MotherWit Sleep Essentials

10/02/2020

Sweet families, As we move into a new period of heightened restrictions, we'd like to remind you of the services and support we're still offering:

Our Birth Essentials childbirth education classes can be taken in a group setting, online. Or privately, in-home or online.
http://birthessentials.ca/

Hospitals and some birthing centres are now limiting the number of support people in the birthing room to just 1. As your birth doula, we're committed to continuing to offer prenatal information, education, and support, while also holding a safe space for your feelings to land, whatever they may be. We can support you virtually during labour and birth, offering gentle reassurance, a familiar voice, assisting your partner with labour support, reminding you of your options and preferences for your birth. And, reflecting your magnificence back to you. Because we know you've got this, and we've got you!

Our postpartum support will carry on as usual, in-home or virtually. Our doulas are taking all the necessary precautions to stay safe and healthy so that we may be able to continue our home visits.

These are strange and uncomfortable times, and the idea of not having the support team you were hoping for may feel scary. But, we will get through this, together. One day at a time. ❤

04/04/2020

Rights to ALL birthing people.

03/29/2020

Dear families,
Given the increased anxiety surrounding imminent births due to COVID-19, our team has put together an Essential Labout Support Guide. Our goal is to offer some insight into what couples (or people birthing alone) might be met with in a hospital setting, as well as offer some ideas on how to cope with labour and delivery in these uncomfortable times. We want to help lessen the number of unknowns you might be faced with.

Birth is a vulnerable and transformational time. The idea of not having the support team you were hoping for may feel scary. This document is our gift to you to help answer your questions and ease some of your worries.

Labour Support Guide for Covid-19 These are strange and uncomfortable times. Many birthing folks are hearing the difficult news that their doula, and in some cases even their partner, may not be able to attend their births in person. We know this thought may be distressing. Birth is a vulnerable and...

12/10/2019

11/13/2019

Sleep training is a response to a major problem. The manifestation of the problem is the stress, frustration, and exhaustion of parents who have night waking babies. For many, the situation is totally unsustainable. However, the root of the major problem is not that babies are anxious night owls; it is that there is not enough support for parenting.
Babies require soothing. They need to be supported in getting to sleep. They need the vibe of a calm, attuned person to co-regulate their nervous systems within. This deep need for connection babies have is primal and evolutionary. When a parent becomes exhausted by life's demands and understandably jangled by compounded stress, it makes sense that many babies will also feel wired while tired, deepening parental suffering.
Our modern parenting culture is generally structured around the privilege of the space and things that contain us. It costs a lot to maintain the space and things we provide for our families, physically, mentally, and emotionally, never mind financially.
Babies generally do not want space and things. They want closeness and security. We ask our babies, wired for secure attachment, to express our culture's avoidant attachment style because we need our energy to maintain our space and things without enough support.
These problems are real, and require tremendous compassion.
"Fixing" the babies through sleep training is our cultural go to, though there is evidence when looking at the field of neuro-development that there can often be problems with this. What really needs fixing? Our incredible isolation as parents. Being alone at night with a baby who yowls every time you try to take a ni**le out of their mouth, or a toddler who freaks out the moment you try to put them into a crib when you know the day stretches before you in an overwhelming sea of exhaustion? No wonder people are looking for quick fixes. Parents are desperate. Chronic sleep deprivation is unhealthy and dangerous.
Imagine how much easier it would be if we lived in deeper community, where many folks occupied a kitchen happily making food together, and where there was an available set of arms or two at night to soothe a baby so parents could get sleep; a society in which parenthood was honoured, nourished, and supported, upheld as the most important role in the world.
Fostering separation is a fix. But it is a radical movement towards consistently connected community that will be the healing.
At MotherWit Doula Care we strive to create connected community. We also offer overnight family care in order to help families rest and reboot. It can be amazing how babies settle when parents have an opportunity to settle.
It takes a village to raise a child.

10/25/2019

09/23/2019

MotherWit's comprehensive approach to supporting families in getting more sleep doesn't stop with the class, consultations, or personalized strategy. We know that when mothers are feeling jangled or lonely, mothers who are usually the primary nervous system regulators of their babies, sleep can be impacted no matter what information they have. Evidence and lived experience are different things.

Our approach extends to providing a community space for mothers who need more reflection of their worth, and more relationships to nourish a sense of belonging. This group is free, and many have found it to be a place where ideas are exchanged, friendships are made, and support is found. In parenthood, community is everything.

We ARE your village.

06/20/2019

Let's ensure new parents have realistic expectations about infant sleep patterns. AND, let's ensure they have good support to meet these high demands. Keep checking on parents with kids this age. They still need support with food prep, getting naps, breaks, and some laundry folding.

Yup!!! True story!! Normal infant sleep needs to be met with understanding !!

04/26/2019

Doulas are not midwives. They are not medically trained, but they serve as as an emotional and physical support system for the birthing family.

03/17/2019

As we cannot force a baby to walk or talk before its time, we cannot force the ability to self-soothe before the brain is actually ready without repercussion. In infancy, if something takes extreme measures, then it usually means the child is NOT ready, and the result is not actually a self-soothed child (though there are exceptions to EVERY rule).

Do you feel pressured to sleep train your baby so they will learn to "self soothe"? In this post I'll explain why self soothing is nothing more than a myth.