear Max­ence,

The clock turned 00:00, my client was push­ing vig­or­ously. The entire labor has been so pre­car­i­ous, with no clear indi­ca­tions whether she would be able to have a suc­cess­ful vbac (vagi­nal birth after a cesarean) or not. I’ve been with her since 5am, not count­ing the calls I have been receiv­ing through the night and the home­birth the night before. The doc­tor and I exchanged a glance that only the both of us under­stood – today was the first time in my entire Doula career to have a client birth on my birth­day, and for the Doc­tor, he has had 15 births on his birth­day (Yes, he actu­ally has a record of every­thing!!!!). Yet as she is push­ing, hav­ing been in a tough labor for more than 24 hours, finally being so close to deliv­ery, I sud­denly felt over­whelmed with tears, hold­ing back from sob­bing, as today marks one month since you passed away.

There is not a day that I don’t think about you and your fam­ily. Keep­ing in close con­tact with your Mommy, I am cry­ing after exchang­ing smses with your mommy, espe­cially when she opens her heart up to me, shar­ing the pain that she is going through.

You may have been too young to know this but I only met your mommy about two months before she gave birth to your sis­ter Julie where I was her birth doula. The first thing that struck me about your mother was her beauty and her very strong sense of self. Even though it was a pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship, we had a con­nec­tion and got along really well.

It was dur­ing the post­na­tal visit when I first met you, active and run­ning around despite not feel­ing well and you were still get­ting used to hav­ing Julie as the new addi­tion to the fam­ily. Apart from
that, I got to know you through other peo­ple & the rela­tion­ship you had with them and what they had to say about you, your things that are lying around the house and the pic­tures that I’ve seen of you.

On the day that you passed on, I came home exhausted after a 12 hour work day when a friend called to can­cel the break­fast meet­ing together with your mommy and that’s how I found out about your pass­ing. In shock, I con­tacted your mommy to offer to babysit Julie through­out and was glad that she accepted so that she could attend to you.

My dad died when I was 2.5 years old in an acci­dent and when my son Kieran turned 2.5 years old I had an irra­tional fear of him dying, it was only until he was about 3 years old did that fear dis­si­pate on
it’s own. So when I heard about your death and wit­ness­ing what your mother and fam­ily had to go through, it felt like my worse fears were being played out. Dur­ing those days of being there with your fam­ily at the wake and keep­ing in touch with your mommy there­after, I can only imag­ine the pain that your mommy is going through.

I imag­ined that I would be strong on the out­side, for the sake of my fam­ily and for the sake of mov­ing on but on the inside I am crum­bling and tired of being strong. I imag­ined that there would be a day when I feel so numbed to the pain and would have appeared to move on but some­thing would trig­ger the pain to the point of hys­te­ria and dyfunc­tion, that all I really needed would be to let it out, go insane with grieve to feel it fully and just be and scream within the walls of my heart “Why me? Why you?”. I imag­ined that if I would hold on to the pain it would help me to remem­ber and feel you close in my heart. I imag­ined being with chil­dren and won­der­ing had you still been alive, would you be doing what they are doing or even more. I mourn for the loss of you, I mourn for the loss of us and many many many other moments and mem­o­ries that are not to be. I won­der if life is still worth liv­ing? And with all this pain, what really hurts is that I miss you so much, the sounds of you, the warmth of your body as you snug­gle into our bed in the mid­dle of the nights and all your lit­tle tricks and treats that makes the house­hold come alive. And if it doesn’t make it bet­ter, is that my breasts are still mak­ing milk for you. Every day there is a reminder of you yet when I want to reach out to you, you are not there and I feel locked up in an asy­lum. I miss you, I love you and I know not what to do except that if I could wish for any­thing in the world right now, that would be for you to be in my arms right now.

I can only imag­ine and feel the tears and the pain in my heart when­ever I think of you and your fam­ily. I can only be there in what­ever ways pos­si­ble to offer a lis­ten­ing ear and a shoul­der to cry
on for your mother. And this Max­ence, I can and will do.

I trust that you are with God and in his house right now, with the angels pro­tect­ing you as I keep you in my prayers and in my heart. Though I may not have really known you my dear lit­tle lit­tle Max­ence, you live on in our hearts. Blessed be thy soul.

With all my love,
Aunty Ginny

Max­ence passed away on 23rd Novem­ber at the age of 2.5 years old, and he is the mid­dle child of a fam­ily of 3 chil­dren.
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What Clients Say:
I usu­ally get swamped with emails after a newslet­ter has been sent out, here are some of what client’s do say…

Dear Ginny,

I really enjoyed read­ing your reflec­tions and expe­ri­ences as a doula in your news let­ter n updates. I have been deeply moved by your cur­rent news let­ter and how all your births had been so lov­ing and calm. I have the men­tal images of the births as you described them in words.

I remem­ber my expe­ri­ence some 5 months plus ago as I laboured drug free and gave birth to my beau­ti­ful baby, it brings tears to my eyes as I recall this expe­ri­ence and Read­ing ur newslet­ter brought me back into the whole expe­ri­ence again. It’s so amaz­ing and I realised that I need to thank you once again, for your call­ing, your lov­ing and assur­ing words and pres­ence and your atti­tude towards your own life and the peo­ple around you.

Even though we didn’t engage you as our doula but the classes helped and because of that my baby was born gen­tly and calmly into this whole au nat­ural. It was a life chang­ing expe­ri­ence and our fam­ily glows with such pride every time ash n I share this expe­ri­ence with friends, fam­ily and even strangers and we have a cute mon­key to show!!

Thanks Ginny, I appre­ci­ate your call­ing and your lov­ing duty to make this world a brighter place for mum­mies and babies.

God bless u and happy days ahead,
Diana

~

Just thought of you. I hope all is well! Thank you so much for shar­ing these women’s sto­ries. Expe­ri­enc­ing their sto­ries through you always uplifts me and I feel so thank­ful to life for being a woman, a mother and for hav­ing given birth in Sin­ga­pore with you at my side.

Akiko

~

Dear Ginny,

Thank you for shar­ing. I am so touched read­ing these.
Elaine is two year old now and I felt the warmth and hap­pi­ness when­ever I recall my birth expe­ri­ence and the hyn­po­birthing and breast­feed­ing classes I attended. Every­thing was so won­der­ful and com­fort­able in prepa­ra­tion for the birth of Elaine.

Thank you for striv­ing to make a difference.

I may not com­pletely under­stand what you went through and strug­gles in your being, but I think your atti­tude, per­spec­tives and expe­ri­ences like no oth­ers have made you a whole­some per­son in every way. A path and jour­ney of no regrets. Kieran will be proud to have a mummy like you. I am full of salute for you.

Wish­ing you strength, hope and lots of faith in all that you do.

Thank you.

regards, Jovin :)

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All events require reg­is­tra­tion. To enquire or reg­is­ter for any of the events, please con­tact Ginny at 9475 1585 or drop her an email at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com with your name, hp num­ber & email.

Open House on Sun­day, 10 Jan­u­ary 2-​6pm
2-​3pm: A FREE pre­view on Hyp­no­birthing to get a taste of what is it all about.
3.30–4.30pm: Plan­ning a water­birth, come for our work­shop and find out what it is all about *Free for the launch*
5-​6pm: Our guest speaker, Kirsten Han­nah, from Osteo­pathic Health­care, will speak about Osteopa­thy and preg­nancy, birth and baby related issues.

Hyp­no­birthing Ante­na­tal Classes sched­ule for 2010
A com­plete ante­na­tal pro­gram using mind-​body tech­niques to enable par­ents to have an easy, short, relaxed & com­fort­able birth to wel­come their babies into this world as gen­tly as pos­si­ble. $495 for 4 ses­sions, 3.5−4 hours per ses­sion. See sched­ule here:
Hyp­no­birthing classes
• Sun­days, 9am-​1pm: 3, 10, 17 & 24 Jan 2010
• Sat­ur­days, 1.30–5.30pm: 16, 23, 30 Jan & 6 Feb 2010
• Sun­days, 11am-​6pm: 31 Jan & 7 Feb 2010 (Inten¬sive)
• Sat­ur­days, 11am-​6pm: 20 & 27 Feb 2010 (Inten¬sive)
• Sat­ur­days, 1.30–5.30pm: 24 Apr, 1, 8 & 15 May 2010
• Sun­days, 9am-​1pm: 9, 16, 23 & 30 May 2010
• Sat­ur­days, 1.30–5.30pm: 22, 29 May, 5 & 12 June 2010

Par­ent­ing Classes sched­ule for 2010
The objec­tive of the Par­ent­ing Classes is to pre­pare par­ents for the first 6 weeks of life and there­after. Con­sist­ing of 2 ses­sions of 4 hours each, we focus on breast­feed­ing, how to help baby in sleep health­ily, and how to soothe a cry­ing baby. We also dis­cuss par­ent­ing styles, chang­ing dynam­ics of the rela­tion­ship and post­par­tum care and changes. This course comes with a CD and mate­ri­als and cost $195.
• Sun­days, 2-​6pm: 17 & 24 Jan 2009
• Sun­days, 9-​1pm: 21 & 28 Feb 2010
• Sun¬days, 2-​6pm: 23 & 30 May 2010

Lunchtime Sup­port Group every Tues­day, 11.30am – 1.30pm – bring a potluck! *Resume 6th Jan­u­ary 2010*
A free lunchtime sup­port group for expec­tant & new par­ents to gain peer sup­port, ask about breast­feed­ing, baby-​related & par­ent­ing ques­tions. We also have a weigh­ing scale avail­able, max­i­mum 10kg though! From Jan 2010, we will spend the first hour dis­cussing the top­ics below and the next hour just chat­ting and ask­ing any other ques­tions that you have or get hands on help with breast­feed­ing.
Wk 1– Cre­ate your own Med­i­Box
Wk 2 — Com­mon Baby Ail­ments
Wk 3 — Alter­na­tive Cures for Com­mon Ail­ments
Wk 4 — Book­club Week (Dis­cus­sion on diff authors on ‘Sleep’)

*NEW* Baby Mas­sage classes to start in March 2010; DONA Doula Train­ing in April 2010; Hyp­no­birthing work­shops and Prac­ti­tioner train­ing in Viet­nam and Jakarta between Mar 2010, all details will be released in the next newsletter.

Pre­na­tal Yoga with Colleen Sim­monds
Pre­na­tal Yoga: Sat­ur­days 11.30am – 12.45pm
Sin­gle Class $25; 4 class pack­age $80; 8 class pack­age $150.00

Four Trimesters Library books
Bor­rowed a book from us or have books to donate? Kindly have it returned by hand or by reg­is­tered mail to: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd, 33 Taman Warna Sin­ga­pore 276369, so that we can have our annual inven­tory count and loan the books to the other moms. More than 50 books are loaned out at this moment, so kindly help them find their way back to where they belong.

To reg­is­ter for any events or classes (seats are lim­ited), please email Ginny at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com the fol­low­ing:
Name:
Partner’s name:
Esti­mated due date (if applic­a­ble):
Hand­phone:
Email:
Event attending:

Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary is born and avail­able for rent
Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary is ide­ally look­ing for mer­chants with com­pli­men­tary prod­ucts and ser­vices to share rental space. Liv­ing room area is avail­able for rent on an hourly ad-​hoc basis as well as on a per­ma­nent basis. Extras such as pro­jec­tor, lap­top, pro­jec­tor screen and refresh­ments are all avail­able. We cur­rently have reg­u­lar work­shops and classes such as First Aid, infant nutri­tion and yoga classes avail­able. If you are inter­ested or know some­one who would be, please con­tact Ginny at 9475 1585 or email her at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com
Link to pic­tures here:

http://​www​.face​book​.com/​a​l​b​u​m​.​p​h​p​?​a​i​d​=​1​0​1​2​5​0​&​a​m​p​;​i​d​=​5​9​1​1​4​6​1​7​9​&​a​m​p​;​l​=​b​9​f​6​d​f​a​a21

Wish­ing you and your fam­i­lies a Merry Christ­mas and a Happy New Year!!!

–
Doulaing with a warm heart because birth mat­ters,
Ginny Phang
Doula, Child­birth Edu­ca­tor, 5PATH cer­ti­fied Hyp­nother­a­pist, Hyp­noFer­til­ity & Hyp­no­Birthing Prac­ti­tioner
W: www​.four​trimesters​.com
A: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd. 33 Taman Warna. (Hol­land Vil­lage) Sin­ga­pore 276369.
T: (65) 9475 1585

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A Doula’s reflec­tions on the tales of many births — Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary Novem­ber 2009 Newslet­ter 12

On November 6th, 2009, posted in: Newsletter by fourtrimesters

In this issue:
– A Doula’s reflec­tions on the tales of many births
– What clients say
– What’s hap­pen­ing at Four Trimesters Birth Sanctuary

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Born in the Caul

36 hours before I was sup­posed to leave for an impromptu vaca­tion, Sab­rina calls me at mid­night to inform me that she thinks she is in early labor. Still out under the moon­light look­ing for her miss­ing dog, I encour­aged her to go home and rest.

I woke up in the morn­ing jump­ing out of bed pan­ick­ing that I must have missed her call, only to real­ize that she still hasn’t called, so I dialed her num­ber, labor was still incon­sis­tent she reported. An appoint­ment with Dr. F.M Lai at 1pm showed that she was only 3-​4cm dilated, so they decided to go home first to get some lunch and pack up before head­ing to the hos­pi­tal. An hour and the half later, Jeff calls me to inform me about the nature of her surges, 5 mins apart but climb­ing in inten­sity. We agreed to meet at Mount Alver­nia Hos­pi­tal, with me trav­el­ing from the East, and them trav­el­ing from Seng Kang, in the pour­ing rain.

3.45pm They arrived at the hos­pi­tal and Sab­rina is 7-​8cm. I arrived 15mins after they did and Sab­rina was clearly breath­ing down but her water bag was still intact. Jeff went down to get admis­sions done, and the nurses were bustling around prep­ping the room for deliv­ery. As for me, my eyes were on the CTG machine as it was not pick­ing up a good trace of baby’s heart rate. I gen­tly asked Sab­rina if she could move from a sit­ting posi­tion to an all fours posi­tion, which could help with the trac­ing. As I lifted up her blan­ket, not hav­ing smelled any whiff of amni­otic fluid which I am so good at detect­ing, I was caught off guard to see baby’s head already crown­ing. I then real­ized that for that split sec­ond, only Sab­rina and I were alone in the room!! I reached over to bell the nurses to no avail. Sab­rina was in her own world, fol­low­ing the flow of her body. With the next breath, baby’s head emerged fully with the waterbag still intact. Instinc­tively, my body took over with ease, plac­ing one hand under baby’s neck just in time to catch Sabrina’s next breath, baby slipped out into the world into my hands. Baby started cry­ing whilst still veiled by the waterbag. At this point, my body hav­ing expe­ri­enced many births before, sim­ply took over and reacted much faster than my head, where my hands reached from baby’s belly, where there was a hole in the waterbag, lift­ing the veil as though it was a t-​shirt, over his head and place baby onto Sabrina’s arms imme­di­ately. Sab­rina, super­star that she is, was calm as ever and she read­ily wel­comed her baby into her arms. First birth, less than 2 hours of intense labor. Hyp­no­Birthing rocks!

The whole scene was so bizarre. In a moment where every­one should have been in the room – for some rea­son, no one was around – and when I attempted to get every­one, from press­ing the nurses call but­ton repeat­edly.. to call­ing her hus­band and the Doc­tor, I some­how could not reach any­one. It was as though fate has deter­mined that this moment was meant to be.

I reflected upon the birth as a good omen – to have a baby be born onto my heal­ing hands and to be born in the caul, how much more aus­pi­cious can it get? It was the bless­ing I needed before leav­ing for my 10 day fast at Koh Samui.

~
Mak­ing my peace as a Doula

I jumped out of bed by 5.30am, show­ered, put on my make-​up and quickly planned the sched­ule for the rest of my day. The plan to take the day off looked promis­ing – the plans to accom­pany my son for his swim les­son, head off for a morn­ing breast­feed­ing con­sul­ta­tion, and take the rest of the day off by hav­ing lunch with my son and friend, fol­lowed by trial pot­tery lessons just to do some­thing dif­fer­ent together for Kieran and I, Kieran going for his mar­tial arts class, din­ner with friends, attend­ing Ajahm brahms talk and finally, a salsa dance social at Union Square. Excited about the day ahead as I was once again, going to attempt to take the day off after my morn­ing appointment.

And the story always starts with my phone ring­ing, Jo was on the line and says that she is in early labor. How­ever, because the nature of the surges were hap­haz­ard, she’ll keep me updated. That’s usu­ally fine except that this is Jo’s 3rd preg­nancy and that I’ve only met her yes­ter­day for the first time and for the first pre­na­tal, her birth plan was not done and she hasn’t had the chance to read up about whether she wants a water­birth, home birth or just an active birth. Most of all, the doc­tor and the nurses at her hos­pi­tal of choice has yet to be informed. Her doc­tor only called me per­son­ally a week ago to inform me that she is refer­ring Jo to me.

Expe­ri­ence got the bet­ter of me, so I quickly had my break­fast, pre­pared my veg­etable wrap to take along with me as part of my labor food stash, con­tacted all the rel­e­vant peo­ple (that being the doc­tor, the mid­wife in-​charge of water­births at the hos­pi­tal and the deliv­ery quite staff to inform them and arrange for a pos­si­ble unplanned water­birth. Then because I had only met them yes­ter­day, I had to print their birth plan and checked with her hus­band if he had some of the labor tools such as a rice sock ready, in case he needs me to sup­ply any­thing else. On a per­sonal front, I had to reg­is­ter Kieran at his new swim school, for­tu­nately the class today was within walk­ing dis­tance from my home and where I would get a cab as well, so I quickly made my way there. Just as I was done, her hus­band called to update me on her progress and I said we should meet at the hos­pi­tal. Jo refused as she felt that she would not be able to make it through the car ride to the hos­pi­tal with­out any sup­port so her hus­band asked me to go over to their place instead and we go to the hos­pi­tal from there. I called for a cab and headed over.

One look at Jo on all fours hold­ing on to the gym ball under the run­ning shower, I felt instinc­tively that we had to go soon and wanted to see the nature of her surges before we made a move. So I quickly asked her hus­band to bring over the draft birth plan we worked on and asked him to hand write the points that we dis­cussed the before whilst I observe Jo to see how she was cop­ing with the surges, if her vulva was bulging, if her anus was dilated and if there was any more bloody show. With each surge, I coached her on her breath­ing so she would focus more on her breath­ing instead of los­ing it dur­ing con­trac­tions. I told her hus­band to grab two tow­els for the car in case her waters broke and to take her clothes so we can dress her as we had to get ready to trans­fer to the hos­pi­tal soon­est. I texted the mid­wife in charge of water­births at the deliv­ery quite to inform her that we were going to go in soon.

But we had a prob­lem. Jo would not and could not move. Con­trac­tions were 2 mins apart and she started to feel like she needed to push. Usu­ally, when a client com­mits to a hos­pi­tal birth, I make it a point and even take pride in the fact that I will do what­ever it takes to get them there. How­ever, this time, the sit­u­a­tion was dif­fer­ent. I had to think quickly. Do we force her to move and get her going to the hos­pi­tal OR since she can’t move, do they want to go to the hos­pi­tal? In a sit­u­a­tion like this, I would ensure that they make a move and go to the hos­pi­tal BUT I wasn’t too con­fi­dent that we would be able to make it in time and the pos­si­bil­ity of Jo giv­ing birth in the car was very real. So I explained the sit­u­a­tion to her hus­band and decided that we should go. Jo still could not move and did not want to move.

Thoughts race through my mind. The hos­pi­tal staff are all antic­i­pat­ing her arrival and her doc­tor even called me up per­son­ally to refer Jo to me, my rep­u­ta­tion and rela­tion­ship with the doc­tor and the hos­pi­tal is at stake here. OR do I call the doc­tor who does home­births to see if he will take on this last minute case based on com­plete trust in me and my judge­ment and if he can come over right now so that Jo, who had 2 trau­matic births, can finally achieve the birth of her dreams?

Whilst the pos­si­bil­ity of risk­ing the rela­tion­ship with the Doc­tor and hos­pi­tal was at stake, Jo’s needs topped the list in nano sec­ond. I left Jo in her husband’s care and went to call Dr. F.M Lai who does home­births, ask­ing if he could come. He said yes, and I gave him all the details he needed and rushed back to attend­ing to Jo who was in dis­tress. She was push­ing hard, and I coached her to keep blow­ing with each out-​breath. Then I had to call the pae­di­a­tri­cian to ask if she was will­ing to take a last minute case and be on standby, and she said yes. Next I had to con­tact the hospital’s mid­wife. At this point, I was with­out hands. Her hus­band had to con­nect the ear piece to my ear whilst he found all the num­bers and called/​smsed on my behalf.

Stand­ing just next to the run­ning shower, with Jo grab­bing on one hand and my other hand mas­sag­ing her back inten­sively crouch­ing over, I was get­ting drenched which I found very amus­ing. Amus­ing because even after attend­ing 200 over births and always know­ing instinc­tively how to pro­tect myself and my clothes, this was the first time I was get­ting a wet shower with my clothes and make-​up on after all these years! When we talk about water­births to the doc­tors and the nurses in a new envi­ron­ment, one of the com­mon ques­tions asked is if the doctor/​nurses have to go into the pool to deliver the baby. And I always say never, well, this time around, I am wrong.

Her hus­band at this point who busy with all the logis­tics, giv­ing road direc­tions to the doc­tor, get­ting hot water ready (what hot water is for? I dunno, but my guess is watch­ing many too many Chi­nese drama series of how there would always be hot water at a birth), grab­bing all the tow­els, pro­tect­ing the bed, spread­ing tow­els on the floor so nobody slips and falls etc… he was busy as a bum­ble bee!

At this point, Jo was scream­ing the HDB block down.. and kept say­ing I can­not do it, I can­not do it. With a firm but lov­ing voice, I told Jo not to waste her ener­gies by talk­ing, instead coached her with breath­ing and blow­ing, until the doc­tor arrives, with my fin­gers and toes crossed tightly. I caught a baby before I left for my 12 day vaca­tion recently, which is some­thing I do not do as Doulas do not do any­thing clin­i­cal unless it’s an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion, inter­est­ingly, for that hos­pi­tal birth, no one was around and the nurse bell even stopped func­tion­ing but that’s a dif­fer­ent story alto­gether. Point being, this baby was to be deliv­ered by the doctor.

Finally, her hus­band announced that the Doc­tor has arrived. A sigh of relieve and a huge smile came from me. Josephine was fully dilated, a point she has never made it through drug-​free before with her pre­vi­ous 2 births. Head was low and sit­ting there, now she was free to push. Within a few pushes, her per­ineum was stretch­ing and she started say­ing “its too painful”. Not hav­ing birth her pre­vi­ous babies before with­out assis­tance, Jo was los­ing con­fi­dence again. “Push through the pain” I said firmly and reas­sur­ingly. There is no where else to go, there is no help for assis­tance avail­able, this is a home­birth, as you have requested. So work with it, push through the pain”. And she did.

Her hus­band was like a news­caster at this point, cheer­ing Jo on whilst video-​taping the entire birth. “A lot of hair!””The head is crown­ing” The Head is out”… A big smile flashed across Jo’s face when I told her that baby’s head is out, and with the next con­trac­tion, she just had to give one push and the body would slide out.

Baby was born and Jo burst into tears, unable to believe all that was hap­pen­ing. We slowly helped Jo to sit down and passed baby imme­di­ately into her arms. Even though this was her third preg­nancy, this birth expe­ri­ence was all new to her, and she needed this expe­ri­ence to know that she CAN do this and more impor­tantly, to heal from her birth trauma of her pre­vi­ous births. A heal­ing cir­cle – the rebirth of a mother and father all over again.

Reflec­tions from the Doula:
“Even though I only met Jo & her hus­band less than 24 hours ago from her birth, a bond of trust was formed imme­di­ately. This birth expe­ri­ence gave me a split sec­ond oppor­tu­nity to rethink my role as a Doula when I had to make the call between get­ting Jo to the hos­pi­tal or arrang­ing for a home birth. The choice was clear. My client’s inter­ests come first, this is after all, their birth expe­ri­ence to keep and not mine. Whilst I risk the rela­tion­ship with the doc­tor and the hos­pi­tal, the sat­is­fac­tion and heal­ing that it pro­vided for Jo made the deci­sion the right decision.

As for the rest of the day, I did take the rest of the day off and the high­light of the day was at my favourite Aus­tralian Monk Ajahn Brahm’s talk and he said: “It’s the inten­tion, and not the result.” At that point, I made my peace with my deci­sion and my calling.

After the birth, I sat on the floor next to Jo’s bed and we were shar­ing about moth­er­hood where she started ask­ing me about the strug­gles as a sin­gle par­ent, the per­cep­tion of how I was well-​off because I live in a landed prop­erty etc.. I was tear­ing silently in my heart and feel­ing mis­un­der­stood. If only peo­ple knew and under­stood the strug­gles I go through as a sin­gle mom, how I put myself on the line emo­tion­ally, phys­i­cally and spir­i­tu­ally to man the fort as a mother, as a woman, as a doula, as all that I am, and often won­der in tears and weari­ness, when will this strug­gle ever end? I once again quote Ajahn Brahm “It’s not about what job you choose to do, but HOW you choose to do the job.” Every moment, I choose with all my love and good inten­tions. I choose to Doula with a warm heart because birth mat­ters, one birth at a time” ~ Ginny

~
Num­ber 2 of the Num­ber 3s

Num­ber 2 mom expect­ing her num­ber 3, Janet had less than ideal birth expe­ri­ences for her pre­vi­ous births. It was as though the Uni­verse was beck­on­ing her to awaken into con­scious­ness through her com­ing birth, she found me last minute through word-​of-​mouth. Through­out the Hyp­no­Birthing classes and prepa­ra­tion for her birth, I was not at all wor­ried about Janet being able to do it although a drug-​free birth and breast­feed­ing suc­cess­fully would be a new expe­ri­ence for her even though this is her third expe­ri­ence. There was some­thing com­ing together for her on an ener­getic level, and a sense of under­ly­ing cer­tainty that she was going to have the water­birth that she envisioned.

The big day came and Janet was feel­ing impa­tient. She was used to being induced, mak­ing her births very fast and effi­cient. This wait­ing around and wait­ing for labor to nat­u­rally pick up was all so new to her. Kept busy with her two younger chil­dren, she was unable to progress from early labor to active labor until her chil­dren went for their nap. Almost imme­di­ately, her neo­cor­tex switched off and she went into la-​la-​land. Jaren called me to ask to meet at the hospital.

When Janet came out of the car, she was still calm and com­posed so when Dr. Chong Yap-​Seng asked me how much time he has before he needs to be there, I said no wor­ries, he has time, and as usual, I’ll keep him updated. By the time we walked from the main entrance of National Uni­ver­sity Hos­pi­tal to the deliv­ery suite, I texted Dr. Chong to start mak­ing his way to the hos­pi­tal, labor was accel­er­at­ing very quickly. The usual fan­fare of prep­ping the room, admis­sions etc.. were all tak­ing place as Jaren and I quickly set up the birthing room, water­tub and the other com­fort mea­sures that we needed. Janet’s waters released when she was sit­ting on the toi­let seat, and we quickly moved her into the tub after. I called Dr. Chong to ask him to come NOW. As Jaren was film­ing the process, I held on to Janet, coach­ing her to focus on her breath and to breathe calmly and slowly, allow­ing her per­ineum to stretch. The med­ical offi­cer then sig­naled to me that baby’s head was crown­ing and I asked Jaren if he still wanted to deliver his own baby and he said yes. In the next few breaths, baby swam out into Daddy’s arms, enveloped imme­di­ately into a world of love and spir­i­tu­al­ity as Deva Premal’s music filled the room, tears fill­ing our eyes and love warm­ing our hearts.

~
Num­ber 3 of the Num­ber 3s

She was get­ting impa­tient and BIG, yet because she was the num­ber 3 of the num­ber 3s, I knew she was def­i­nitely the next and was will­ing to wait and let baby decide and I gave her the sug­ges­tion of doing belly lift­ing. The night after belly lift­ing, she called me just when I reached home, after clock­ing another 10 hour work day and we decided to meet at the hos­pi­tal. As dis­cussed before­hand, and hav­ing had a drug free birth with a Doula before, she did not want to labor in the tub.

She was in smiles when she arrived, look­ing radi­ant and beau­ti­ful as she always has and very much aware of what­ever that was hap­pen­ing. Still in early labor at 3cm, I slowly coaxed her to get into la-​la-​land (labor land) by spray­ing aro­mather­apy, dim­ming the lights and strictly no music as per her instruc­tions. She started get­ting curi­ous about using the tub, so I filled it up, leav­ing it as an open option in case she changed her mind. Labor started pick­ing up and she decided to give it a go, a lit­tle appre­hen­sive at first as the tub was too big for her dur­ing her last birth. We got her com­fort­able and the water did won­ders as it relaxed her even more and the inten­sity of her labor picked up. We helped her out of the tub and she was breath­ing down in no time. I called Dr. F.M Lai to ask him to come over and as fast and reli­able he always is, he was with us shortly. As Julie’s head and arms emerged, one could tell that this was a big baby and 4kg later, Julie was placed in Mommy’s arms.

Quick, happy and “easy” :-D, her hus­band said that this birth was the calmest of all 3 births. Yay! Mis­sion accomplished.

~
Last but not least…..

Sak­i­nah con­tacted me early in her preg­nancy, hav­ing heard about me from her friends who have had cesare­ans before. It took them 5 years to have this baby and this moment was long awaited for. It is such an honor to watch her blos­som through this jour­ney, mak­ing the changes nec­es­sary from chang­ing doc­tors and hos­pi­tals just so that she can have a water birth – the first ever in her Malay com­mu­nity of friends. Even though she took Hyp­no­birthing, pain asso­ci­ated with child­birth has been deeply ingrained in her mind. From early labor on, she kept say­ing how painful it was and would burst into tears from time to time. Surges were inten­si­fy­ing at home, and as they felt com­fort­able, they stayed home as long as they could. When the surges started com­ing every 4 mins or so, I gave par­ents the option of mov­ing on to the hos­pi­tal to set­tle in or stay­ing home a bit longer before going. They decided to go.

4cm dilated. We set­tled in the hos­pi­tal and when she was ready, we moved to the tub. Sak­i­nah was made up with a heart of gold and courage of steel as she labored with each breathe. Coach­ing her con­stantly, Shaff & I were work­ing hand in hand, remind­ing her to breathe a breath for baby; a breath for her; a breath for Shaff and a breath for Allah, and with every exha­la­tion, she would shout out “ALLAH!!!” In between moments, tears would flow, yet she would find the love and courage some­where within and car­ried on, one breath at a time, focus­ing on one surge each time. We worked closely with Deb­o­rah, the mid­wife in-​charge of water­births, who was cheer­ing us on all the way.

Dr. Mary Rauff made in just in time when Shakir was crown­ing and with 2 big breaths, Shakir slipped out into this world, born in the water and placed on Sakinah’s arms as both par­ents burst into tears of delight and sheer joy, and as Shaff posted on his face­book sta­tus “My whole life I have been wait­ing for you.” We all waited so long for you dear baby as tears flow into my eyes as I recall the beau­ti­ful moment when you were in Daddy’s arms with him singing prayers for your bless­ing. You were so attuned and silent, tak­ing in all of God’s bless­ings and the aura of love.

~
Thank you all for hav­ing me there as part of your jour­ney, as I ded­i­cate my life to serve God, in every sin­gle one of you. Love, Doula Ginny

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What Clients Say:

Dear Ginny, I will never thank you enough for help­ing me to feed Emna. You guided me in the first steps of moth­er­hood. Thanks to you, I dis­cov­ered the joy of breast-​feeding even if the begin­ning was hard and painful, you were there, pump­ing my breasts :-) and elim­i­nate engorge­ment. Today, my breast-​feeding is going well and I hope to con­tinue like that as long as pos­si­ble. – Azyade

“I gave up breast­feed­ing my first child after 2 weeks but with the sec­ond child, I took breast­feed­ing classes & booked breast­feed­ing con­sul­ta­tions imme­di­ately after birth for the first 2 weeks, and now, at 6 months, I am still breast­feed­ing my baby suc­cess­fully. Thanks Ginny! — Ashley

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All events require reg­is­tra­tion. To enquire or reg­is­ter for any of the events, please con­tact Ginny at 9475 1585 or drop her an email at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com with your name, hp num­ber & email.

Hyp­no­birthing Taster this Sun, 8 Nov and 29th Nov 2009, 2-​3pm
A FREE pre­view on Hyp­no­birthing to get a taste of what is it all about.

Hyp­no­birthing Ante­na­tal Classes
A com­plete ante­na­tal pro­gram using mind-​body tech­niques to enable par­ents to have an easy, short, relaxed & com­fort­able birth to wel­come their babies into this world as gen­tly as pos­si­ble. $495 for 4 ses­sions, 3.5−4 hours per ses­sion. See sched­ule here: http://​four​trimesters​.word​press​.com/​s​i​g​n​-​u​p​-​n​ow/
– Sat­ur­days, 2-​6pm: 21, 28 Nov, 5 & 12 Dec 2009
– Sun­days, 9am-​1pm: 6, 13, 20 & 27 Dec 2009

Par­ent­ing Classes on 6 & 13 Decem­ber 2009, 2-​6pm
The objec­tive of the Par­ent­ing Classes is to pre­pare par­ents for the first 6 weeks of life and there­after. Con­sist­ing of 2 ses­sions of 4 hours each, we focus on breast­feed­ing, how to help baby in sleep health­ily, and how to soothe a cry­ing baby. We also dis­cuss par­ent­ing styles, chang­ing dynam­ics of the rela­tion­ship and post­par­tum care and changes. This course comes with a CD and mate­ri­als and cost $195.

Intro­duc­ing infants to solids work­shop with Franzi on Sat­ur­day, 14 Novem­ber 2-​5pm
Back by pop­u­lar demand, this hands-​on work­shop will pro­vide guid­ing prin­ci­ples on infant nutri­tion, focus on wean­ing and nutri­tion in the 1st year, pro­vide knowl­edge on ingre­di­ents as well as tips to limit aller­gies and the poten­tial impact of food on the child’s devel­op­ment. This work­shop is 3 hours long and cost $110, $150 with a helper.

Lunchtime Sup­port Group every Tues­day, 12-​2pm – bring a potluck!
A free lunchtime sup­port group for expec­tant & new par­ents to gain peer sup­port, ask about breast­feed­ing, baby-​related & par­ent­ing ques­tions. We also have a weigh­ing scale avail­able, max­i­mum 10kg though!

Pre­na­tal Yoga with Colleen Sim­monds
Pre­na­tal Yoga: Sat­ur­days 11.30am – 12.45pm
Sin­gle Class $25; 4 class pack­age $80; 8 class pack­age $150.00

Women’s Yoga with Nadia Furuki every Tues­day, 3 — 4.15pm
Sin­gle Class $30;4 class pack­age $100;8 class pack­age $180;12 class pack­age $250

Four Trimesters Library books
Bor­rowed a book from us or have books to donate? Kindly have it returned by hand or by reg­is­tered mail to: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd, 33 Taman Warna Sin­ga­pore 276369, so that we can have our annual inven­tory count and loan the books to the other moms. More than 50 books are loaned out at this moment, so kindly help them find their way back to where they belong.

To reg­is­ter for any events or classes (seats are lim­ited), please email Ginny at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com the fol­low­ing:
Name:
Partner’s name:
Esti­mated due date (if applic­a­ble):
Hand­phone:
Email:
Event attending:

Doulaing with a warm heart because birth mat­ters,
Ginny Phang
Doula, Child­birth Edu­ca­tor, Hyp­no­birthing Prac­ti­tioner, 5-​PATH Hyp­nother­a­pist, Mas­ter Neu­roStrate­gist
T: (65) 9475 1585
E: ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com
W: www​.four​trimesters​.com
B: http://​gin​nyphang​.word​press​.com
A: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd. 33 Taman Warna, Chip Bee Gar­dens, opp. Hol­land Vil­lage Shop­ping Centre

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Own Your Birth Expe­ri­ence — Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary Sep­tem­ber 2009 Newslet­ter 11

On September 11th, 2009, posted in: Uncategorized by fourtrimesters

In this issue:
– Own your birth expe­ri­ence
– What clients say
– What’s new at Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary
– Birth Story of the month: Johann’s Birth

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Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

The chant went on. I stood there at the end of the fire lane, eyes locked with the par­tic­i­pant who is about to attempt the fire walk, beck­on­ing her with one arm to walk towards me, and my other arm out-​stretched as a bar­rier to break her state after her walk as her feet gets hosed down. Not hav­ing done the fire walk before nor crewed for Anthony Rob­bins “Unleash the Power Within” sem­i­nar, the only ref­er­ence point I had was the men­tal birth visu­al­iza­tions of one of the train­ers demon­strat­ing the role I was tak­ing on dur­ing the rehearsals we had the day before – that is, to stop the fire walk­ers at the end of the 3m burn­ing coals and break their men­tal state. We only had half a day to train for this, as we role-​played the scenes the day before, con­di­tion­ing it into our ner­vous sys­tem men­tally, emo­tion­ally and phys­i­cally. But noth­ing truly pre­pares you for the real thing. As ner­vous as I was, com­pletely S-​T-​R-​E-​T-​C-​H-​E-​D out of my com­fort zone, I tuned out the doubt­ful voices in my head and tuned into the men­tal state of cer­tainty. One after another, they came towards me.
By the time it was my turn to walk the blaz­ing hot coals (648−1093 degree cel­sius), there was hardly any room for doubt and uncer­tainty, I just had to do it, there was no other way. I clapped my hands in rhythm to my chant “YES! YES! YES! YES!” and stormed across the burn­ing coals, unscathed with NO blis­ters. The power of men­tal visualisation!

The same way I rehearsed for the fire walk is the same way to rehearse for the birth that you want. Play it over and over and over again in your mind until you truly believe that it is gonna be this way or no way. Feel it, breathe it, hear it, sense it. When you get to that state, your EASY, SHORT, RELAXED & COMFORTABLE birth is truly yours to own. I have seen in so many times in the moth­ers I am priv­i­leged to work with. It is possible!

And in case you are won­der­ing, when it is my turn to have another baby, I am def­i­nitely hav­ing a home water-​birth and I already have a col­lec­tion of visual images from my expe­ri­ences sup­port­ing women at their births, of how I want my glo­ri­ous, orgas­mic birth to be.

Own Your Birth Experience.

Writ­ten by Ginny Phang. You can go to this link to read more about my fire­walk expe­ri­ence: http://​gin​nyphang​.word​press​.com/
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What Clients Say:
I usu­ally get swamped with emails after a newslet­ter has been sent out, here are some of what client’s do say…

Hi Ginny,
You were my doula at Thom­son Med­ical Cen­ter on Sept 13 when my son was born. We had a suc­cess­ful VBAC although there was some vac­uum assis­tance at the end. The baby was pos­te­rior and it was a long hard labour but I did have a vagi­nal birth in the end. That VBAC was really impor­tant to me and was such an impor­tant fac­tor to the birth of my third son, just 4 weeks ago. I want to thank you for all the birth edu­ca­tion and help­ing me achieve a suc­cess­ful vagi­nal birth then because it did so much to help me in my recent birth.

I’m liv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia now and I had dif­fi­culty find­ing an OB who is really sup­port­ive of me hav­ing a vagi­nal birth because of my C-​section his­tory. I man­aged to find a mid­wife who was con­fi­dent to help me birth at home. We had a beau­ti­ful home­birth and every­thing went quickly and smoothly. It was the best birth expe­ri­ence I had of my three sons. The con­di­tions were per­fect this time and the baby was in the right posi­tion, the con­trac­tions were bear­able and dila­tion was quick at the end. I attribute much of the suc­cess of this birth to what I had learnt from the last birth with you. I had such vivid mem­o­ries of my last birth expe­ri­ence in Sin­ga­pore and that really gave me con­fi­dence this time round.

I want you to know that what you had done as a doula went fur­ther than just the birth you sup­ported 5 years ago; it did so much in help­ing me this time in my home­birth here in Cal­i­for­nia. Thank you.

Best wishes,
Dinah

~

Hi Ginny

Once again I find myself relat­ing to what you have writ­ten: “.…Hyp­no­birthing moth­ers who report that they did not expe­ri­ence pain dur­ing the labor, only intense discomfort..”

Just this after­noon I was telling my hus­band “…I think my men­strual cramps feel even worse than my labor pains!!!” and I found myself miss­ing being preg­nant!!!! And recently I keep meet­ing peo­ple who are in their early preg­nancy… it’s this uni­verse thingy.…. I want to be preg­nant again!!! ;p

:) Aileen

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All events require reg­is­tra­tion. To enquire or reg­is­ter for any of the events, please con­tact Ginny at 9475 1585 or drop her an email at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com with your name, hp num­ber & email.

 Hyp­no­birthing Taster this Sat, 12 Sep 2009, 9.30–10.30am
A FREE pre­view on Hyp­no­birthing to get a taste of what is it all about.

 www​.mum​my​knows​best​shop​.com is now housed at our premises
So come on by to pur­chase your prod­ucts here!!! We SWEAR by the Nurs­ing teas!!!!

• First Aid Class on Sat­ur­day, 26 Sep 2 – 4.30pm
Sarah Das is a reg­is­tered Mid­wife from the UK. She offers First Aid Classes. Each course is 2.5 hours long and cost $150 each; $120 per sin­gle per­son or cou­ple; $140 for 3 peo­ple in the same house­hold i.e. bring your helper along too.

 Hyp­no­birthing Ante­na­tal Classes start­ing Sun, 13 Sep 2pm *reduced prices*
A com­plete ante­na­tal pro­gram using mind-​body tech­niques to enable par­ents to have an easy, short, relaxed & com­fort­able birth to wel­come their babies into this world as gen­tly as pos­si­ble. $495for 4 ses­sions, 3.5−4 hours per ses­sion. See sched­ule here: http://​four​trimesters​.word​press​.com/​s​i​g​n​-​u​p​-​n​ow/

 Par­ent­ing Classes on 27th Sep & 4th Octo­ber 2009, 9am — 1pm
The objec­tive of the Par­ent­ing Classes is to pre­pare par­ents for the first 6 weeks of life and there­after. Con­sist­ing of 2 ses­sions of 4 hours each, we focus on breast­feed­ing, how to help baby in sleep health­ily, and how to soothe a cry­ing baby. We also dis­cuss par­ent­ing styles, chang­ing dynam­ics of the rela­tion­ship and post­par­tum care and changes. This course comes with a CD and mate­ri­als and cost $195.

 Lunchtime Sup­port Group every Tues­day, 12-​2pm – bring a potluck! *Resume 6th Octo­ber – there’s no sup­port group in September*
A free lunchtime sup­port group for expec­tant & new par­ents to gain peer sup­port, ask about breast­feed­ing, baby-​related & par­ent­ing ques­tions. We also have a weigh­ing scale avail­able, max­i­mum 10kg though!

 Pre­na­tal Yoga with Colleen Sim­monds *No classes in Octo­ber*
Pre­na­tal Yoga: Sat­ur­days 11.30am – 12.45pm
Sin­gle Class $25; 4 class pack­age $80; 8 class pack­age $150.00

 Women’s Yoga with Nadia Furuki every Tues­day, 3.30 — 4.45pm
Sin­gle Class $30;4 class pack­age $100;8 class pack­age $180;12 class pack­age $250
 Four Trimesters Library books
Bor­rowed a book from us or have books to donate? Kindly have it returned by hand or by reg­is­tered mail to: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd, 33 Taman Warna Sin­ga­pore 276369, so that we can have our annual inven­tory count and loan the books to the other moms. More than 50 books are loaned out at this moment, so kindly help them find their way back to where they belong.

To reg­is­ter for any events or classes (seats are lim­ited), please email Ginny at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com the fol­low­ing:
Name:
Partner’s name:
Esti­mated due date (if applic­a­ble):
Hand­phone:
Email:
Event attending:

 Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary is born and avail­able for rent
Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary is ide­ally look­ing for mer­chants with com­pli­men­tary prod­ucts and ser­vices to share rental space. Liv­ing room area is avail­able for rent on an hourly ad-​hoc basis as well as on a per­ma­nent basis. Extras such as pro­jec­tor, lap­top, pro­jec­tor screen and refresh­ments are all avail­able. We cur­rently have reg­u­lar work­shops and classes such as First Aid, infant nutri­tion and yoga classes avail­able. If you are inter­ested or know some­one who would be, please con­tact Ginny at 9475 1585 or email her at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com
Link to pic­tures here:

http://​www​.face​book​.com/​a​l​b​u​m​.​p​h​p​?​a​i​d​=​1​0​1​2​5​0​&​a​m​p​;​i​d​=​5​9​1​1​4​6​1​7​9​&​a​m​p​;​l​=​b​9​f​6​d​f​a​a21

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Birth Story of the Month: Johann’s Birth

9 Jan 2009
10.30am: Woke up and dis­cov­ered some stain­ing that seems to be like show when going to the toi­let. Won­dered if I should can­cel my lunch appoint­ment with my friend, Erni. Decided to observe. Took a shower and sms Bertil.

11am: No fur­ther signs – did not expe­ri­ence any con­trac­tions or fur­ther show. Started stuff­ing hos­pi­tal bag – why didn’t I pack it ear­lier?? Made a cup of rasp­berry leaf tea and told baby J to hang in there and let me attend my old friend’s, Yin­ing, wed­ding tomor­row night before he comes.

12pm: Still noth­ing hap­pen­ing, since Ginny men­tioned that show might take a few days, I decided to pro­ceed with day’s plan. Got changed and went to Repub­lic Plaza for lunch.

3pm: Was hav­ing dessert when I expe­ri­enced very mild menstrual-​like dis­com­fort. Went to toi­let, but no show or bleed­ing. Bertil sms me that he’s meet­ing his mates for some beer and will be home around 8pm.

4pm: Left Repub­lic Plaza and headed to Car­refour to exchange the night lamps I bought a few days ago. Was fed up when staff said I can’t test the new lamps and I have to come back if I want to exchange them again – can’t she see that I’m heav­ily preg­nant??!! Had to explain that I’m due any time now and don’t want to make another trip here. Had to speak to super­vi­sor before get­ting exchange done. Took for­ever and had to stand the whole time. Tiring!!

5pm: Finally could leave. On the way home, felt some mild menstrual-​like cramps and back­ache. Noth­ing unbear­able though. Won­dered if baby J will come before the wed­ding dinner.

6pm: Arrived at Boon Lay and felt that I had to do some last minute shop­ping in case baby J decides to arrive. Went to Jurong Point – rushed around to shops:
– NTUC: got pack of rice for rice socks
– Sports shop: hunted high and low for socks with high­est cot­ton con­tent for rice socks
– Book shop: bought a mag­a­zine and a funny novel to enter­tain me in the deliv­ery suite
– Home­ware shop: got 2 pedal bins and var­i­ous odds and ends
Ended up with huge bags of shop­ping to carry home. Decided to take a cab home.

7pm: Home at last! Feel­ing pretty tired… but started prepar­ing din­ner of sausages and rata­touille. Noticed that surges are becom­ing more reg­u­lar but didn’t time them as they weren’t both­er­ing me at all, besides, I’m busy cooking…

7.30pm: Bertil sms me again to say that he’ll be late and will only be back around 8.30pm. Replied ask­ing him not to drink too much as we may need to go to the hos­pi­tal tonight.

8.30pm: Had another round of surges dur­ing din­ner. Made an esti­ma­tion that surges are occur­ring every hour or so. Bertil gets excited and starts singing, “my son is com­ing!” He asked if I think we would go to the hos­pi­tal tomor­row morn­ing or after­noon – I replied that we would be lucky if we didn’t have to go in the mid­dle of the night today!!

After din­ner, did the dishes, made rice socks (finally!), last minute tasks and packing.

Asked Bertil if he knows what to do in the deliv­ery suite. His reply? “No.. you’ll have to tell me what to do..” *faint* oh well… at least I know what to expect now…

9pm: Surges were dif­fi­cult to time. They would come per­sis­tently for 15 to 30 mins then stop, before restart­ing in 1 hour with the same pat­tern – what is that sup­posed to mean?? Found that slow breath­ing and squat­ting down dur­ing surges helped me feel more com­fort­able. Oth­er­wise, I con­tin­ued to breathe normally.

9.30pm: Sms Yin­ing to say that I’m hav­ing early signs of labour. We’re on standby and prob­a­bly can’t make it to her wedding.

10pm: Sms gyne that I had show in the morn­ing and now hav­ing con­trac­tions approx­i­mately 1 in 1 hour since 7pm.

Decided to exfo­li­ate and do a deep cleans­ing mask before tak­ing a shower – just in case I wouldn’t be able to for the next 1 month! Also trimmed my nails so that I wouldn’t scratch Bertil (aren’t I considerate??)…

10.22pm: Gyne replied “Observe yrself at home if the con­trac­tions reach 1 in 10 min or too painful go to hos­pi­tal and the nurses will inform me on yr sta­tus. Oth­er­wise see you in my clinic at 8.45am for assessment”.

10.30pm: Dou­ble checked hos­pi­tal bag with Bertil. Vain pot me threw in more toi­letries but decided to give make-​up a pass.

High­lighted things in hyp­no­birthing book and notes for Bertil to take note of and asked him to famil­iar­ize him­self with the Sup­port Strate­gies cards.

10 Jan 2009
12am: Surges felt like they have picked up speed – seems to be 1 in 20 mins. Told Bertil to start tim­ing. Accord­ing to timer, surges lasted 50 secs at a fre­quency of 1 in 7 — 10 mins. Didn’t believe that surges were so close, thought that there must be some­thing wrong with Bertil’s tim­ing tech­nique – doesn’t feel that intense. So far surges haven’t been painful, just felt like intense tight­en­ing sensations.

Kept try­ing to time until we both got fed up. Decided to try and get some sleep first.

1am: Can’t sleep but still feels too early for hospital.

1.30am: Went to the toi­let and saw fresh blood. Surges inten­si­fied. Took deep breaths. Went to wake Bertil who lit­er­ally jumped out of bed. Instructed him to carry all the stuff down and I will fol­low once we’re ready to leave. I got changed while he was car­ry­ing the bags to the car — had to kneel on the floor sev­eral times when surges came in con­tin­u­ous waves.

Finally it’s time to go! When I was sure that the surges were over, I walked down the stairs to the car. A new surge hit just as I reached the car. Tried to get into the car but it was locked and Bertil is still upstairs!! I swore, think­ing he’s nuts to keep the car locked in the mid­dle of the night when no one is around. Kneeled next to the car while wait­ing for him to arrive. He came down and couldn’t see me kneel­ing on the oppo­site side. Once he real­ized I was there, he got into the car and waited for me to get in. So much so for male chivalry, I thought – couldn’t he at least help me into the car??!!

1.45am: Finally able to move off… called gyne on the way to Mt Alver­nia and he sleep­ily told me to check in first, the nurses will update him.

Darn! I for­got to trim my eye brows!

Had surges in the car, tried tim­ing them and they seemed to be 1 in 5 mins – I still thought that I wasn’t tim­ing them cor­rectly… Told Bertil that I find surges eas­ier to man­age than men­strual cramps as they are reg­u­lar and consistent.

2am: Arrived at Mt Alver­nia. Walked to the reg­is­tra­tion desk and told the nurse “I’m in labour”. Bertil tagged along behind with the bags. A guy came up with a wheel­chair. I sat on it even though I felt that I could walk. Was wheeled to the deliv­ery suites on level 3, where the nurses asked for my name and fre­quency of surges. Was imme­di­ately sent to one of the suites with 2 nurses. Bertil was told to go down­stairs and reg­is­ter while I was given a cup to col­lect a pee sam­ple and a hos­pi­tal gown. Went to the bath­room to pee and change – took a while as surges started to inten­sify even more. Nurse knocked on door to ask if I’m alright.

Finally came out of the bath­room – able to walk once the surges were over. Nurse led me to the bed and I was think­ing that Bertil was tak­ing really long with the reg­is­tra­tion. Nurse was about to strap on the CTG when another surge came, I had to grip her wrist really hard. I think I must have hurt her but she was nice enough not to com­plain. Once CTG was on, I could lie down in the semi-​supine posi­tion. Surges came and went – I stopped count­ing and lost track of the time. Con­cen­trated on count­ing and deep breath­ing. Some­body asked if I wanted gas – I shook my head. A nurse did a V.E. and announced in sur­prise that I was already 7 to 8 cm dilated! Wow!! I could hardly believe my ears and felt very heart­ened by the news! I felt inex­plic­a­bly thirsty and asked for water – gob­bled 2 cups of water to the nurse’s surprise.

Bertil finally came back and was just as sur­prised that I’m already so dilated… told him to get the birth plan out and leave it with my notes on the nurses’ counter. He also started play­ing the Rain­bow Relax­ation CD and sat next to me. Nurses left us alone after read­ing our birth plan.

My left hand was grip­ping his while my right hand gripped the bed rail as we moved through the surges. At some point, I felt Bertil pry­ing my hand open so that he could trans­fer my hand to his other hand. He tried to do some light touch mas­sage on my left arm – I couldn’t decide if it was irri­tat­ing or dis­tract­ing so I just let him con­tinue. A nurse came back in to free me from the CTG.

Felt a sud­den need to pee and Bertil helped me to the toi­let – it took a long while to get there and back with fre­quent stops and kneel­ing on floor dur­ing surges. Decided that it’s not a good idea to move and that I should just stay in bed.

At some point, Bertil went to replay the Rain­bow Relax­ation and I heard him take the oppor­tu­nity to go to the bath­room. I was doing well and was ok with that… surges came while I was wait­ing for him to come back out… then sud­denly I felt a ‘pop’ sen­sa­tion and warm water flow­ing out – my water bag had burst! Bertil is still not out – what on earth is he doing in the bath­room!??! Could still wait until I felt an strong feel­ing of some­thing mov­ing down very quickly – a feel­ing that I can’t describe in words…. Couldn’t wait any­more and shouted “Bertil!!” at the top of my lungs. Heard a com­mo­tion in the bath­room and Bertil came run­ning out, sound­ing flus­tered… “Get the nurses!” I said… I don’t know how he did that but a nurse came very quickly… “Water bag has bro­ken” I told her. It felt like there was some action going on but I was too focused to pay any atten­tion to what was hap­pen­ing around me. I felt an intense pres­sure to push and instinc­tively started… at some point, the nurse told me not to push, the doc­tor is not here yet!! I tried but couldn’t stop – the urge was just so pri­mal — she came over and made the bed com­pletely flat despite my protests… this will help you to stop push­ing, she said. She then turned me onto my left side and I was left in this posi­tion, breath­ing heav­ily and grip­ping Bertil. I didn’t know how long I was in this posi­tion until I couldn’t bear it any longer and really really had to push despite the nurse telling me to “con­trol” and “don’t push”. Thank­fully, Bertil spoke up for me and told her “I think she really needs to push now.”

Dr Kee finally arrived – I was both relieved and angry that he took so long but no time and energy to dwell on it – at last I was allowed to push. Some­one must have put me back up into the semi-​supine posi­tion. Dr Kee asked if I wanted to feel the head – it was dis­tract­ing and took me some effort to shake my head. I heard him say that an epi­siotomy is not needed. A surge came and the crown­ing sen­sa­tion, so dif­fer­ent from the surges that I was used to, took me off-​guard and I lost my focus… “I can’t do it… I’m giv­ing up” flashed through my mind. Just then the surge sub­sided and Dr Kee was still telling me to push… I couldn’t muster up any energy. We waited for the next surge and I felt some­thing large and round (the baby’s head) com­ing through fol­lowed by a wet slith­er­ing move­ment which I assumed to be the body…

3.52am: Dr Kee announced the time of birth. I just closed my eyes and leaned back. When I opened my eyes shortly, I saw Johann, lying blood­ied while the cord was clamped and Bertil cut the cord… it felt like an out of body expe­ri­ence… I didn’t feel like I was phys­i­cally present. Instead, I felt like a 3rd party observ­ing the scene.

Johann was hastily wrapped in the green hos­pi­tal sheet and given to me. When I first held him, I felt like it was “hello, stranger…so you’re the guy I’ve been talk­ing to for the past 9 months.” The nurse squeezed out colostrum and helped him to latch on. Mean­while, Dr Kee swas say­ing that my uter­ine con­trac­tions were very effi­cient and the pla­centa could be deliv­ered nat­u­rally. He started mas­sag­ing my uterus. I did not notice when the pla­centa was deliv­ered. At some point, I told Dr Kee “I can’t believe I just did this.” He told me that I sus­tained a minor tear and some abra­sions and stitched me up.

Things started wind­ing down. Johann was taken to be weighed, mea­sured and cleaned up with Bertil in tow, before being returned to me. Dr. Kee ensured that we were fine, changed out of his scrubs and left. Bertil, Johann and I were left alone to spend our first moments as a fam­ily together…

After some time, the nurses came back, cleaned me up and trans­ferred me to a gur­ney as we made the tran­si­tion to the wards. Bertil wheeled Johann along, while the nurses pushed me out. Just as we passed the recep­tion desk, a nurse there said “next time, come in ear­lier…” On hind­sight, maybe I should have done so, but then again, maybe not! This felt just right!

This birth story is writ­ten by Cor­rine Schmidt and reprinted with per­mis­sion.
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We are on Face­book!!!
If you would to be removed from this mail­ing list, please drop me an email with sub­ject “unsubscribe”

Please feel free to cir­cu­late this email to any­one who may be interested.

Ps: Please note that I am going on a detox/​yoga retreat in Koh Samui from Sat 19–26 Sep and will only be con­tactable at cer­tain times of the day via email, sms or Skype (Skype name: four­trimesters). Should you need to call me, kindly call me via Skype.

Doulaing with a warm heart because birth mat­ters,
Ginny Phang
Doula, Child­birth Edu­ca­tor, Hyp­no­birthing Prac­ti­tioner, 5-​PATH Hyp­nother­a­pist, Mas­ter Neu­roStrate­gist
T: (65) 9475 1585
E: ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com
W: www​.four​trimesters​.com
B: http://​gin​nyphang​.word​press​.com
A: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd. 33 Taman Warna, Chip Bee Gar­dens, opp. Hol­land Vil­lage Shop­ping Centre

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Sur­ren­der­ing to the Process — Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary July 2009 Newslet­ter 10 *reduced prices*

On July 17th, 2009, posted in: BirthTalk! by fourtrimesters

Since school reopened for term 3 about three weeks ago, I have been feel­ing stretched like a piece of dough being rolled out to be cut into pasta noo­dles. A few minor adjust­ments paved way for major changes on the per­sonal front, mostly being extremely proac­tive in my 8 year old son’s life. Thus is the jour­ney and the life of being a par­ent, and a mother. It is con­stantly evolv­ing, tak­ing you places beyond your wildest imag­i­na­tion and stretch­ing you to the point where you never even knew existed. Such is the beauty of par­ent­hood, I say this with my eyes rolling back­wards. Who are you kidding?

I kid you not. The late nights spent get­ting work done, research­ing on school­ing options and method­olo­gies as well as teach­ing cur­ricu­lums; the morn­ings and evening spent on fam­ily time and coach­ing him on school­work; the after­noons spent on meet­ing clients and doing all work related stuff; plus the lack of sleep.. I was knack­ered yet I stayed awake at every pos­si­bil­ity, avoid­ing what was most important.

For a long time now, I’ve always felt that my call­ing and I lead par­al­lel lives. How could it not be? As I quote Kahlil Gibran from The Prophet, “Work IS love made vis­i­ble.” True to itself, my clients have been call­ing me, mostly feel­ing anx­ious as they reach the last leg of their preg­nancy, the most chal­leng­ing point where they are so close yet so far away, as they wait for D-​day. As I reach out to them and reas­sure them, I hear myself telling them what I needed to hear for myself as well.

“Instead of dis­tract­ing your­self, sit with your feel­ings instead. If you are feel­ing frus­trated, uncom­fort­able, anx­ious, scared, just tune in to those feel­ings and let it all come out, let it all flow out. If you keep try­ing to dis­tract your­self from those feel­ings, they’ll keep com­ing back coz like lit­tle chil­dren, they want your atten­tion. So tune into them, meet them eye to eye and embrace them with love, kind­ness and com­pas­sion. There’s only so much you can do, the final leg is truly let­ting go and sur­ren­der­ing to the process. Birth is truly a med­i­ta­tion. You are not liv­ing in the past surges you already expe­ri­enced, or the surges that have yet to come. It’s about meet­ing ONE SURGE AT A TIME with your breath. ”

Stretched out like dough and on the verge of tears, I stopped run­ning to lis­ten to the voices in my head and tuned into the feel­ings in my heart. There was a deep long­ing within, to recon­nect with my sanc­tu­ary within. I took out the Mus­lim prayer beads that was given to me by a client about 2 years ago. Until now, it was always left in my drawer as I never quite knew what to do with it. But today, my heart knew. I sat down, with the prayer beads in one hand and tuned into my breath.

Breath­ing in, I am calm
Breath­ing out, I am peace
Breath­ing in, I relax
Breath­ing out, I let go of ten­sion
Breath­ing in, I am liv­ing in the present moment
Breath­ing out, I am liv­ing in a won­der­ful moment

99 breath beads later, I am home.

Babies, I am sorry to have kept you wait­ing. I am home and I am ready to be there for you, with the whole of my heart, my pres­ence and my love, and with my prayer beads in my hand.

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Home Birth Story of the Month:

Hav­ing been a gym­nast in my younger days, any­thing that requires flex­i­bil­ity tends to come eas­ier for me than oth­ers. So when my Yoga Instruc­tor chal­lenged us to do a spilt, it was almost a piece of cake for me. How­ever, like every­thing else in Yoga where you get “pushed to the edge” dur­ing the poses, she chal­lenged and guided me to impro­vise the pose and do a proper yogi split and stretched my lig­a­ments which caused quite an intense dis­com­fort. My fel­low yogi mate – who inci­den­tally is also my ex-​client and now a very close friend who hypno-​birthed her sec­ond child at home – turned to me and asked “Is it painful Ginny? I am find­ing it very painful.”

I found it inter­est­ing that this com­ment came from her and it made me think about Hyp­no­birthing moth­ers who report that they did not expe­ri­ence pain dur­ing the labor, only intense dis­com­fort. In a sim­i­lar fash­ion, when I was doing the split, I felt the same way. It’s not that I don’t feel any­thing, surely I do (and all the labour­ing moth­ers do!!!) but I did not per­ceive it as pain. Intense dis­com­fort yes, but cer­tainly not painful.

That same evening, when I was sit­ting with my good friends hav­ing cof­fee whilst wait­ing for our monthly food book club to get-​together, my phone rang. Tjis was on the phone, report­ing to me that Karlijin’s labor has finally started. Com­ing from a coun­try where home-​birthing is a norm and hav­ing had her first baby at home in Hol­land, it was only nat­ural to Kar­li­jin & Tjis to have another homebirth.

The one thing that stood out when I met Kar­li­jin and Tjis for the first time were col­ors. They radi­ated as a cou­ple, and Kar­li­jin lit­er­ally “wore” her talk. Lit­tle did I know until later, that Kar­li­jin kept a birth rit­ual, some­thing so rare and unheard of yet so essen­tial in our mod­ern times. Although I am very much labeled as a “banana” – yel­low on the out­side and white on the inside, and more or less very “mod­ern and west­ern­ized”, not hav­ing much to do with local cus­toms and rit­u­als. I have, also in my line of call­ing, noticed the impor­tance of rit­u­als. In my obser­va­tion, it seems to me that every­thing that nature has intended from the time we are preg­nant, is a rit­ual to help us and our bod­ies to adjust to becom­ing a mother. A woman who goes through labor, even if it is a trial of labor, has more accep­tance and less of a shock into her tran­si­tion to a mother as opposed to a mother who has an elec­tive cae­sarean where one moment she is preg­nant, and the next moment, she is a mother. Men­tally she knows it, but emo­tion­ally and on an uncon­scious bod­ily level, it’s dif­fer­ent alto­gether, mak­ing it seems as though labor itself is a rit­ual not just mark the birth of a baby but also the rebirth of a mother each time around.

Karlijin’s daily rit­ual was to sew when her older son Luuk, was in school. She set out the task to pre­pare the baby’s room and embroi­dered baby’s blan­kets and such. This was her way of bond­ing and con­nect­ing with baby, some­thing sec­ond time or more moth­ers often “for­get” that they are preg­nant because they are busy with the old kid(s).

So by the time her prac­tice surges came, she was ready. And like any sec­ond time or more moth­ers, even though you have gone through it once before or even more, you never really know when you are in labor. After hav­ing prac­tice con­trac­tions on and off for a week, Kar­li­jin finally went into labor after she found that she was already 4cm dilated when she vis­ited Dr. Lai’s clinic in the morn­ing and had her mem­branes swept in hope to get things started.

7th July 2009
6.23pm
Tjis called to inform me that Kar­li­jin is in labor and that con­trac­tions were every 4mins and that she was already 4cm dilated this morn­ing when she was at Dr. Lai’s office. So I said that i’ll take a shower and come over.

7.10 pm
I arrived and your par­ents were in the liv­ing room. Kar­li­jin was sit­ting on the sofa and con­trac­tions were strong enough to have her focus on them when­ever they came yet she kept her­self busy and helped me orga­nize the things to set up for the homebirth.

7.39 pm
After the logis­tics were taken care of, I sug­gested to Mommy to go into her own space to relax instead of sit­ting together with us in the liv­ing room get­ting dis­tracted so that it’ll help the con­trac­tions to pick up. Inter­est­ingly, from my obser­va­tion of hav­ing attended more than 250 births, labor­ing women no mat­ter where they come from, have sev­eral sim­i­lar­i­ties, one of it would be the need to “purge it all out” ver­bally and “dis­tract” them­selves before they would be will­ing to go into their own space yet it’s their own space within that they need to access to in order for labor to progress. Kar­li­jin finally decided to sur­ren­der to the process and take a shower.

Even though I have had the priv­i­lege of attend­ing births for close to 6–7 years now, there are still a group of women whom I would allow to “intim­i­date” me because of their con­fi­dence in their abil­ity to birth their way, nat­u­rally. Kar­li­jin was one of those women. Yet time and birthing wis­dom has always shown me, over and over again, we are all uni­ver­sal. When I allowed the thoughts in my head to run its course or run wild rather, and tuned into my gut instincts and my heart, I was one with her.

Karlijin’s con­trac­tions has picked up con­sid­er­ably, pro­gress­ing from 4 to 2 min inter­vals and def­i­nitely much stronger. There were no other phys­i­cal signs such as her waters break­ing or more mucus plug but I was not con­cerned because that’s quite nor­mal for a sec­ond time or more moth­ers. She was in the bath­room lean­ing over the basin counter with each surge. Instinc­tively, I rubbed her back and got her more drink­ing water.

8.39 pm
Notic­ing that my phone was not get­ting a good recep­tion, it sud­denly occurred to me to give Dr. Lai a call and leave him Daddy’s house and hand­phone num­ber in case he needed help with direc­tions. I am secretly pleased about my *instincts* as Dr. Lai called right after he received my sms. He arrived shortly and he set up the equip­ment. Kar­li­jin mea­sured 5cm dilated with your head at sta­tion zero. All is look­ing well and Dr. Lai left.

Notic­ing that Kar­li­jin was begin­ning to look very flushed, I asked Tjis for a bowl of ice and applied iced tow­els on her face which she liked a lot.

Know­ing that despite the fact that Kar­li­jin only mea­sured 5cm dilated, once her waters break, labor will progress very quickly, I asked her to visu­al­ize waters break­ing. Kar­li­jin later said that she found that sug­ges­tion very helpful.

9.10 pm
This is the part I love – notc­ing the sub­tle dif­fer­ences that means so much more than what it seems. After two surges where I noticed Karlijin’s knees bend­ing with the surges as if she were bear­ing down, her waters broke and her waters were clear. Great sign J I asked Tjis to take my phone and call Dr. Lai using the house phone for me to update him. As there wasn’t much waters, I wasn’t sure if her waters leaked or broke so I said that I’ll him in 10mins to update him again.

Karlijin’s surges were def­i­nitely more intense as she grooved with the rhythm of the surges. I asked Tjis to come over to help and apply ice cold tow­els on her head as I crouch over to rub her back and mon­i­tor her progress in case she deliv­ers before Dr. Lai arrives. All good.

9.30 pm
Dr. Lai arrived and with his usual demeanor, there was no rush to do any­thing at all, every­thing was at Karlijin’s pace. Kar­li­jin was 8cm dilated and decided to labor and birth on the bed. We trusted her lead to fol­low her body, with Tjis guid­ing her on her breath­ing, wip­ing her face and offer­ing her drink­ing water.

At 10.05pm, Takae slipped out into this world and into Karlijin’s lov­ing arms and Tjis’s happy and excited pres­ence. Wel­come sweet child!

As I was leav­ing after a post­na­tal visit with Kar­li­jin, I found her mother sit­ting at the veran­dah, sewing.

This birth story is writ­ten by Ginny Phang and reprinted with Tji’s & Karlijin’s per­mis­sion as she awaits two more home­births in the next month and a grow­ing num­ber in the months to come.
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Dear All,

Reduced prices and pay­ment by instal­ment are all avail­able to meet and beat the reces­sion. See: http://​four​trimesters​.word​press​.com/​s​i​g​n​-​u​p​-​n​ow/

Four Trimesters is going through a web makeover to cel­e­brate our sev­enth year since we birthed into being. Please make your­selves com­fort­able in our tem­po­rary online birth sanc­tu­ary whilst we dress our­selves up again. Over the next few weeks to come, until our new look is ready, I will be blog­ging fre­quently to upload more birth sto­ries and the birth scene in Sin­ga­pore and around the world. So please email me your pregnancy/​birth/​par­ent­ing sto­ries with pic­tures and even tes­ti­mo­ni­als to share with other expec­tant par­ents that birthing can truly be a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence! See you online!

The other good news is that if your insur­ance cov­er­age cov­ers mater­nity care, our Doula pack­ages can be billed under Dr. Paul Tseng, Dr. Lai Fon-​Min and any other doc­tor who is will­ing to do this, terms and con­di­tions apply, please email me pri­vately to find out more.

Love, Doula Ginny

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All events require reg­is­tra­tion. To enquire or reg­is­ter for any of the events, please con­tact Ginny at 9475 1585 or drop her an email at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com with your name, hp num­ber & email.

• Hyp­no­birthing Taster on Sun, 19 July 2009, 2-​3pm
A FREE pre­view on Hyp­no­birthing to get a taste of what is it all about.

• First Aid Class on Sat­ur­day, 26 Sep 2 – 4.30pm
Sarah Das is a reg­is­tered Mid­wife from the UK. She offers First Aid Classes. Each course is 2.5 hours long and cost $150 each; $120 per sin­gle per­son or cou­ple; $140 for 3 peo­ple in the same house­hold i.e. bring your helper along too.

• Hyp­no­birthing Ante­na­tal Classes start­ing Sat, 1 Aug & Sun, 16 Aug *reduced prices*
A com­plete ante­na­tal pro­gram using mind-​body tech­niques to enable par­ents to have an easy, short, relaxed & com­fort­able birth to wel­come their babies into this world as gen­tly as pos­si­ble. $495for 4 ses­sions, 3.5−4 hours per session.

• Par­ent­ing Classes on 2 & 8 August 2009, 2 — 6pm
The objec­tive of the Par­ent­ing Classes is to pre­pare par­ents for the first 6 weeks of life and there­after. Con­sist­ing of 2 ses­sions of 4 hours each, we focus on breast­feed­ing, how to help baby in sleep health­ily, and how to soothe a cry­ing baby. We also dis­cuss par­ent­ing styles, chang­ing dynam­ics of the rela­tion­ship and post­par­tum care and changes. This course comes with a CD and mate­ri­als and cost $250.

• Lunchtime Sup­port Group every Tues­day, 12-​2pm – bring a potluck!
A free lunchtime sup­port group for expec­tant & new par­ents to gain peer sup­port, ask about breast­feed­ing, baby-​related & par­ent­ing ques­tions. We also have a weigh­ing scale avail­able, max­i­mum 10kg though!

• Pre­na­tal Yoga with Colleen Sim­monds
Pre­na­tal Yoga: Sat­ur­days 11.30am – 12.45pm
Sin­gle Class $25; 4 class pack­age $80; 8 class pack­age $150.00

• Women’s Yoga with Nadia Furuki every Tues­day, 3 — 4.15pm
Sin­gle Class $30;4 class pack­age $100;8 class pack­age $180;12 class pack­age $250
 Four Trimesters Library books
Bor­rowed a book from us or have books to donate? Kindly have it returned by hand or by reg­is­tered mail to: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd, 33 Taman Warna Sin­ga­pore 276369, so that we can have our annual inven­tory count and loan the books to the other moms. More than 50 books are loaned out at this moment, so kindly help them find their way back to where they belong.

To reg­is­ter for any events or classes (seats are lim­ited), please email Ginny at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com the fol­low­ing:
Name:
Partner’s name:
Esti­mated due date (if applic­a­ble):
Hand­phone:
Email:
Event attending:

• Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary is born and avail­able for rent
Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary is ide­ally look­ing for mer­chants with com­pli­men­tary prod­ucts and ser­vices to share rental space. Liv­ing room area is avail­able for rent on an hourly ad-​hoc basis as well as on a per­ma­nent basis. Extras such as pro­jec­tor, lap­top, pro­jec­tor screen and refresh­ments are all avail­able. We cur­rently have reg­u­lar work­shops and classes such as First Aid, infant nutri­tion and yoga classes avail­able. If you are inter­ested or know some­one who would be, please con­tact Ginny at 9475 1585 or email her at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com
Link to pic­tures here:

http://​www​.face​book​.com/​a​l​b​u​m​.​p​h​p​?​a​i​d​=​1​0​1​2​5​0​&​a​m​p​;​i​d​=​5​9​1​1​4​6​1​7​9​&​a​m​p​;​l​=​b​9​f​6​d​f​a​a21

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We are on Face­book!!!
If you would to be removed from this mail­ing list, please drop me an email with sub­ject “unsubscribe”

Please feel free to cir­cu­late this email to any­one who may be interested.

Doulaing with a warm heart because birth mat­ters,
Ginny Phang
Cer­ti­fied Doula, Child­birth Edu­ca­tor, 5PATH Hyp­nother­a­pist, Hyp­noFer­til­ity & Hyp­no­Birthing Prac­ti­tioner, Neu­roStrate­gist
W: www​.four​trimesters​.com
A: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd. 33 Taman Warna (Hol­land Vil­lage). Sin­ga­pore 276369
T: (65) 9475 1585

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Bless­ings of the swine — Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary May 2009 Newslet­ter 9

On May 6th, 2009, posted in: BirthTalk!, Newsletter by fourtrimesters

4.30am. I pressed the wrong but­ton when the phone rang. The line got cut off. With one eye opened, I redi­alled and Lula was on the receiv­ing end. “My waters has bro­ken Ginny.”

It was only the night before when I was on the phone with Hugo and Lula about the last minute plans to have a home­birth instead of a hos­pi­tal birth as planned because of the dis­crim­i­na­tion against Mex­i­cans all over the world. Not hav­ing been back in Mex­ico since they moved here to make Sin­ga­pore their home months ago, they have been dis­crim­i­nated against in sev­eral inci­dences and did not want to go through that stress at the hos­pi­tal. And before Hugo ended the call last night, his last sen­tence to me was that as a Hyp­no­birthing Dad, he has spo­ken to San­ti­ago to hold on inside whilst we prepped for the homebirth.

It usu­ally takes time for labor to start after the waters have bro­ken, with that in mind, I went back to bed. I con­tacted Dr. Lai in the morn­ing to get his approval for a home­birth as I rushed to the phar­macy to buy what­ever sup­plies we needed and headed for their apart­ment. Dr. Lai was a lit­tle con­cerned as baby was in pos­te­rior posi­tion dur­ing the pre­na­tal scans but oth­er­wise, there were no con­tra­dic­tions to not allow a homebirth.

Lula was in the shower when I arrived at about 10am. Even though her breaths were short, she was cop­ing well, so I went ahead to get all the logis­tics pre­pared such as water­proof­ing the bed and ensur­ing that all that we needed was there before I set­tled out­side the shower with Lula. Surges were about 5 mins apart and intense. Fetal heartrate was excellent.

I knew Tia was home when I was given the det­tol to san­i­tized the bath­tub. I caught a glimpse of Tia prepar­ing food in the kitchen. I often read in birth sto­ries about the tra­di­tion of a fam­ily mem­ber bak­ing a birth­day cake when a woman goes into labor, and when the cake is ready, comes baby. As the aro­mas of the food filled the house, in my head, like water for choco­late (http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​L​i​k​e​_​W​a​t​e​r​_​f​o​r​_​C​h​o​c​o​l​ate), I felt trans­ported back in time. Here I am, in a mod­ern apart­ment, yet it feels like I am in Mex­ico. Tia is feel­ing anx­ious. Why was Lula tak­ing so long? Hugo, for­tu­nately was calm, reas­sur­ing Tia more than he needed to with Lula.

“I am ready Ginny, I am ready to have this baby.” Lula wanted to know when Dr. Lai would come and asked me how long this was going to take. I said I don’t know how long she is going to take, and in fact no one knows. But what I do know is that she looks like she is doing well and we’ll just wait for it to progress even more. How would I know that she is fully dilated?, she asked. I said I’ll know because she won’t be talk­ing to me and ask­ing me these ques­tions. Lula alter­nated between bath­rooms so that there was enough hot water to keep going as she found being under the shower very help­ful. She was doing well and soon enough started to feel that she needed to have a bowel move­ment and would give it a go. After two attempts she was finally con­vinced that its baby mov­ing down, and not bowel movements.

Back in my head, I felt like a chef in a Mex­i­can kitchen, like water for choco­late. Just observ­ing Lula labor, I knew it was not time yet. It wasn’t about what the clock indi­cated, it was about observ­ing her body, like wait­ing for the gluten in the dough to develop.

Dr. Lai came dur­ing lunchtime and con­firmed that Lula was pro­gress­ing well at 6cm, with baby’s head rel­a­tively low and her waters were still clear. Baby seems to be in OA, which is a good sign. He left and said he’ll be back at 5pm. As usual, I’ll keep him updated over the phone.

Not hav­ing planned for a home­birth, let alone a water birth, we needed to boil more water to keep the water tem­per­a­ture ideal for labour­ing and birthing in water. When the tub was ready, Lula went in with Hugo’s assis­tance but it seemed clear that she pre­ferred the shower, nev­er­the­less she stayed in for a bit before com­ing out and using the show­ers again.

After a while, I felt that we weren’t pro­gress­ing as much as I had antic­i­pated and encour­aged her to come out of the shower to try other posi­tions instead. Lula was all for it. Lula started pray­ing. Call upon your mother, I said silently in my heart as I felt like I could feel the pres­ence of oth­ers in the room. Call upon your ances­tors to help you sweet child. Instinc­tively I felt that Tia should be in the room as she was the only one rep­re­sent­ing the Mex­i­can com­mu­nity back home where Lula would have been sur­rounded by her large extended family.

Both tired and hun­gry, we man­aged to squeeze in some fruit juice and cut fruits for her, and after try­ing a few posi­tions on land where she clearly fell deeply asleep in-​between surges, she decided to lay on her side. The surges started inten­si­fy­ing shortly after she moved into that posi­tion, labor picked up from the monot­o­nous rhythm. Whilst I am not musi­cally inclined, my ears are well verse in the moans of a labour­ing mother. Regard­less of race and nation­al­i­ties, I find the music of the labour­ing moth­ers uni­ver­sal. The moan­ing notes indi­cated that Lula was bear­ing down. Only cov­ered with a large towel, I lifted the towel to take a peep and my sus­pi­cions were con­firmed with more heavy show. I was pleased at her progress and noti­fied Dr. Lai via sms. Fetal heartrate was still good.

Lula asked me to help her with her breath­ing, to demon­strate to her as we exchanged words in both Span­ish and Mex­i­can, with Hugo trans­lat­ing when­ever nec­es­sary. I moaned along with her. This was the time when things got really strange. As Lula was moan­ing, there was a loud moan­ing in the back­ground. This time, I am no longer in Mex­ico but in a Tibetan monastery. With each moan, came another moan, like a Tibetan chant. For a moment in time, I thought it was my mind tak­ing me places, play­ing tricks on my good ears.

“Tia, gra­cias!!!!!” shouted Lula. The chant­ing stopped.

I encour­aged Lula to move to the tub, in hope that the water will help her to progress even faster in the squat­ting posi­tion. She was clearly bear­ing down by this time and surges were about 2 mins apart. I smsed Dr. Lai to come now as I felt that she was ready, like the dough bak­ing in the oven and ris­ing. As she was bear­ing down, I could also see the base of the blad­der. San­ti­ago, where are you? Tia’s finally in the bath­room with us, busy snap­ping away and get­ting every­thing we needed.

Dr. Lai arrived and a vagi­nal exam­i­na­tion con­firmed that Lula is fully dilated and Santiago’s head is just sit­ting there. She went back into the water and tried bear­ing down in var­i­ous posi­tions. “Just help me Dr. Lai to get San­ti­ago out!” Lula asked. Dr. Lai asked if she would like to deliver on land instead and we can help with fun­dal pres­sure, Lula con­sented before chang­ing her mind, insist­ing to me that she wants to birth in the water. I said to her that I’ll go whichever way she wants. I then asked if she would like to go onto the bed first to have a vagi­nal exam­i­na­tion done whilst she is bear­ing down, so Dr. Lai can tell whether her bear­ing down is pro­gress­ing, and we can always move back to the water. She agreed.

Once on the bed, Lula started scream­ing at the top of her lungs when Dr. Lai was check­ing her. “Get your hands out of me and let me do my job!!!!!!!!!!!!” as the surges came. In-​between surges she would be apol­o­gis­ing pro­fusely to Dr. Lai, and when the surges came, she would start scream­ing again. “Ginny, I am not doing it the Hyp­no­birthing way” as she rat­tled on and on. By this point, I could not stop smil­ing, and just short of break­ing out in laugh­ter. I had to ask Lula to stop talk­ing and focus on rest­ing before the next surge comes yet she would con­tinue rat­tling on and on. Santiago’s head was now vis­i­ble, with Hugo and I apply­ing fun­dal pres­sure and Dr. Lai encour­ag­ing her. At one point, we asked Lula to place her hands to feel Santiago’s hair. Tia was busy film­ing and snap­ping away – her first time wit­ness­ing a birth.

“Stop the fun­dal pres­sure” ordered Dr. Lai. Santiago’s head was out and Dr. Lai plac­ing his fin­ger in-​between his neck and his cord to pro­tect San­ti­ago. I reminded Lula that it’s just one more surge as San­ti­ago slid out into this world at 4.19pm with his umbil­i­cal cord entan­gled all over. Once untan­gled, San­ti­ago was placed imme­di­ately onto Lula’s arms, skin-​to-​skin, heart-​to-​heart.

An hour later, after a refresh­ing bowl of Mex­i­can chicken soup, we woke up Mex­ico at 3am with news of Santiago’s birth via Skype and later, his birth was even announced on the radio. Wel­come into this world sweet child, the bless­ings of the swine sure made this home­birth a possibility!

This birth story was writ­ten for Hugo, Lula and San­ti­ago, and reprinted with permission.

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All events require reg­is­tra­tion. To enquire or reg­is­ter for any of the events, please con­tact Ginny at 9475 1585 or drop her an email at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com with your name, hp num­ber & email.

FREE Open House on Sat­ur­day, 9 May 2009, 2-​6pm
A free open house for expec­tant par­ents & new par­ents to watch a Birth movie “The Busi­ness of Birthing” , talk about birth and a free pre­view on Hyp­no­birthing. Feel free to bring snacks!
2–3.30pm: Birth Movie Screen­ing — The Busi­ness of being born (www​.the​busi​nes​sof​be​ing​born​.com)
3.30-5pm: BirthTalk! Come for an open Q&A about Hyp­no­birthing, Doulas and any­thing birth-​related

First Aid Class on Sun­day, 17 May 10am – 12.30pm
Sarah Das is a reg­is­tered Mid­wife from the UK. She offers First Aid Classes. Each course is 2.5 hours long and cost $150 each; $120 per sin­gle per­son or cou­ple; $140 for 3 peo­ple in the same house­hold i.e. bring your helper along too.

Intro­duc­ing infants to solids work­shop with Franzi on Sat­ur­day, 30 May 2-​4pm
This hands-​on work­shop will pro­vide guid­ing prin­ci­ples on infant nutri­tion, focus on wean­ing and nutri­tion in the 1st year, pro­vide knowl­edge on ingre­di­ents as well as tips to limit aller­gies and the poten­tial impact of food on the child’s devel­op­ment. This work­shop is 2 hours long and cost $110, $150 with a helper.

Hyp­no­birthing Taster on Sat, 23 May 2009, 10-​11am
A FREE pre­view on Hyp­no­birthing to get a taste of what is it all about.

Hyp­no­birthing Ante­na­tal Classes
A com­plete ante­na­tal pro­gram using mind-​body tech­niques to enable par­ents to have an easy, short, relaxed & com­fort­able birth to wel­come their babies into this world as gen­tly as pos­si­ble. $545 for 4 ses­sions, 3.5−4 hours per session.

Par­ent­ing Classes on 17 & 24 May 2009, 2 — 6pm
The objec­tive of the Par­ent­ing Classes is to pre­pare par­ents for the first 6 weeks of life and there­after. Con­sist­ing of 2 ses­sions of 4 hours each, we focus on breast­feed­ing, how to help baby in sleep health­ily, and how to soothe a cry­ing baby. We also dis­cuss par­ent­ing styles, chang­ing dynam­ics of the rela­tion­ship and post­par­tum care and changes. This course comes with a CD and mate­ri­als and cost $250.

Lunchtime Sup­port Group every Tues­day, 12-​2pm – bring a potluck!
A free lunchtime sup­port group for expec­tant & new par­ents to gain peer sup­port, ask about breast­feed­ing, baby-​related & par­ent­ing questions.

Pre­na­tal & Post­na­tal Yoga with Colleen Sim­monds
Pre­na­tal Yoga: Sat­ur­days 11.30am – 12.45pm
Post­na­tal Yoga: Tues­days 2.30 — 3.30pm
Sin­gle Class $25; 4 class pack­age $80; 8 class pack­age $150.00

Women’s Yoga with Nadia Furuki every Tues­day, 4–5.15pm
Sin­gle Class $30;4 class pack­age $100;8 class pack­age $180;12 class pack­age $250

Baby Garage Sale (Dates to be con­firmed – pls email me if you are inter­ested)
This is a Baby Garage Sale for both buy­ers & sell­ers where you can come together to buy or/​and sell baby related prod­ucts sec­ond hand. If you are inter­ested in rent­ing a space to sell your goods, its a 2m by 2m space on the floor and cost $30, please con­tact Ginny at 94751585 or drop her an email at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com

Four Trimesters Library books
Bor­rowed a book from us or have books to donate? Kindly have it returned by hand or by reg­is­tered mail to: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd, 33 Taman Warna Sin­ga­pore 276369, so that we can have our annual inven­tory count and loan the books to the other moms. More than 50 books are loaned out at this moment, so kindly help them find their way back to where they belong.

To reg­is­ter for any events or classes (seats are lim­ited), please email Ginny at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com the fol­low­ing:
Name:
Partner’s name:
Esti­mated due date (if applic­a­ble):
Hand­phone:
Email:
Event attending:

Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary is born and avail­able for rent
Four Trimesters Birth Sanc­tu­ary is ide­ally look­ing for mer­chants with com­pli­men­tary prod­ucts and ser­vices to share rental space. Liv­ing room area is avail­able for rent on an hourly ad-​hoc basis as well as on a per­ma­nent basis. Extras such as pro­jec­tor, lap­top, pro­jec­tor screen and refresh­ments are all avail­able. We cur­rently have reg­u­lar work­shops and classes such as First Aid, infant nutri­tion and yoga classes avail­able. There is a bed­room for rent upstairs, all fully fur­nished. Wifi, util­i­ties and daily clean­ing all included. Bed­room can be con­verted to an office space.If you are inter­ested or know some­one who would be, please con­tact Ginny at 9475 1585 or email her at ginny@​fourtrimesters.​com
Link to pic­tures here:

http://​www​.face​book​.com/​a​l​b​u​m​.​p​h​p​?​a​i​d​=​1​0​1​2​5​0​&​a​m​p​;​i​d​=​5​9​1​1​4​6​1​7​9​&​a​m​p​;​l​=​b​9​f​6​d​f​a​a21

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Dear All,

We have MOVED!!! – online that is

Four Trimesters is going through a web makeover to cel­e­brate our sev­enth year since we birthed into being. Please make your­selves com­fort­able in our tem­po­rary online birth sanc­tu­ary whilst we dress our­selves up again. Over the next few weeks to come, until our new look is ready, I will be blog­ging fre­quently to upload more birth sto­ries and the birth scene in Sin­ga­pore and around the world. So please email me your pregnancy/​birth/​par­ent­ing sto­ries with pic­tures and even tes­ti­mo­ni­als to share with other expec­tant par­ents that birthing can truly be a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence! See you online!

www​.four​trimesters​.com

The other good news is that if your insur­ance cov­er­age cov­ers mater­nity care, our Doula pack­ages can be billed under Dr. Paul Tseng, Dr. Lai Fon-​Min and any other doc­tor who is will­ing to do this, terms and con­di­tions apply, please email me pri­vately to find out more.

Love, Doula Ginny

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We are on Face­book!!!
If you would to be removed from this mail­ing list, please drop me an email with sub­ject “unsubscribe”

Please feel free to cir­cu­late this email to any­one who may be interested.

Doulaing with a warm heart because birth mat­ters,
Ginny Phang
Cer­ti­fied Doula, Child­birth Edu­ca­tor, 5PATH Hyp­nother­a­pist, Hyp­noFer­til­ity & Hyp­no­Birthing Prac­ti­tioner, Neu­roStrate­gist
W: www​.four​trimesters​.com
A: Four Trimesters Pte Ltd. 33 Taman Warna (Hol­land Vil­lage). Sin­ga­pore 276369
T: (65) 9475 1585

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10 MORE things they don’t tell you about being a Sin­gle Mom

On April 11th, 2009, posted in: Ginny speaks by fourtrimesters 1 Comment

16. The “f” word
Almost as vul­gar as the “f” word, is the word “father”. If there are TWO impor­tant con­cepts you should know as a sin­gle mom, the first would be that EVERY child has a father.You know that, but your child does not under­stand that esp when he has not met his father or his father had not played an active role in his life. Put your­self in your child’s shoes and think of it as a fairy­tale, its there but its unreal and beyond grasp.

For many years now, Kieran will go around say­ing that “he doesn’t have a father” and trust me, as a mom, there is noth­ing more painful than that espe­cially when you under­stand the dam­age it does to him on an emo­tional level and one of the under­ly­ing causes of the power strug­gles that we have. Whilst I truly don’t think he deserves being acknowl­edged as the father, noth­ing can change the fact that he is his bio­log­i­cal father. Only dur­ing the Fam­ily Con­stel­la­tions week­end that I attended last Octo­ber, did I realise that for Kieran to acknowl­edge that he has a father, i would have to do so first. So swal­low­ing a gal­lon full of pride and resis­tance, I acknowl­edged that he has a father by dig­ging out a really old pic­ture I had of his father and I and dis­played it at home, in full view of every­one who comes by.

17. If you have noth­ing good to say, don’t say any­thing
The other impor­tant con­cept that I swear by till today it to NEVER, i repeat, NEVER speak ill of your child’s bio­log­i­cal father, no mat­ter how much he has hurt you. That’s between you and him, not your child, so don’t pull your child into it. When your child is older, your child will be the judge and should be given every oppor­tu­nity to meet your ex if he wants to. This is some­thing I have man­aged to keep to for the past 8 years. And if i have to speak of his dad, i will only share good mem­o­ries I had with him. And if i have noth­ing good to say, then don’t say anything.

18. the other Men
Now that the man is out of the pic­ture… or rather, lit­er­ally, on a pic­ture on my wall, what about men and role mod­els that the ‘sin­gle par­ent­ing or rais­ing boys’ books usu­ally talk about? Well, the the­ory goes that if a child in a sin­gle par­ented fam­ily has pos­i­tive role mod­els around him, that should suf­fice. BUT what the books fail to men­tion is how dif­fi­cult it actu­ally is to find con­sis­tent pos­i­tive male role mod­els who would gen­uinely care about your son’s (not theirs) wel­fare. Eight years on, I have not found one, and unless you have a bloody good sug­ges­tion that will work, then share it with me coz’ I am tired of empty promises and non-​constructive suggestions.

19. Buy One Get One FREE
Yes it comes in a pack­age, take it or leave it. And hey, it cer­tainly takes more than BALLS to date a 2–1 pack­age. espe­cially some­one like me, haha! And whilst I don’t have any sug­ges­tions as to how to find pos­i­tive male role mod­els for my son, I also have none when it comes to dat­ing. Some say you should not intro­duce the man until your rela­tion­ship with him is sta­ble, some say to intro­duce him right from the start so you know whether the rela­tion­ship will work or not. I have only done the lat­ter and all I can say is that it has been insight­ful. Whilst I have not set­tled down with “the one” yet as there is none at the moment, every rela­tion­ship has brought me closer to what it can be by show­ing me what it can be like, and what I would like to avoid, ulti­mately bring­ing you one step closer to yourself.

20. It takes a vil­lage to raise a child
Whilst it may sound depress­ing, it really isn’t that bad alto­gether. Men aside, the next best thing you can do for your­self apart from estab­lish­ing a very strong sup­port net­work to sup­port YOU, is to estab­lish a Parent-​led team for your child. Quot­ing Mar­garet Mead“it takes a vil­lage to raise a child”.

I got the idea of a Parent-​led team from a book I am cur­rently read­ing — The Minds of Boys by Michael Gurian (http://​www​.guri​an​in​sti​tute​.com), just in time when I am look­ing to hire some­one to come in 3–4 times dur­ing week­day evenings to sit with my son and coach him on his home­work since my lifestyle is so unpre­dictable, which in turn is really unfair to my son.

The idea of a Parent-​led team is to get a group of peo­ple to be involved in par­ent­ing your child. Now, to get some­one to com­mit to com­ing in once a week is already hard enough, ask Kieran’s Godpa and he can attest to that… how­ever, with Skype and the won­ders of the inter­net, logis­tics and spa­cial issues should not be an issue.

With­out real­is­ing it, I already do have some mem­bers on Kieran’s Parent-​led team. Kieran’s Grand-​aunt is in charge of his reli­gious edu­ca­tion, ensur­ing that he turns up for cat­e­chism, attends mass with him, and reads him the Bible. My won­der­ful house­mate, who unfor­tu­nately is mov­ing back at the end of this month, has been loan­ing, read­ing and coach­ing him on home­work when­ever I am not around.She just said to include her in this team so they can chat via Skype or meet up once a month or some­thing… Being a lit­er­a­ture teacher from New Zealand and teach­ing at Julia Gabriel Sin­ga­pore, its great expo­sure for Kieran.

So if you are read­ing this, and may be inter­ested, we have OPEN posi­tions for expo­sure to “nuclear fam­i­lies” so Kieran can expe­ri­ence what it is like to immerse with a fam­ily with both a father and a mother; male role mod­els where when time per­mits, you can bring him out for sports or a man-​to-​boy testos­terone time; music expo­sure (appar­ently helps to improve Maths by leaps and bounds as it uses the same side of the brain); and/​or just out­ings with kids since I work week­ends; or any­thing else you can think of ie. using com­puter for cre­ative design etc..

21. Don’t be pai-​seh
If there is one other thing that comes use­ful, be thick-​skinned and always ask for help when you need it. I did an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment last year when I had to rope in a team of help­ing hands to help me out last year when I was stranded with­out a live-​in domes­tic helper for 6 weeks after break­ing up with my boyfriend. This also had to hap­pen at a time when a few of my fam­ily mem­bers were hos­pi­talised so the help I got from them was very limited.

I emailed a group of friends liv­ing nearby, both locals and for­eign­ers and to my sur­prise, it was the for­eign­ers who all responded almost imme­di­ately to lend a help­ing hand, from sin­gle friends who had less fam­ily oblig­a­tions and babysat when­ever i had to work week­day nights or stayed over when I had to attend births, some even being on “stand-​by” when I am on stand-​by for my clients, to a close friend liv­ing in a huge house and 4 kids offer­ing to ask her helper to come by and babysit or even com­ing over her­self with her tod­dler when the other kids are in bed. Wow wow wow. I heard from a local fam­ily two weeks later…

A few learn­ings after this inci­dent:
(a) My friends are truly my extended fam­ily, which is also the rea­son why I am very selec­tive, pro­tec­tive and lov­ing towards them. When the going gets tough, you truly see who your allies are.
(b) I think its very “asian” to not dry your dirty linens in pub­lic, hence not com­ing out in the open about being unwed (its unbe­liev­able how many are incog­nito); with a mind­set that when you need help or have prob­lems, it should be kept within the fam­ily. Sweet­heart, its time to break con­for­mity! Be thick-​skinned, be bold… ask for help!!!

22. Sta­bil­ity amidst the chaos
By now, you might have noticed the influx of peo­ple stream­ing in and out of your lives.. because find­ing a few com­mit­ted peo­ple is really hard but mak­ing do with bits and pieces every­where is a lot more real­is­tic. Adds vari­ety as well! How­ever, kids need some form of sta­bil­ity and rou­tine, so with my almost totally unpre­dictable hours and lifestyle,its really unfair for Kieran.And that is why, a solid domes­tic helper and sup­port from friends and fam­ily are cru­cial for me, so that whether I am there or not, his life goes on.

So who is the oak tree? YOU!!! And your child needs to know that, that you are avail­able and there for him no mat­ter where he is. And if you can’t be (i have lim­ited access to my phone when I am at births or with clients), there had bet­ter be a reli­able back up per­son he can call on.

23. The other “f” word
Trust me, it can get very stress­ful just coor­di­nat­ing the num­ber of peo­ple around a child’s life. My friends can attest to how stress­ful i get when my domes­tic helpers in the past can­not get their act together as it adds to the list of things i need to man­age and worry about. And now, you’ll also under­stand why my tol­er­ance level is very low as some may say, because I have high expec­ta­tions. I do expect the per­son to do their job WELL, and if they don’t, they are out of the pic­ture or at most in my case, if they don’t and it becomes a neces­sity, they stay on the pic­ture literally.

So the other “f” word, for­tu­nately, is to remem­ber to have FUN, F U N, FUN!!! Its easy to get car­ried away by logis­tics of get­ting things done and accom­plished. Par­tic­i­pate in being a human-​BEING, and not a human-​DOING. Just the other day, I was hav­ing lunch with my house­mate and she was shar­ing with me about her night with Kieran when I was away at a birth. It sounded as though she was talk­ing about some­one else’s son as he shared with won­der­ful adven­tures at school with her — golly, i felt like a brick just fell onto my head. It made me miss him so much yet he is always there, its ME who is not present and who has lost sight of what is impor­tant in life. Kids — they are your teach­ers, truly!

24. Inte­gra­tion
Now that I have given you nuggets of infor­ma­tion here and there, how does it all fall in place? How does one be a mother, a daugh­ter, her own woman, a part­ner, a friend, a pro­fes­sional???? Firstly it takes time to get every­thing together; Sec­ondly, it takes to get use to it and bal­ance what you want and don’t want; Thirdly, be fluid and make allowances for changes as noth­ing is truly con­stant; Fourthly, mas­ter the art of bounc­ing back when­ever you fall off the band­wagon. There is NO other way truly but bounce back on track, another valu­able life skill. Its all eas­ier said than done I can assure you, hav­ing lived through it and still liv­ing it. Life’s a jour­ney, you need the des­ti­na­tion to pro­vide you with the direc­tion, but it’s the jour­ney where you truly grow, upwards, down­wards, side­ways, con­tort.. I trust that you’ll fig­ure it out even if it means going in cir­cles sometimes.

25.Last but not least…
It is impor­tant yet chal­leng­ing to live in the present, how­ever it is also impor­tant to remem­ber to “Hold on to your dreams…” Who are you? What are your dreams as a per­son? What is the pur­pose of your life?

Wanna know my dreams? I’ll tell you when I get there…

This is for Kieran, my fam­ily and my friends — with­out which, I DO NOT want to even imag­ine what life would be like.. I love you all, very very much!

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Enmesh­ment — when your needs are met by your child

On April 9th, 2009, posted in: Ginny speaks by fourtrimesters

This arti­cle is writ­ten based on a book review that I wanted to write on “The Emo­tional Incest Syn­drome – what to do when a parent’s love rules your life” writ­ten by Dr. Patri­cia Love.

How­ever, I am unsure as to where to even begin. It’s like watch­ing the movie “Mil­lion­aire Slum­dogs”, about a boy who grew up in the slums who had all the answers to win the game show “Who wants to be a mil­lion­aire?”. When inves­ti­gated by the police who sus­pected that he was cheat­ing, it was found that all his answers are based on his expe­ri­ences in the slums. So are mine.

Where do I start? How does a story teller weave dif­fer­ent parts of a story together? I don’t know but I’ll give it a go…

April 2007
It was in April 2007 when I first under­stood what enmesh­ment meant even before know­ing that the word existed. It was one of those words I never used, never even knew of its exis­tence yet when I first heard of the term, I under­stood it com­pletely — Sim­ply because I lived it.

I was in a crowd of 2,000 peo­ple and after sev­eral failed attempts, I decided to stand on my seat and waved fran­ti­cally towards the stage, doing my best to get his atten­tion. Finally, he saw me and pointed me out to the cam­eras as the mic-​runners dashed towards me. Today was the last day. With the mic in hand, I said to the man and the crowd. “I set him free – I set my son free as the man in my life where I kept him pris­oner for so long” as I burst into tears of relieve. It was only three days before that, when we were end­ing a part­ner exer­cise when it hit me, and it hit me hard. Anthony Rob­bins came down from the stage and walked towards me, a gigan­tic man tow­er­ing me as he gave me a heart­felt hug.

Since the time I decided to keep the preg­nancy and risk every­thing I had as a 23 year old, which included being kicked out of my own home; not hav­ing a job; unfin­ished edu­ca­tion; zero sav­ings; and no place to live – every­thing I did, I did it for him. The same love that pulled me through the hard­est and low­est point of my life, awak­ing every day amazed that once again, I man­aged to make it through another sun rise. The same love that kept me going when a day’s meal for the both of us would be a $2.50 slice of ikan kurau that I would divide into half, one half piece for his lunch & one half piece for his din­ner, mixed together with a veg­e­tar­ian por­ridge that we would share, with him hav­ing all the fish. The same love that drove me to find my life’s call­ing whilst in search for a bet­ter life for the both of us. He became my guid­ing light, my angel, my com­pass. The same love betrayed him and held him cap­tive, los­ing his child­hood to meet his mother’s needs by step­ping up to be her man.

Over­look­ing the ocean from the apart­ment I was resid­ing in at the Gold Coast, my sob­bing cries blended into the night sky­line and the sounds of the crash­ing waves. That night, the wall of defense that have lined my heart col­lapsed, eroded by the floods I was caus­ing as I cried and grieved for the part­ner I did not have; for hav­ing to stand up strong and tall no mat­ter how much I was crum­bling inside; for hav­ing to go on run­ning even when the tank was empty, every time and all the time; for mak­ing the choice to be a sin­gle mother but most of all, I cried for my son. How could I, lov­ing him so much, also inflict pain on him? What does it mean if he is no longer the man of my life? What would be my pur­pose in life had it not been for him? I cried until I came to a real­iza­tion that putting our rela­tion­ship back in place as mother and child does not mean that I love him any less. I can still love him the same, even more, it just means that I made the space avail­able for my life part­ner to come in. My love for my son doesn’t have to change.

Whilst I did not know how that real­iza­tion and aware­ness would trans­late itself, it cer­tainly got the ball rolling. That sum­mer, I lost 8-​10kg in about 3 months. I was at the peak of my career. I left my 4.5 year rela­tion­ship and I started dat­ing. I weaned my son off breast­feed­ing after 6.5 years. I was on the roll and this time, I went to the other end of the spec­trum, push­ing my son away as I lived the sin­gle life that I missed out in my twen­ties, sur­pass­ing it for moth­er­hood. I was on a high when I went for my first sky-​dive in Las Vegas. Never did I real­ize that like the sky dive, I plum­meted down to ground zero and this time, I crashed hard and I took my son with me and gained 15kg. Just great!

July 2008
Kieran found me sob­bing uncon­trol­lably in my bed­room when he came home from school and I broke the news to him, that my part­ner and I have sep­a­rated. That night, he hugged me to sleep, reas­sur­ing me that it is all going to be okie.

This is the same man that Kieran and I would both fight over to get his atten­tion – I for a part­ner and com­pan­ion, Kieran for a father fig­ure. We would play­fully fight to see who would end up snug­gling up with him at night, with Kieran often win­ning to sleep in-​between the both of us, before we would move him down to his mat­tress when he falls asleep. This was a man who accepted us for who we were and the “pack­age” that we came in. We were bowled over – finally there was place­ment in the fam­ily system.

So when he left the pic­ture, we were back to square one and dis­placed. The place next to me remains empty and Kieran imme­di­ately stepped up and took posi­tion, in a posi­tion that was not meant for him yet a posi­tion that he was famil­iar with. To add to the dis­po­si­tion, this was hap­pen­ing at a time when I my live-​in domes­tic helper was on leave; and my ex-​partner was sup­posed to move in with me to help out with child­care should I need to work in the evenings and attend births at night. Sud­denly I was left stranded. For­tu­nately I have a very strong and sup­port­ive net­work of friends and fam­ily who came pour­ing in with help. That also meant that, like a funeral, I had drones of peo­ple in my house almost every night to keep me com­pany whilst I was in “mourn­ing”. Whilst this was cer­tainly help­ful, it also meant that Kieran was sur­rounded by adults all the time, and in his new posi­tion next to me, this was just the “per­fect” envi­ron­ment to breed more bac­te­ria, so he needed to fight for his place as an “adult– child” amongst the adults.

It did not take long before the power strug­gles between the both of us started and we hit the brick wall very quickly after. My male friends in par­tic­u­lar, who were with me sev­eral times in the week night to keep me com­pany or to babysit, were very con­cerned and advised that I brought him to see a pro­fes­sional. I refused, what do these sin­gle men know about kids any­way, as I con­fided in my girl­friends.. How­ever, not know­ing what else to do, I heeded their advice and found a play ther­a­pist.
After two ses­sions with the play ther­a­pist, she reported that my son has improved tremen­dously and that there was no need to come back to see her. How­ever, what remains a prob­lem is “enmesh­ment” as she gave me some “rec­om­men­da­tions” on what I can do about it. Stop co-​sleeping, stop doing adult activ­i­ties with him and the likes. I was angry, I was con­fused and I wanted to deny it all yet I wanted things to be bet­ter. Did my innate wis­dom and cul­tural upbring­ing get ahead of me? Who has the right answers?

I learned later, in my ther­apy work, that a lot of dis­ci­pli­nary issues are an indi­rect con­se­quence of what is hap­pen­ing to the par­ents and the rela­tion­ship that they have with each other, and not so much about the child at all.

April 2009
My alarm bell rings when­ever I sense incon­gru­ence and this was one of those moments. I have been see­ing this client for many months now and some­thing just doesn’t click. After many false alarms as to when labor was actu­ally and finally going to start, I asked her to come down for a ses­sion to “clear the air”. Some­thing was clearly going on – after all, it is mind over matter.

I waited to see what would unfold dur­ing the ses­sion and when the time was right, I posed the ques­tion – “what’s your rela­tion­ship with your part­ner like? Would you say that you have a strong relationship?”

”I have to remind my hus­band to ask me how I am doing when I wake up or how my day was –all he seemed con­cerned about is our child.”

”What doesn’t seem right to me when I am around you and your fam­ily as that you are both very child-​centered. Whilst this is actu­ally fine and even healthy, what is incon­gru­ent is that I get the sense that your own needs are not being met, and each of you put all your ener­gies into meet­ing the needs of your child and because your own adult needs are not met, your rela­tion­ship needs are not met, you both divert this energy of unmet needs to get­ting your own needs met through your child, such as hug­ging and cud­dling that you are not get­ting from your part­ner.” I shared my observation.

As her story unfolded, the jig­saw pieces were finally begin­ning to find its place as I explained to her about enmesh­ment, dis­place­ment and the impor­tance of fam­ily sys­tems and how it plays out when peo­ple in a group set­ting is being dis­placed. She is not the first. In fact, she is one of the many clients that I meet, together with my per­sonal quest to heal and grow, that led me to study­ing and offer­ing ther­apy and rela­tion­ship coun­sel­ing in my line of work as a Doula.

“I have read The Con­tin­uum Con­cept, my hus­band and I are big advo­cates of co-​sleeping and pro-​longed breast­feed­ing , isn’t this then unhealthy accord­ing to enmesh­ment?” my client asked me.

”They are all fine IF your mar­riage is strong and your needs are not met by your child, I replied as we went deeper into the con­ver­sa­tion when she finally under­stood it and could see that this is actu­ally hap­pen­ing in her own fam­ily. 10 min­utes after leav­ing my house, her waters released and she had her baby that night itself, but that, is another story alto­gether meant for another time.

I under­stand enmesh­ment. I have lived through it and am in the con­tin­ual process of work­ing through it after all these years. I know what she is talk­ing about when she shares about how breast­feed­ing and co-​sleeping can be so inti­mate in a non-​sexual way, my son and I have gone through that before. Whilst it is essen­tial that we as par­ents meet the needs of our child at his stage of devel­op­ment, wher­ever he is at that point in time, we also have to ensure that our own needs are met, through a dif­fer­ent out­let such as fam­ily, friends and extra cur­ricu­lum activities.

Enmesh­ment impris­ons; Love frees – which will you choose?

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