Alisha Dewes in Sydney, Australia | Educational consultant

Alisha Dewes

Locality: Sydney, Australia

Add/Update information

Reviews

Tags

• Educational consultant

25.01.2022 Foremilk/hindmilk?

24.01.2022 ***Trigger post about pregnancy loss*** It’s a long post but one I needed to share. Most people who know me know about Rose. ... Those that ask about her hear every detail. She was our miracle, our rainbow baby. Very much wanted, so very loved. 5 years ago, we welcomed her into this world only to say goodbye due to a rare disorder called Potters Syndrome. It has taken me 5 years to feel like I’m not going to break into a million pieces on her birthday. I feel strong enough to share more intimate moments of my experience. Not to shock or upset but to break the taboo around pregnancy loss, for others to know its OK to talk about your loss and more importantly its OK, not to be ok. I share my story for two reasons. 1.It makes me feel close to her. By talking about her and her birth I can openly grieve and allow my emotions to pass through me instead of bottling things up. Working as midwife after losing Rose has been my greatest challenge and talking about my grief has helped me continue doing what I love. 2.Pregnancy loss is common, in fact 1 in 4 pregnancies will end in loss but we don’t talk about it. In society we tend to shy away from painful conversations and that leaves women suffering alone. My hope is that by sharing my experience it may help somebody else feel less alone. When I see posts from friends that have experienced the loss of a child I feel a closeness, almost a bond that no woman wants to have, yet appreciates all the same as you know there is someone else that truly understands the depth of despair a mother’s heart can reach. Losing Rose has been one of my greatest lessons in life I now take nothing for granted. Not a single moment. I am grateful to be alive. I hold my children tight and love them fiercely. I am grateful for the love and support from my family and friends who have proven that no matter how crazy emotional I get they still love me unconditionally. I am in awe of my mum Adele Adams and my husband’s strength, they held space for me and allowed me to grieve in the way I needed. Who I pushed away to protect my own heart. I have learnt that soul mates can exist in friendships! My soul sisters Kye Haira and Rachelle Rachelle Louise Rakuraku stayed by my side for a 3 day induction, who watched me birth my baby girl and held me in that moment and loved me through the pain. Without the threat of suffering, we can’t experience true joy. The best we get is pleasantness - Neal Shusterman

23.01.2022 Here is my much-loved #4thTrimester image that explains this key stage in a new baby’s life so simply. #carryingmatters #buildahappybrain

22.01.2022 A member of our Gidget Virtual Village shared this recently and it really resonated. Here's to bringing more of the 'tougher' topics into the conversation, because they are often the really important ones!

20.01.2022 Stay calm, stay safe! Online classes available in an online face to face format for all pregnant couples at this time

18.01.2022 Babies don’t have the capacity to manipulate us

16.01.2022 Love this breakdown of how to prepare for a positive birth

16.01.2022 Oxytocin is a powerful hormone. Did you know that oxytocin is responsible for feeling loving toward a family member, the urge to kiss, and the reason you keep ...smelling your newborns head? But what’s the most important job of oxytocin? Birth! Oxytocin is right there with you from conception through breastfeeding. Oxytocin reduces fear and makes us brave while protecting our children. A hormone that is responsible for reproduction and protection? Thats pretty powerful! How can we support such an amazing hormone? Oxytocin is shy. It does its best work during birth when there are low lights, quiet sounds, privacy, and loving support. So turn down the lights. Quiet the room. Hug and sway with your partner or support person. Relax your hands and jaw. Surround yourself with a bubble of support and safety. Your body and hormones are communicating constantly, sending signals, receiving them, and doing the hard work of birth. So relax, and let the oxytocin flow.

14.01.2022 The moment I looked at him I fell in love He’s everything I ever wanted. I’m tired after the birth, and I’m sore, but I’m so happy he’s here. I keep counting hi...s fingers and toes and smelling the top of his head and thinking, You’re mine. You’re here! He’s perfect. I’m so happy. Nothing went the way I planned it. I had an emergency c-section and when they handed her to me I felt nothing. I’m trying to breastfeed but it just doesn’t work. I feel numb. I keep waiting for the love to arrive but it hasn’t yet. Does this mean I’m not cut out to be a mother? Can everyone tell that I’m a fraud? Wasn’t this supposed to be the happiest time of my life? Our experiences of motherhood can be so very different, even from baby to baby. Remember that what you feel is valid. You’re not alone. And help is available if you’re struggling. Art by @this_mama_doodles #perinatalmentalhealthweek https://www.cope.org.au

14.01.2022 The drop in female hormones after birth is considered the single LARGEST sudden hormone change in the SHORTEST amount of time, for any human being, at any point... in their life. Get this - during pregnancy your estrogen and progesterone will increase to the level of taking almost 100 BIRTH CONTROL PILLS in one day! And then within a matter of three days after birth you're essential back to a baseline of what your hormones were before pregnancy - and even lower. So you can imagine this is a little like PMS on steroids! The drop in hormones you experience after pregnancy stimulates your body to produce a hormone called prolactin - which signals your milk-making glands to produce breast milk. Exclusively breastfeeding actually suppresses your natural estrogen and progesterone levels to keep your breast milk supply high and your periods away. If you do not breastfeed - prolactin levels will drop and you may experience a period as early as 6 weeks after birth. If you combine feed your baby your hormone levels will also change - prolactin levels and milk supply will drop slightly, estrogen & progesterone will rise and you may also experience a period while breastfeeding. WHY IS THIS SIGNIFICANT? A surge in oxytocin after birth and during breastfeeding compensates for the initial drop of estrogen and progesterone. Around 6 weeks those positive post-birth hormones can begin to fade and you might start noticing the effects of low progesterone and estrogen. These two hormones are key to making dopamine and serotonin, two neurotransmitters in the brain that are important in feeling calm and happy. So, with a reduction in post-birth hormones, progesterone and estrogen some women might start to experience the baby-blues. If this is you - please know it is completely natural to feel overwhelmed. Reach out, get support & find tools to help you through this crazy hormonal ride. WHEN WILL HORMONES RETURN TO NORMAL? Hormones can return to normal anywhere from 6 weeks- 6 months postpartum (depending on breastfeeding). Pregnancy can sometimes cause your hormones to go a little whacky! Seek support if your hormones do not return to normal, you experience delayed menstrual cycles after breastfeeding, are anxious, depressed, have low libido, chronic fatigue, weight gain, heavy menstrual cycles or other unpleasant symptoms. Functional Naturopathy

13.01.2022 Language is a powerful birth tool and can change a woman’s mindset in seconds.

13.01.2022 What you need to know mummas

13.01.2022 Who has heard the advice, Stop holding the #baby so much you’re going to spoil them. And did it make you hesitate to do what your instincts directed, to cal...m your crying baby? There are no reasons to think twice when cuddling with your upset infant, no matter what well-meaning advice you receive. It’s impossible to spoil them. J. Kevin Nugent, director of the Brazelton Institute at #Children’s Hospital in Boston and a child psychologist, says that a newborn baby learns from their interactions with their parents that the world is reliable, and can trust that their needs will be met. Responding to baby’s cries isn’t a matter of spoiling, he said. It’s a matter of meeting the child’s needs. Babies are #neurobiologically wired to stop crying when they are being carried. This is a part of our evolutionary biology that helps our species survive. Studies published in the Current Biology journal, the first of which was by Esposito et al., show that the infant calming response to carrying is a coordinated set of central, motor, and cardiac regulations that is an evolutionarily preserved aspect of caregiver-infant interactions. These studies also help to have a scientific explanation for the frustration many new parents struggle with... that a calm and relaxed infant will often begin crying immediately when he or she is put down. Scientists have known for years that the cerebellum is directly linked to a feedback loop with the #vagus nerve which keeps heart rate slow and gives you resilience under pressure. The cerebellum only accounts for about 10% of the size of a baby’s brain but it contains over 50% of its neurons. As adults, we can calm ourselves by practicing mindfulness, which puts the cerebellum at peace and creates a parasympathetic response of well being. This appears to be the same response that occurs in infants when they are being carried. Notre Dame psychologist Darcia Narvaez led a research team that found children become healthier and happier adults when they have parents who treated them with #affection, #sensitivity, and #playfulness since birth. By surveying over 600 adults about affectionate touch, free #play and positive family time in their childhoods, it was found that adults with less anxiety and overall better mental wellbeing had positive childhoods. Professor Narvaez encourages parents to respond to their baby’s cries, whether it means holding them, touching them, or rocking them; it’s all optimal. What parents do in those early months and years are really affecting the way the #brain is going to grow the rest of their lives, explains Narvaez, so lots of holding, touching and rocking, that is what babies expect. They grow better that way. And keep them calm, because all sorts of systems are establishing the way they are going to work. If you let them cry a lot, those systems are going to be easily triggered into #stress. We can see that in adulthood that people that are not cared for well, tend to be more stress reactive and they have a hard time self-calming. The researchers found that free play is vital for child development, as well as growing up in a positive, warm home environment. Narvaez believed that humans need these important things from the time they are born. Therefore, she recommends parents follow their instincts. Although it places a large responsibility on parents to be responsive to their baby’s cries, she adds that we really didn’t evolve to parent alone. Our history is to have a #community of caregivers to help, such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends in the baby’s life. Professor Narvaez says, We need to, as a community, support families so they can give children what they need. https://theheartysoul.com/holding-your-crying-baby-isnt-sp/ https://www.psychologytoday.com//the-neuroscience-calming- https://www.researchgate.net//236251169_Infant_Calming_Res #neurochild #childdevelopment #familygoals #villagelife #dyads

10.01.2022 Great documentary for expecting couples https://youtu.be/e3HuD9Ehb_0

06.01.2022 Love this visual!

05.01.2022 Please pass on to family and friends

03.01.2022 HOW TO PLAN FOR A POSITIVE, EMPOWERING BIRTH A lot of mums-to-be have their heart set on a particular kind of birth, yet nature and circumstances can mean that ...their actual experience is pretty different to what they had hoped for. Of course, in the short term every new mum is just glad to have their healthy baby in their arms but later on, once the initial oxytocin rush is over, having a birth experience that wasn’t the one you had dreamed of can weigh heavy on the mind. The very first thing to say is that you did the best you knew how to at the time and given the circumstances. Ideas like, ‘I did something to make my birth hard’ or ‘I should have said no’ are worth forgetting about almost immediately. Knowing what to do or say when under time pressure, and in the heat of a moment as intense as having a baby, is not easy. Allow yourself some peace of mind. After knowing and understanding that, I’d share these tips with any woman planning a birth..... Read the list here https://bit.ly/2O93Y9X The Birthing Tree . . For support in your gentle parenting journey get your copy of the new Autumn Issue 38 of The Natural Parent Magazine https://linktr.ee/TheNaturalParentMagazine

02.01.2022 credit: The Little Milk Bar

02.01.2022 Have you ever heard the words ‘not progressing’ muttered with reference to your own or another persons labour? The phrase ‘failure to progress’ is used to desc...ribe the deviance with which a woman’s cervix dilates when compared to the expectations of Dr Emanuel Friedman original (1955) and ongoing research about cervical dilation norms in labour. The current medical understanding of how labour should progress is rooted in Dr Friedman’s research; he was the first to depict a ‘labour curve’ and divide labour into stages. His research has since been discredited (like, it was discredited about 20 years ago!)... and we know that the Friedman curve to plot labour progress is incorrect. Despite having newer and better research about labour progress, most maternity care providers apply Friedman’s curve to labour and expect it to perform this way. If you deviate from the curve you have ‘failed to progress’ according to their expectations... BUT what is actually happening is that your care provider is applying an outdated and incorrect expectation onto your body... you have not failed to progress, they have failed to wait... it should not be labelled ‘failure to progress’ (where the blame is placed on women) it should be labelled ‘failure to wait’. Zhang et al (2010) in their study ‘contemporary patterns of spontaneous Labor with normal neonatal outcomes’ found that ‘Labor May take more than 6 hours to progress from 4 to 5 cm and more than 3 hours to progress from 5 to 6cm of dilation’... however, before we ‘told-you-so’ the entire obstetric profession, we should view Zhang’s findings with some scepticism. Although this research found the pattern of labour to deviate from Friedman’s curve, approximately 50% of the women in their study were under the influence of synthetic oxytocin (syntocinon/pitocin) in order to speed up their labour. So, this research still cannot fully inform us about the physiological unfolding of labour and how fast or slow it might progress... but it does open up an opportunity to change our beliefs about labour progress #failuretoprogressorfailuretowait #birth #induction #medicalisationofbirth See more

02.01.2022 We are so excited and proud to be announcing that we are still revolutionising and pioneering childbirth education by having Australia’s first ever, fully train...ed and qualified, Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Dr Lanzis Homar, join our Calmbirth family by becoming a Calmbirth Educator. This is a milestone in changing our birth culture one family at a time, through the collaborative approach of an obstetrician working together with his midwife and pregnant couples to bring about cultural change and minimise the risk of intervention. I attended Calmbirth classes myself as a first-time father. I fell in love with the program and promised myself that one day I would incorporate Calmbirth into my obstetric practice. The course helps women mobilise resources within themselves and with their partners to confidently birth their baby. Having begun my career in Madagascar, I have seen many beautiful births without intervention in a country with very few medical resources. I know that birthing women have amazing resources and inner strength, and with Calmbirth I can help them to unlock it. A good collaboration between midwife, doctor, and couple, can minimize the risk of intervention. That is why I decided to create the first Calmbirth course jointly run by both an Obstetrician and a Midwife. I believe in providing personalised, respectful and gentle holistic care and truly understand that a couples birth experience will last in their minds and hearts forever. Please join Calmbirth with Lanziz & Sally, in the beautiful city of Toowoomba. "I will be working alongside my very talented and passionate midwife, Sally Crothers, who I will be introducing to you in next week’s blog.so stay tuned."