Pregnancy loss is a devastating experience that happens to many parents every year and most go on to conceive again. This experience can turn gestation into a time that feels tenuous and full of worries, making it hard for parents to feel safe to bond with their growing baby. Our own histories and our ancestral imprints around death and loss have an impact on how we move through the loss of a baby, making this phase possibly even more challenging. Considering that the prenatal period is one...

Nearly 4 million babies are born each year in the United States, with statistics showing a slight decline in births in 2021 to 3.7 million. Currently, the majority of births (98.4%) happen in hospital settings (MacDorman & Declercq, 2019). Before the pandemic, one quarter to one third of birthing parents reported their births as traumatic (Simkin, 2016). The US has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations, with an exponential number of women nearly dying (severe...

El Jardín Birth and Family began the Birth in Pieces project in 2015. A labor of love, this project spanned multiple years and took various twists and turns as we interviewed more and more women. Patterns emerged. We realized that these individual narratives, together, painted a picture of modern birth culture. What's wrong with birth in the USA? It's time to ask mothers. The film is the outcome of their work interviewing mothers and their partners talking about their experiences with birth.

Polyvagal Theory and the Developing Child: Systems of Care for Strengthening Kids, Families and Communities by Marilyn Sanders and George Thompson is finally here! Come join us for a book launch and discussion with one the authors, Dr. Marilyn Sanders. Dr. Sanders originally published her work in the acclaimed edited volume by Stephen Porges and Deb Dana, Clinical Application of the Polyvagal Theory. She is a board-certified pediatrician and neonatologist and provides clinical care for...

I have been writing about the baby's experience for many years. After the book by Brene Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead came out, I decided that I wanted to be one of the people she wrote about who lived whole-hearted lives. She describes them as people who would not sit by and simply watch life go by, but those who were willing to enter into the arena and dare greatly, erring, getting dirty and fully engaging in life.

In 1999, an adult in my private practice remembered their difficult birth in their body while receiving bodywork from me. It was an eye opening moment. I had just had my first baby and was a newly graduated Biodynamic craniosacral therapist. We are trained to ask about the birth process in our adult clients because of the compressive forces on the body particularly the cranium. My client told me that she felt her lifelong depression was associated with her near death at birth, and what...

Nearly one in 10 people born in the United States is premature (birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy), and its complications are the number one cause of death in babies. Those who survive premature birth often have long-term health issues. Surprisingly, the United States has one of the worst premature birth rates among high-resource nations (Source: March of Dimes ). Research has also shown that the countries with the highest prematurity rates also have high rates of depression and alcoholism...

At the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH), a celebration of support for the Mother-Baby Dyad and Trauma Healing is happening. All month, there have been lectures by esteemed experts in trauma sensitive and trauma healing approaches. From midwives who are trauma sensitive to baby bodyworkers, from family therapists who know how help you recognize trauma attachment to cultural competencies with marginal communities, you will find it in this free lecture...

Monday, March 4, marks the beginning of Birth Psychology Month for the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Pyschology and Health (APPPAH). This monthlong celebration features a panel of speakers around trauma informed practices for pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care. APPPAH received a grant for this project, so live lectures are free. Our first two speakers will be on Monday at 7 pm and 8:30 pm Eastern time. Jennie Birkholz, Principal of Breakwater Light, LLC, Trauma informed educator...

The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health is excited to bring together 10 talented practitioners to explore the Trauma Informed Practices that help improve birth outcomes and support human development right from the very start. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (1998) launched the importance of trauma and trauma informed care in our health and educational systems. We suddenly had a measure of how early experiences in childhood could correlate with adult disease.

The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health is pioneering a model of care that includes the baby starting at conception. Our model also includes transgenerational and intergenerational trauma, prenatal experiences, birth and attachment and bonding. We have a conference on this topic October 5-7, 2018, in Denver, CO. See: https://birthpsychology.com/2018-conference/welcome I will be a the Zero to Three conference representing our programs for a poster session. If you are...

I am reading Nadine Burke Harris’s Book: The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity . I will often come across a passage that resonates so deeply with my own life that I have to put the book down and just breathe. The reason for my pause is not about my own Adverse Childhood Experiences, although I have a few; it is because I recognize the path she is on. I first heard about Adverse Childhood Experiences from another professional in my field of practice, prenatal...

I am reading Nadine Burke Harris’s Book: The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity . I will often come across a passage that resonates so deeply with my own life that I have to put the book down and just breathe. The reason for my pause is not about my own Adverse Childhood Experiences, although I have a few; it is because I recognize the path she is on. I first heard about Adverse Childhood Experiences from another professional in my field of practice, prenatal...

In 2002, I wrote a JOPPPAH article, The Power of Beliefs: What Babies are Teaching Us . In it I discuss how young babies already portray a sophisticated and established complex of beliefs and patterns of being in the world. I describe four clinical stories of babies in PPN-oriented BEBA therapy sessions who are expressing very difficult patterns based upon earlier experiences in the womb, during birth and as newborns. Babies and children live in the inner world of their earliest experiences,...

The ACEs and Resilience movement is now across the US and worldwide, focusing on increasing awareness of how trauma impacts children and adults. There are now calls for more programs, projects, training and research on trauma from a baby's perspective. Recent programs highlight Trauma Informed Parenting , Maternal Health and ACEs , and Pediatrics and ACEs , but none of these approaches include the first 9 months of life, even though data clearly shows that the baby's experience of the womb...