Keeping our babies warm and cozy is essential to their well-being and comfort, but this seems to be lost knowledge. There are incredible benefits to warm babies – they tend to be more comfortable and relax, digest better, have less constipation, and are champions at weight gain! Here’s the radical truth - Newborns and infants both need to be wearing the same numbers of clothing layers as their adults, plus 1-2 more!

It’s common on the web to bicker about the dramatic risks or benefits of drinking red raspberry leaf tea at certain stages of pregnancy. (Namely that if used too early it “might cause a miscarriage!” or should be saved to the end as it can “put you into a strong labor.”) As a midwife who has safely used red raspberry herbals with pregnant and lactating clients for over four decades, there’s so much more to know! Unfortunately, a lot of incomplete information and fear-mongering has been repeated in authoritative ways. Let’s clear up the confusion!

It’s time we educate the newly pregnant woman that the midwife or obstetrician that ‘delivers' their baby is actually HELPING THEM to deliver their baby, and even more importantly, helping them along the journey of becoming a mother/parent. What this health care provider will do, could do, should do is quite a bit more than to just make sure everyone survives the whole thing. Many assume that whatever their OB does is automatically the best care to be had. However, it can be problematic to ‘just go along’, without asking questions and without actively choosing the sort of care you want. Here’s why….

Breastfeeding is a natural process but it doesn’t always come naturally. Many things are known to help boost breastfeeding success. One of the most powerful ways to position you and your baby for breastfeeding success is to choose a birth team that is skilled and enthusiastic about low intervention/low-tech birth. Their expertise in natural birth will help you both emerge from your birth empowered, feeling your best, and without needing a lot of extra recovery from being ‘done to’, all of which protects your baby’s instincts and ability to breastfeed skillfully.  

Hand, Foot and Mouth disease spreads easily through day care centers and kindergarten classes. It brings great misery to families, is highly contagious, and can be hazardous to the immune-compromised. Let’s review it’s symptoms and typical course, which will help you choose your best natural, therapeutic response

Our deeper understandings of birth may come to us from the most unexpected sources, and at the most unanticipated times. During a stretch when I was selling insurance, I found myself in a very unusual place: a stud farm for some of the most valuable horses in the world. One of the stalls emanated energy that felt like so much like birth, I peeked in the large horse box. It was a familiar scene, but with a four-legged mama; a swollen mare was pacing restlessly in the afternoon quiet, deeply breathing and blowing. Her unborn foal was already worth about three million dollars (in 1990 dollars!) because of the lineage it shared with two Triple Crown winners. As horseman explained the barn birth I was about to see, it was entirely shocking how MUCH better it was than humans experience in modern hospitals!

Having the kids off school during the summer is a mixed bag. The long-anticipated freedom from being over-scheduled quickly gives way to the stressful fatigue of managing high-intensity kids looking for outlets. It’s exhausting to constantly be ‘herding cats’, or trying to muscle our kids into ‘helping’ or ‘things to occupy them’. As parents, we can still reap the helpful benefits of rhythm during the summer free-for-all by getting creative. Here are 10 parenting tips to beat summer boredom!

During pregnancy, women are already feeling extra warm because of their hormonal changes and increased blood flow.  When the weather turns super-hot, midwives look for all the tricks to help their miserable mamas stay a little more comfortable and guard against dehydration and overheating.  

Here are the strategies that helped me get through my own hot pregnant July, and that help my midwife clients get through their hot season.

The dazzling heat of a bright summer day makes it a perfect time try some new refreshments.  The herbs are growing wildly in many yards and gardens, new flavors are popping up at your local farmer’s market, and the eagerness for thirst quenchers buys you a little grace as you try out new recipes. Herbal teas are simple, tasty ways to keep everyone hydrated with budget-friendly variety and nourishing minerals.

Seeing the wonderfully quick relief of my kiddo’s bee sting with a single homeopathic dose and drop of essential oil topically got me hooked on keeping a natural first aid kid handy. Here are the most effective natural remedies to keep on hand to safely and effectively relieve the pain and swelling of bee stings, wasp stings, and all the biting insects!