The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS, a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA

Parenting

Support prenatal care and birth support for rural and under-served women!
Support the inclusion of Certified Professional Midwives in Medicaid and health care reform.

Where's the Birth Plan? by Jennifer Block - Midwifery-style care saves money and provides excellence for the new family--a great two for one proposal! She clearly points out how the more humane style of care provided by midwives not only saves money, but also saves lives. A new economic analysis forecasts savings of $9.1 billion per year if 10 percent of women planned to deliver out of hospital with midwives.

The Debate on Healthcare Policy Reform by Faith Gibson, a healthcare historian and policy theoretician
Learn about Health Care 2.0 and why "The problem with obstetrics is that it is all about obstetricians"

Resources

Science shows up Supernanny - A mental health expert warns that fashionable advice to ignore your child's tears may cause lifelong harm
Amelia Hill, education correspondent
Sunday November 7, 2004

Natural Family Online

"Living Joyfully With Children" by Win and Bill Sweet

I think it's a great book to give to new parents. It is easy to read and written in short bits with plenty of anecdotes to give you an idea of how to apply the principles presented. It does deal with toddlers and older children primarily, not much on infants. The best thing it has to offer is to help people be conscious and present in their parenting. So much of actual parenting seems to be reactive in nature and replaying old scripts from our own childhood experiences. The other really useful thing is that it gets both parents on the same page. The Sweets recommend sitting down and forming principles to govern your family by. This allows you to talk it out between yourselves and determine if your parenting goals are the same. Then as your children get older they begin to participate in this process. This allows them to feel a part of making the family work, instead of just being told what to do. There is also a huge emphasis on letting children have as much unstructured play as possible, even and especially as they approach and enter adolescence. All around I think it is a very good choice to give to new parents. It's easy to read, broken down in small digestible bits, and very practical.

Attachment Parenting: - "A fun and opinionated web site written by an attachment parenting couple raising three children in our modern times."

The Holistic Moms Network is for moms who are interested in natural health and holistic therapies, follow an "alternative" parenting style, or are looking to connect with other moms who share their perspective?

Mindful Mama - Good News for Mom, Baby and the Planet

Hooked on Nature is an educational campaign to inspire communities to develop an infrastructure that provides youth of all ages with an opportunity to develop a relationship with the natural world - based in Palo Alto, CA.

Is Nature Deficit Disorder Real?

AstrasScouts: Help Us Reinvent Scouting for Tomorrow. AstrasScouts Values and Goals: Ending All Prejudice, Honoring of all Cultures, Pursuit of Knowledge, Personal Responsibility, Individual Excellence, Teamwork/Friendship, Justice brings Peace, Global Awareness

America Serves is a student-driven, student-focused service project opportunity for high school students interested in learning about the challenges faced by children in other parts of the world, and doing something about them. The goal of each AMERICA SERVES project is to design, plan, and execute an educational fundraising event for an overseas relief organization chosen by the students.

Seeds of Compassion - from a conference Apr. 11-15, 2008, with the participation of the Dalai Lama. When we look across secular and religious wisdom traditions, and across human history and cultures, compassion may well be the virtue that is valued most highly and most broadly. The resources below seek to expand our conversation about what compassion looks like in action and how best to nurture it in future generations.

The Natural Child Project - Our vision is a world in which all children are treated with dignity, respect, understanding, and compassion. In such a world, every child can grow into adulthood with a generous capacity for love and trust. Our society has no more urgent task.

Healthy Child Online - the parenting website and E-Newsletter that gives you reliable information about natural health and holistic medicine for children. In addition, we offer you insights on encouraging and fostering in children the following qualities: self-love, compassion for others, joy, contentment, and vibrant health and vitality on all levels - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

New Method For Parents Helps Children Clear Negative Emotions Early from mercola.com

Parenting from bf.marie.org

Building a Foundation for Compassionate Intelligence by Diane Gordon

Children and Nature - A Relationship of Primary Importance - Discusses crucial elements in raising a healthy child.

Children of the New Earth magazine - the first, and currently only, international magazine to bring together all the latest information on everything pertaining to the extraordinary phenomena collectively known as the “Children of the New Earth.”

Why Wear Your Baby? By Sharon Reuven - "Although babywearing is an old concept, researchers in the past fifty years have confirmed the wisdom of this timeless practice. Studies have revealed that our children's social, emotional, and physical development are all significantly affected by early exposure to motion and human contact."

Spiral Scouts - an alternative scouting structure - Many families who choose homebirth or midwifery care may be uncomfortable with the intolerance exhibited by some of our national scouting organizations. Spiral Scouts is a response that provides a structure for scouting groups where different belief systems can plug in their own belief system modules. I think this is a neat idea!

Get Mothering Advice From Your Pet--Not Your Doctor

Reading Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce is an essential eye-opening experience for a conscious, conscientious parent. [ Reaching Beyond Magical Child - six, one-Hour videos, is now available from Touch The Future .]

Here's the transcription of an interview on educating and birthing children.

One of his most important messages is that for very young children, the problem with television isn't the content of the shows. In fact, the problem is that images on television are a level of abstraction that is inappropriate for such young children. It forces their brain to develop this prematurely, at the expense of more developmentally appropriate skills. It's a sobering thought that watching television can lead to Sensory Palsy.

Mothering Magazine celebrates the experience of parenthood as worthy of one’s best efforts and fosters awareness of the immense importance and value of parenthood and family life in the development of the full human potential. As a readers’ magazine, we recognize parents as the experts and wish to provide truly helpful information upon which parents can base informed choices.

They maintain a nice index of articles from their archives.

Pathways magazine for thought provoking articles for your family's health. This magazine is from the Holistic Pediatric Association and the Alliance for Holistic Family Health and Wellness

NursingFamilyMagazine - The Instinctive/Attachment Parenting Newsletter - Our goal at Nursing Family Magazine is to bring encouragement, support, enlightenment, information, and empowerment to families everywhere. This is a publication about creating strong family bonds by following your heart! Breastfeeding, baby wearing, co-sleeping, gentle birth, simpler living and more! Celebrate Motherhood!

Aware Parenting Online Support Groups - Attachment Parenting

The Earthy Birthy Thought Swap - We hope to foster a positive *Web Community* that will nurture, support & inspire the Natural Instinctive style that Atttachment/Continuum Parenting symbolizes.

The Compleat Mother Magazine Forum - Bulletin Board from The Compleat Mother - The Magazine of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Breastfeeding

The Kindred Spirits Mothering Forum

Attachment Parenting

Aware Parenting is a philosophy of child-rearing that has the potential to change the world. Based on cutting-edge research and insights in child development, Aware Parenting questions most traditional assumptions about children, and proposes a new approach that can profoundly shift a parent's relationship with his or her child. Parents who follow this approach raise children who are bright, compassionate, competent, non-violent, and drug-free.

Empathic Parenting , Journal of the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Many articles from the journal can be found at the Home of Empathic Parenting .

ParenthoodWeb

The Natural Child Project - Our multiple-award-winning site on empathic parenting, homeschooling, and child advocacy has a parenting advice column, personal stories, and articles by Jan Hunt, Alice Miller, Naomi Aldort, Joseph Chilton Pearce, and others.

Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children: Creating a Culture for Compassionate Parenting

Harvard Researchers Say Children Need Touching and Attention

America's "let them cry" attitude toward children may lead to more fears and tears among adults, according to two Harvard Medical School researchers.
Instead of letting infants cry, American parents should keep their babies close, console them when they cry, and bring them to bed with them, where they'll feel safe, according to Michael Commons and Patrice Miller, researchers at the Medical School's Department of Psychiatry.

Nurtured.Com : A meeting place for those who follow less traditional methods of raising children.

Birth Bonding as the Foundation for Attachment Parenting

Attachment & Special Issues

Attachment Parenting List

ParenthoodWeb

For a wonderful set of links to natural products for babies and children, . Better yet, simply subscribe yourself .

Nursing Family Magazine maintains a very large list of resources.

What does Child-Friendly Mean? A quiet place to nurse or feed your child. A little extra time to board the bus. The warmth and support of the entire community. A place for children in daily life. Contact www.childfriendly.org 800-500-5234 - Ask for a How-To Kit and start transforming your neighborhood into a place that supports and respects children.

Mothering Magazine (Jan/Feb 2005 issue, p. 25) has a list of 24 groups that help moms do their job well.

Empowered Motherhood LLC helps moms-to-be successfully transition into motherhood.

Sleeping

Some wonderful articles by Sarah J. Buckley, MD, from the section on Mothering - Care of the Newborn at Women of Spirit

Attachment Parenting
The Cosiness of Co-sleeping
Babies and Sleep
Getting a Good Night's Sleep - Another Perspective

Research on Infant Sleep and Parenting Advice

The Humanity Sleeper from Humanity Family Bed has a bolster to keep baby from rolling off the bed and has an extra thick absorbent pad to absorb breastmilk leaks. People love it!

Cosleeping & SIDS Fact Sheet from Linda Folden Palmer, DC, author of Baby Matters

From Primates to Late Nights: One Researcher’s Path to Sleep Studies - Interview with James McKenna, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame.

This is an excellent article about the way in which co-sleeping helps to regulate the baby's physiological functions and reduces the SIDS risk.

Why babies should never sleep alone: a review of the co-sleeping controversy in relation to SIDS, bedsharing and breast feeding.
McKenna JJ, McDade T.
Paediatr Respir Rev. 2005 Jun;6(2):134-52.

" . . . co-sleeping at least in the form of roomsharing especially with an actively breast feeding mother saves lives . . . "

And Baby Makes Three in One Bed from the NYTimes 12/29/05

Bedtime Story by James J. McKenna contains amazing information about just how beneficial cosleeping really is. [This article is available at birthlove.com, a subscription site that is well worth the small cost!]

Sharing a bed with your baby from UNICEF UK.

Elizabeth Pantley has tons of information about gentle parenting at http:

The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night by Elizabeth Pantley. Professionals who work with parents of babies may request a set of 4 newsletters, which are also available online: Newborn Babies and Sleep, What is Preventing Your Baby from Sleeping Through the Night?, Regular Naps Improve Nighttime Sleep, Early Bedtime Means Better Baby Sleep.

Checklist for Safe Co-Sleeping

She also has a new book out called Gentle Baby Care : No-cry, No-fuss, No-worry--Essential Tips for Raising Your Baby. Some excerpts are available online: Going Visiting with Your Baby, Crying in the Car Seat, Handling Unwanted Advice, Stop Diaper Changing Battles

Professionals can request a set of one-page articles from my books - for use on your website, as handouts, or in your newsletter. I provide these to many professionals who work with parents of babies and young children. I will be happy to send you the newsletter set at no charge. The titles are:

Newborn Babies and Sleep
Colic –What Can You Do About It?
Toddler Cooperation
Wonderful Sounds for Sleep
Going Visiting with Your Baby
Crying in the Car Seat
Baby Tantrums
Hitting, Kicking, Biting & Hair Pulling
The Baby Blues: Do You Have Them? & What to Do
Stop Diaper Changing Battles
Help Your Crying Baby
Eight Sleep Tips for Every Child
Solving Naptime Problems
Tantrums, Fussing and Whining
What Triggers Your Anger?
Stop the Interrupting
Moving from Crib to Bed
Should Babies & Toddlers Watch Television?
Handling Unwanted Advice
Quick Facts About Potty Training
The Potty Training Readiness Quiz
Potty Training – Get Ready, Get Set, Go!
First Born Jealousy
How to Have a Happy Marriage When You’re Busy Being Parents

All titles are available in Microsoft word text files by email. (Some are in PDF reproducible format.)
Spanish versions of some titles are also available upon request.

Tim Seldin, President, The Montessori Foundation and Chair, The International Montessori Council wrote the forward to my newest book, The No-Cry Discipline Solution. He has graciously provided four articles for this set:

Children are Little Scientists
Learning How to Pour
Learning to Observe your Child
Children Love to Work and Play

Signing with Children

Sign with Your Baby by Joseph Garcia - How to communicate with hearing infants before they can speak

Translating Newborn by Sonia Shah - You know your baby’s trying to tell you something, but what is it?

American Sign Language Browser

Singing with Children

Music Together - The Joy of Family Music! - Music and movement for newborns - preschoolers and the adults who love them!

Fam Jam! Music Together® is a registered Music Together® center based in Eldorado and in Santa Fe, run by a friend of mine.

Fatherhood

New book just for dads!

Men at Birth by David Vernon (ed) - What does it feel like to attend the birth of your own child? How do men overcome their natural anxieties int his situation and how can they best support their partners? These and many more issues are explored in this groundbreaking book, through the stories shared by fathers involved in all kinds of births.

BREAST IS STILL BEST, EVEN IF IT IS DAD'S by Alexandra Frean - Times Online - June 13, 2005

This is a fabulous article from Mothering Magazine:

Labor Union: The Story of a Bradley Dad
By Dimitri Kaasan
Issue 119 - July/August 2003

Birthrites: Healing After Caesarean has a new section on Men's Experiences [Here men can contribute their own stories and read other stories about cesarean and VBAC experiences. I find that many men don't understand the impact that it has on a woman to have her body cut open, her baby extracted, and her uterus brought outside her body for repair, after which she is expected to recover from her pregnancy and her surgery while nursing a newborn baby and looking radiant for the photos.]

THE TRAUMATIC BIRTH EXPERIENCE: A FATHER’S PERSPECTIVE

STRESS AND WEIGHT GAIN OBSERVED IN MEN DURING PARTNER'S PREGNANCY - First-time fathers are more likely to put on weight and drink excessively during their partner's pregnancy than after the baby is born, according to the findings of a study by Australian researchers. [Medscape registration is free.]

New dads can get postpartum depression, too

I Will Support - A Father's Affirmation by Patricia Blomme

The Fathering HomePage

Father's World Web Ring

Fatherhood At Its Best

I Will Support - Father's Affirmation - by Patricia Blomme

[I received a report that this magazine was defunct.]
FirstTime Dad.com - "answers your questions about being a new dad and talks about issues important to you, in your language."

Home School Dads - Geared specifically for the fathers who homeschool. Get the latest homeschooling news, articles, organizations, events, Homeschool Mall, and much, much more!

Paternal postnatal depression

A second study in this week's news highlighting the importance of a consequence of pregnancy that is often ignored looked at the impact of postnatal depression in fathers on the development of their child.

The research, which involved 8431 fathers and 11,833 mothers, found that 4 percent of men scored higher than 12 on the Edinburgh postnatal depression scale at 8 weeks postpartum, indicating major depressive disorder, compared with 10 percent of women. This paternal depression was found to be predictive of adverse emotional and behavioral outcomes in the children at age 3.5 years, even after adjusting for maternal and later paternal depression.

"Although largely neglected to date, paternal depression in the postnatal period should be recognized and treated by health professionals in order to lessen any adverse effects on the child," the researchers, led by Paul Ramchandani from the University of Oxford in the UK, advise.

Paternal depression in the postnatal period and child development: a prospective population study.
Ramchandani P, Stein A, Evans J, O'Connor TG; ALSPAC study team.
Lancet. 2005 Jun 25-Jul 1;365(9478):2201-5.

FINDINGS: Information was available for 8431 fathers, 11,833 mothers, and 10,024 children. Depression in fathers during the postnatal period was associated with adverse emotional and behavioural outcomes in children aged 3.5 years (adjusted odds ratio 2.09, 95% CI 1.42-3.08), and an increased risk of conduct problems in boys (2.66, 1.67-4.25). These effects remained even after controlling for maternal postnatal depression and later paternal depression. INTERPRETATION: Our findings indicate that paternal depression has a specific and persisting detrimental effect on their children's early behavioural and emotional development.

Mental Development

Brainy kids' brains develop slowly - [3/29/06] - Very smart children, despite their reputation for being ahead of their peers mentally, actually lag behind other kids in development of the "thinking" part of the brain, a new study says. . . .

"Intellectual ability and cortical development in children and adolescents.
" Shaw P, Greenstein D, Lerch J, Clasen L, Lenroot R, Gogtay N, Evans A, Rapoport J, Giedd J.
Nature. 2006 Mar 30;440(7084):676-9.

"Children who are adept at any one of the three academic 'R's (reading, writing and arithmetic) tend to be good at the others, and grow into adults who are similarly skilled at diverse intellectually demanding activities. Determining the neuroanatomical correlates of this relatively stable individual trait of general intelligence has proved difficult, particularly in the rapidly developing brains of children and adolescents. Here we demonstrate that the trajectory of change in the thickness of the cerebral cortex, rather than cortical thickness itself, is most closely related to level of intelligence. Using a longitudinal design, we find a marked developmental shift from a predominantly negative correlation between intelligence and cortical thickness in early childhood to a positive correlation in late childhood and beyond. Additionally, level of intelligence is associated with the trajectory of cortical development, primarily in frontal regions implicated in the maturation of intelligent activity. More intelligent children demonstrate a particularly plastic cortex, with an initial accelerated and prolonged phase of cortical increase, which yields to equally vigorous cortical thinning by early adolescence. This study indicates that the neuroanatomical expression of intelligence in children is dynamic."

Laundry Issues

Delicate newborn skin can react with rashes to all sorts of minor irritants, especially dry cleaning fluid and laundry detergents!

Fabric softener can be amazingly irritating to sensitive skin. Some alternatives include using natural fabrics, using a lot less detergent, drying on low heat and not overdrying your clothes.

THE SOAP THAT GROWS ON TREES!TM - Maggie’s Soap NutsTM are the only laundry soap that grows on trees!
Truly effective, 100% natural and safe for your most sensitive skin. Soap NutsTM are the dried fruit of the Chinese Soapberry tree. They contain saponin, a natural cleaner used for thousands of years to clean clothes, just like the plants used by Native Americans for washing.

I'll add my vote for Charlie's Soap, which is dye- and perfume-free. It cleans well and rinses clean - here's some detailed info.

My son had eczema and I have pretty allergic skin, and it made a big difference for us.

I'm also very sensitive to the issue of laundry detergents, since I'm laundering and sterilizing linens for use on newborn babies at birth, and I also have very sensitive skin.

I used those discs for a while, and they didn't seem to do much. I poked around online and found some interesting information about them. The most interesting thing was that they may seem to work the first few times you use them because there is usually so much residual detergent in our laundered clothes and linens that they bring their own detergent to the next laundry cycle.

Here's a webpage that calls those laundry discs a hoax.

What I learned from all this was that you can actually wash your clothes without any laundry detergent at all. Apparently water and mechanical agitation get clothes pretty clean without any added cleaning agent. Now, I just use a very small amount of fragrance-free Seventh Generation laundry liquid in my regular laundry and do a separate load if there's anything that needs extra cleaning.

Other Parenting Information

The Sling Station has helpful information on how to choose a sling or baby carrier.

How to Deal with Child Protection Workers in Unassisted Births by Capper, a former child protection worker (called Child Protective Services in the US) and now police officer. [As of spring, 2002, the BirthLove site is by subscription only - it's well worth the $10 membership fee; you can get a "sampler" by reading BirthLove's Top Twenty- For Free! .]

Happy Baby - fresh frozen organic baby meals

Dressing for sexes by Jo Paoletti - A fascinating romp through some of the history of the pink/blue color coding of children. In 1918, it was written that "the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for a boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

Strollers and baby carriages are being introduced into Africa, but the pediatricians there are concerned that they may damage the mother/child relationship. In contrast to current practices of carrying their babies in wraps or slings, the strollers are seen as "the ultimate in pushing the baby away from you", according to Nairobi child psychiatrist Frank Njenga. "The baby on the back is actually following the mother in warmth and comfort. The baby feels safer, and safer people are happier people." [from San Francisco Chronicle, 5/20/04, quoted in the APPPAH newsletter, Spring? 2005]