I’d like to start another Birthing From Within childbirth class in either May or June. So far I have two couples as takers, and have room for at least two more couples. So if you are pregnant and will be in your second or third trimester my May or June, let me know! We’d love for you to join us!
Monthly Archive for March, 2009
This one tiny hospital in a tiny New England town is bucking the cesarean
trend by actually lowering their rate and achieving an 18% c-section rate
when their state average is 34%. How do they do it? With a less-is-more,
back-to-basics, midwifery-led model of care. Enjoy.
The way most of us think about genes goes like this: we each have DNA, our genetic blueprint, which is a product of half our mother’s and half our father’s DNA. And we’ll pass on half of our genes to our young along with half of our partner’s genes to our children. And it doesn’t really matter what we do to our bodies – our DNA is an unchanging map, as strong as it was as the day we were born.
But that’s not the whole story.
It turns out that how we influence our children’s genetic map is much more complicated than this. A new strain in genetics, called epigenetics, shows us that the traits we pass on to our child’s DNA is also the result of lifestyle and environmental choices we make, even well before our child’s conception.
“If we think of our genome as the hardware of a computer, the epigenome would be like the software that tells the computer when to work and how to work and how much,” says Dr. Randy Jirtle, professor and researcher at Duke University. All of our cells carry the same genes, but it’s the epigenomes that tell our developing cells what kinds of cells they will develop into – hair, fat, muscle, cancer, heart, etc. Epigenetic codes pass on as cells divide, but they are not necessarily permanent.
So what does this all have to do with pregnancy? Researchers think that epigenetic codes can change, especially during critical periods, such as – you got it – pregnancy. And when pregnant mothers eat things that change their body makeup, it can change the makeup of their unborn child. For instance, studies with mice have proven that a diet high in a certain toxins during pregnancy (in the study they used BPA, a plastic commonly found in many baby bottles and other household products), even when the mother is thin, more often leads to an epigenome in her young that is a marker for obesity and she has many more obese children, even when they are fed the exact same diet. And what’s perhaps even more interesting is this obesity epigenetic marker is passed on to the next generations as well.
What all this means is that everything that we do to our bodies – what we eat, how much we drink alcohol, how much stress we are under, if we smoke or use drugs, how active we are, and how much we are around environmental toxins - all these things can have an effect not just on our own health as previously thought, but on our future generations. And, the old adage “you are what you eat” is only half true – we are what WE eat (and drink and breathe etc.), but also and what our MOTHER ate and possibly what our GRANDPARENTS ate also effect our health. And why, aside for providing nutrients to our fetus, it really does matter what we put into our bodies in pregnancy, and surprisingly, well before. The way we treat our bodies even well before our pregnancy matter to the health of our children and our children’s children in ways that we never imagined.
That can sound pretty depressing. But there is great optimism in all of this as well. We are no longer slave to the idea that our genetics is the be-all and end-all to our health. The great thing about our epigenetic blueprint is that it is constantly changing – we have the ability to modify it for the better. And while it can sometimes be hard to see results of a lifestyle change in our own bodies for a multitude of genetic and environmental reasons, our unborn and even unconceived children may get to start from scratch with a healthier epigenome if we make healthier choices during pregnancy and before. We may even be able to erase the power of an obesity (or cancer, or alcoholic…etc.) gene from our heredity for our children’s sake. And if that’s not a beautiful thing, I don’t know what is.
“We’ve got to get more people thinking about what they do – they have a responsibility for their epigenome,” Dr. Jirtle says. “Their genome they inherit, but their epigenome they can potentially alter. And particularly that of their children. And that brings in responsibility. But it also brings in hope. You’re not necessarily stuck with this – you can alter this.”
Watch the entire Nova Science Now segment on epigenetics and learn much more here.
Tonight was Fran Wilson, CNM’s going away party. Fran was the midwife that ran the Wild Rose Women’s Clinic in Kennewick. Many families from all over the area came to say goodbye and pay their respects to an area midwife who caught many babies both at Kennewick General Hospital and at home. It was cool to see so many babies crawling around and so many thankful people. She helped me immensely when I started doing doula work. It is sad to see her go – there is one less choice for women in the Mid-Columbia region of Washington.
Yet, new life is being born. There are two new midwives who have come to town to take over Wild Rose Midwifery, and they seem like lovely women – I met them both tonight. Kristin Eggleston and Lorri Carr will be serving the Tri-Cities, Prosser, Yakima Valley, Goldendale and Walla Walla. They plan to provide full-service prenatal, birth (homebirth) and postpartum care as well as prenatal counseling. They will accept Medicaid and a limited number of private insurances, and will also accept self-pay.
To contact them directly:
Kristin Eggleston, LM
509 * 780 * 3330
sunrisedoula *at* cableone *dot* net
Lorri Carr, LM
509 * 250 * 2072
lorricarr *at* hughes *dot* net
Welcome Kristin and Lorri to the community!