Pregnant mamas, please come to get ready!

Postpartum mamas, bring your babe and learn some tricks to make it a bit easier!

The postpartum period is so much easier with a few tips and tricks up your sleeve! Class will include herbs and food cures that are easy to have on hand to self-treat.

Natural approaches to common concerns will be given: managing baby blues, natural pain relief, balancing appetite, toning the abdominal muscles and pelvic floor, lactation issues, prevention and home treatment of mastitis, strategies to maximize rest and minimize stress.

For new moms and moms-to-be. Bring your partner.

$35, but partners attend for FREE.

When:  November 20, 2011 12:30-3:00pm

Where: Berkeley Yoga Center

call 415.938.7421 to register or click below to pay online.

I am frequently approached for information about how to start infants with solid foods. While there are a variety of books about making your own baby foods and different food mills and devices and recipes available, I think keeping things as simple as possible is the best thing for a busy, young family.

Make it easy, keep it real (real foods, that is): this is the foundation to giving your child lifelong healthy tastes.

When our son was starting solids, we believed it was important not only to recognize the latest in research on allergies, but also focus on digestible food combinations, the same way that we ourselves do in consideration of Ayurvedic principles. I didn’t want to give the usual first foods that were offered to my generation, which were principally carby warm cereals like rice porridge; I didn’t want my child to develop a habit of reaching for the sweet taste too preferentially so early in life. After all, although breastmilk is quite sweet, it is balanced with protein and fat in a way that rice cereal is not.

The Traditional Signs

We first offered solids when our son showed the traditional signs:

• he was over 6 months old,
• had broken his first tooth,
• and showed interest in eating.

When I say “interest in eating,” I mean he would watch us eat intently and excitedly. His little eyes would follow the fork as I loaded it up and brought it to my mouth and back as if he were watching Agassi at the US Open. He would reach out and grab the utensils. He would teeth on a spoon. He would drool and hunger not just to eat, but to get involved with the fun and exciting mealtime ritual.

The first foods were mashed or pureed root vegetables. Not white potatoes (which are too vata-provoking and may cause gas). We stayed on the side of carrots, sweet potatoes, taro, parsnip, celery root, squash (which is obviously not a root, but still). Sometimes to add some protein, I would offer homemade bone broth separately or mix it into the mashed roots.

After a few weeks of this (really not long) we saw that he was doing fine with eating. Call me crazy, but I was already getting tired of separate meal prep. We have a rule in the house: no special interest eating groups. (I’m kidding. Sorta.) Besides, his bounding enthusiasm for inclusion in the social aspect of family mealtimes was an ongoing good sign. So, we gave him bits of our dinner, straight from–well, not exactly our plates, but our mouths. Actually, just mine. It is supposed to be from just the Mom’s, according to traditional lore.

The “Mama Bird” Method

I’m not sure how modern dentistry views this old approach*, but I first saw what I can only refer to as the “mama bird method” when I was out for dim sum when I was 6 months pregnant. We were sitting across from a new family who spoke only Chinese. The mother mimed that the baby boy in her lap was 6 months old. She would eat a little herself and then, offer baby some by basically taking a bite of veggies and meat and noodle and chewing it and the spitting it back on the chopsticks and giving it to the baby. A bite for her, then a bite for him. A very pleasant family outing. He looked like a little prince there in Mama’s lap, facing the table, pleased to be able to pretend to be grownup and do and eat and sit as the grownups did around him.

I did it and it worked very well. A dear friend who grew up in Romania says that they feed children the mama bird way in her homeland. Another friend of Mexican decent says that the Mamas and Grandmamas from Mexico fed babies this way, too.

Anyway, I checked in about it with Liu Ming, our favorite local Orthodox Daoist teacher in Oakland who is a specialist in the realm of nutritional, traditional eating, who gave me the huge thumbs up to being your child’s own food processor. To condense what he said, he basically thought that when parents ignore a child’s desire to grow up and eat real food, they do it a disservice.  He also okayed a wide variety of food relatively soon after introducing food. Obviously, he meant in proper combinations and real food forms (fresh, homecooked, warm, balanced, combined using the basic tenets of Ayurveda or TCM and some understanding of season and personal constitution). Oh, and the whole root veggies thing that we started with was partly what Dharmanidhi trained us about in the Ayurveda apprenticeship. So, basically, props to Ming, Dharmanidhi and Nam Singh–they are my inspiration and basis of my training in most food-as-medicine approaches. Since kids are people, too, the specifics for infants and children are really few.

The way I see it, this kind of approach is ideal for most normal, healthy kids. Obviously, if you are concerned about an allergy, you can introduce foods one at a time and even sticking to that food for some time (a cycle of several poops, for instance) so that you can easily trace any potential reaction directly to the food source. My nephew has extreme and life-threatening food allergies, so I’ve seen the horrors of food allergies and it is really no joke. There is definitely value in taking a progressive step-by-step introduction of food substances in cases like his. Still, in his case as in many like his, there were many signs of sensitivity long before he got a taste of solid food (usually seen on the skin if not also in the diaper, the behavior, etc.) that guide how you would offer solids. Listen if your doctor is concerned and use your intuition.  For our family, a one-by-one introduction of food substances was luckily not necessary.

I think the main benefit to our more old world approach (regardless of whether you will actually chew for your kid or not) is that the child learns to eat and accept and even like a wide variety if tastes (provided that you include them in your diet). Your kid WILL pick up your food habits.

We now have a 3.5 year old whose only food preference is not liking tomatoes. That’s it. And that preference only emerged a few months ago. Yes, there were mild food struggles here and there that we guided him through, and really most of those issues were really about him trying to use food to press our boundaries and see where he was with us. But, by and large the kid will chow on anything: sauerkraut, olives, bitter greens, all manner of veggie and meat. He eats unsweetened yogurt just fine. I don’t have to hide greens in a smoothie. I don’t have to beg him to eat or negotiate or bribe. His proper eating habits and varied tastes are absolutely natural, but every bit trained. It is convenient for me and also one of the best gifts for lifelong health that we could have given our child.

*Note: Ok, I fibbed. Actually, I have read something about what modern dentistry thinks about spit swapping with your kid, whether from mama bird feeding practices or whatever other reason your slobber might get mixed with theirs. I can’t find the research, so I hesitate with this, but basically what I remember is that babies end up with the bacteria present in mom’s mouths no matter what, but not dad’s. So, you want to limit the introduction of different strains of bacteria so as to prevent future gum disease later in life. Therefore, it is better for children to share a cup with mom, but not as much with dad and grandma, etc.

Birth is more than just the labor. It is more than the first day of a mother’s relationship with her child. It is the beginning of a much larger process: motherhood is not something that a woman gives to just her child; it is a capacity that opens within her to serve the whole world.

The weeks (and months) of physical and emotional adjustment after the gross birth experience, however, is helpful to stabilizing this capacity. A protected, supported postnatal period is essential to having a relaxed and healthy mama and baby. A new mom is a very, very, busy person, but she may be busy in a different way than she was before she was a mom. Instead of running around with a big to-do list or killing it at her career, you’ll see her with her mind and heart tirelessly occupied with her child’s needs. It may look like she is quietly sitting for long stretches with baby, puttering about the house for a few minutes here, resting there. Still, she is ever alert to her new child and building intimacy with him. The sleep deprivation is intense and what looks very “chill” may not feel that way to her.

The most important thing for the family and community to remember around a new mom is that she has very little opportunity to do anything for herself. She is there for baby alone. She only has the opportunity to adjust her reaction to what is happening around her as she cannot control her environment herself or go get what she needs. This puts it on the family around her to create a safe and sacred space for her in which she can thrive.

Herbs help. Proper foods help. Relieving her of anything you can so she can do something for herself really helps.

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The “Ayurvedic Guidelines for Postpartum Health” document below is meant to help the family plan the right orientation around the birth and postnatal period. It is meant to help the family understand how they can contribute to an environment that will protect the mother from external stresses and allow her to heal from labor and delivery. If the new mom knows her Ayurvedic constitution and understands the season in relation to it, it will help tremendously. The more smooth and relaxed the environment, the better mother and baby will be able to adjust and the best bond will be created between mother and child.

Consider posting the following “Ayurvedic Guidelines for Postpartum Health” document on the fridge. Share it with family and friends who will be an integral part of the first stage of baby’s life.

Women are power. No act reminds us of this more than birth.

Surrendering to the chaos of labor and then pushing a child through is an incredibly empowering experience. We can help new mothers reveal this as a powerful transformation and successfully integrate it into their lives by offering life-affirming midwives and natural birthing options and protecting the postnatal period as a sacred window with proper support, nutrition and herbal support.

Demedicalized Childbirth: Supporting Women as they Embrace Nature

In 1997, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for the demedicalization of childbirth due to the increase in unnecessary interference with the natural process of birth related to the advance of modern medicine.

Statistics show that medical interventions at birth tend to snowball, leading to further interventions. This makes it difficult for a woman to have the natural birth she planned, while increasing the chances for complications with nursing and general healing that frequently come with drugs usually employed in the hospital birthing process. While we can be truly grateful for lifesaving medical technology when it is applied appropriately, natural childbirth is clearly safer and therefore preferable for most normal births. In a culture where natural childbirth is less common and homebirth can seem extreme, how can we support women to embrace nature?

Birth–and death, for that matter–used to be a common and visible part of daily life right in our homes. Simply by proximity, we as a culture used to know what to expect with birth and the postnatal period. Mamas and sisters and aunties and nieces were there and ready to help out with the familiar territory of birth. Men knew their roles and provided a supportive and respectful space for women. This is in sharp contrast to today’s cultural landscape, where we often don’t see the full range of life anymore. The birthing and dying and eschewed away to the doctor’s domain and labor and birth is depicted as an emergency situation on TV ranging from the Cosby Show all the way to ER. It has bred a kind of pervasive, cultural fear where it seems only the “experts” have the answers about grounded, real-life womens issues–not just at birth, but also in the healing period afterward.

Even outside of the doctor’s office, new moms today are often expected to adjust to their new role as Mommy largely on their own; this compounds the problem. Cut off from a living women’s tradition of community support and with the office demanding Daddy and possibly even Mommy back at work ASAP, the modern world refuses to make space. To make matters worse, women often feel that their experience is unique and therefore irrelevant to other women–from the medical particulars of their birth to the individual family situation and beyond–and therefore moms might not readily talk about their experiences with other women, especially those who are not moms themselves. It all adds up to making having a baby in today’s culture often isolating and strange, even in liberal enclaves where lip service is given to community support but where people actually live quite separately from one another. What’s worse, it also robs women of their inherent power.

This is why it is critical that we offer women safe, natural, life-affirming birthing environments whenever possible, rather than fear-driven ones. After that, it is essential to provide a loving and supportive postpartum environment in which she may recover and integrate her birth experience, whether she was able to have her child naturally or not. Expectant women can help themselves by creating thoughtful birth plans for Labor Day and informing those they are close to of their wishes. For the postpartum period, they can teach their friends and family to stock their kitchen with nutritious foods-as-medicines like bone broths and teas to promote healing and a good, basic home herbal pharmacy with simple, safe herbs for lactation support and to combat baby blues. A postpartum choice growing in popularity is to take a retreat and media fast for mom, dad, new baby and siblings only, with only the very closest best friend, caregiving family member or postpartum doula entering the home to help with meal preparation and cleaning.

What Does This Mean?

If a woman trusts that she can birth naturally, a woman trusts that she can meet any challenge in raising that baby–and in fact, many women report after birth that they believe that they can do anything. When a woman is allowed to stand in the power of her birth, she can stand in the power of her life. The cultural implications of that statement are staggering.

When a woman is empowered by the full, natural birth process, she is biochemically, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually better equipped to make the bond with her child that can lead to a deeper bond with humanity. In birthing a child, it is possible recognize the tear between this world and that: from Dao to one, one to two and so on. When she can intimately connect with this new child which only a few minutes, days or weeks ago was the stuff of her own body, her own being, and now is literally ‘other,’ she has the opportunity to dissolve the very sense of separation that we feel with all others–the family, the community, and beyond.

Properly framed, birth is a spiritual act. Not a medical one.

I am appalled by the way St. Luke’s Hospital’s charitable programming is being gutted. Not only that, but its *natural* medicine: a Touro osteopathic teaching clinic. That’s right, they are cutting effective, natural medicine offered for free to those in need in a clinical context in which medical students are trained. The patients lose; the students lose. Everybody loses.

Check out the letter I submitted to the Health Commission urging them to advise the SF Board of Supes to stop CPMC (Sutter) from this action. The address is there, if you feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. If you’re in the city today, the Health Commission hearing is today and there is another one coming June 16 at 2:00 pm. Speak up!

—————-

May 19, 2009

Department of Public Health
Health Commission
101 Grove Street, room 308
San Francisco, CA 94102

RE: Sutter/CPMC Charity Service Cancellations

To the Health Commission:

I am shocked and saddened to hear that charity service programs such as Touro University’s osteopathic clinic and student training are being canceled. There has been a justifiably angry outcry against this move from the doctors offering these services as well as from the students who have an unparalleled opportunity to learn in the hospital setting, not to mention patients benefiting from these free services.

It is for services like these that Sutter/CPMC has been granted non-profit status. As such, they have a responsibility to answer the real needs of the community. How can they hope to expand and create big, new hospitals such as that proposed for Cathedral Hill without protecting charity programs for facilities already in existence? If Sutter/CPMC wishes to function like a for-profit company, then they should be stripped of their non-profit status.

My child has been a patient of the osteopathic training program with Drs. Cislo and McCombs, DO, through Touro University at St. Luke’s, one of the Sutter/CPMC hospitals. My son’s health has improved dramatically from his care there over the past two years. He was successfully treated through natural, hands-on osteopathic methods from symptoms that his pediatrician claimed couldn’t be helped. At each visit, a room full of students got to share the joy of my boy’s improved health and comfort. Real learning happened and real confidence in natural osteopathic care was instilled in each of us. It is a beautiful program–not only for us, but for many other families who may not be able to find the same quality services due to financial constraints.

Ours was a simple story of good health turning great, but I know that for other patients participating in that program, it has been a story life or death. That is, I am told that some patients are literally kept alive through Touro’s free program. What happens to these patients if the care is stripped?

This is yet another insult in a long line of charity service cancellations. Guided by Sutter/CPMC, the “new” St. Luke’s has already cut many badly needed services in favor of more profitable programs. Consider the impact our community has suffered already: the loss of the entire psychiatric care unit, the loss of neo-natal intensive care, the loss of much-needed SNF beds, the loss of the heart of the maternity ward which was once famous for its commitment to women-centered, safe, demedicalized birth. Now, charity osteopathic medicine has had its final day.

Please listen to the opinions of the hospital doctors and nurses. Let people who took the Hippocratic Oath guide the hospital’s direction. They know what is best for their patients, not the money guys.  Please advise the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to keep Touro’s and other charity programs alive, otherwise they must revoke Sutter/CPMC’s non-profit status.

Sincerely,
Sri Lalita

Postpartum Health: Preparing for the Postpartum Period with Ayurveda at Yoga Mandala

During pregnancy, emphasis is given to being ready for the “big day” when a woman gives birth to her child. Books guide parents in creating birth plans, classes offer methods to cope with the labor and delivery process and doulas can be hired to lend a helping hand. But what happens next?

In this workshop, Sri Lalita will discuss the common features of this time and guide new parents through a list of essentials every mom will want to make the postpartum period an easier, healthy transition. Healing teas, recipes, herbs and sitz bath teas will be discussed. Strategies for promoting optimal recovery for the postpartum mom will be offered. In addition, information about teas and salves to support milk production will be covered.

New Moms, Moms-to-be, partners and birth professionals are encouraged to attend. Contact Yoga Mandala at 510. 486.1989 to pre-register.

Location: Yoga Mandala
2807 Telegraph Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94705
Date: Sunday, February 15, 2009
Time:  10:00 AM – 3:00 PM (with a break for lunch)
Contact: 510.486.1989

I guess our son is at that age, whatever that means.

Have you ever noticed that adults—especially seasoned parents-–have a tendency to lean toward one another and knowingly comment on a given child’s behavior with, “Oh, he’s at that age.” The remarkable thing is that this observation can be made at any age at all, no matter what. In fact, as the parent of a toddler, I can definitively say that my child is, at present, at that age right now. Come to think of it, that age was preceded by another that age, which was marked by different humorous, cute and/or irritating habits and activities. There was another before that as well and so on. No doubt, that age will be following this one. I’m still pretty new to parenting, but I’m catching on.

For instance, as my toddler begins to speak more and with increasing accuracy, such that even strangers might be able to comprehend him at times, I see that that age can be very revealing as to how my child views reality. As a constant mimic of every word and deed to which he is exposed, he is laying down patterns for what he perceives as normal behavior and modes of expression in the world.

Sometimes, that is embarrassing. Just this week, he mastered the pronunciation of my favorite curse word (which starts with ‘s’) and then he used it with appropriate timing in public. That was funny.

His newfound control of his body brings about a wonderful opportunity to glimpse his ideas, since almost everything he thinks is immediately expressed as he tries out gestures actions and new words. Though I celebrate his widening ability to explore the world and the enhanced interface with it that every developmental leap affords, I also catch greater insight into my responsibility as a mother. Are my actions—which he constantly copies—positive stimuli for growth?

The fun part is that his mimicry inspires me with a desire to grow. When we get down on the living room floor for what he calls ‘om-ies’, it is fun to see him giggling, awkwardly trying yoga postures with a big smile spread across his face. And today, as we were driving home from the grocery store, I caught him in the mirror sitting in his car seat, repeatedly chanting om and contorting his hands into play-mudras. He was just having fun, doing what he deems normal.

Watching him play at these yoga activities made me want to go home and practice. I know that the more he witnesses ‘om-ies’, the more he will learn that opening the channels to reinforce using the body in an integrated way is an indispensable daily activity. He will regard it as fun and will experience how yoga helps bring that sense of integration into other aspects of life. Though I am his teacher now, watching his experimentation fires up my desire to be a better student.

I understand that that age is just a series of learning opportunities. In fact, I believe I’m at that age myself and always will be.