If your baby is delivered by c-section, you will receive instructions from your a care provider about how to care for the incision site, appropriate physical activity, and what to expect from your body.  After initial recovery, you can also employ holistic methods to better how you feel and aid the healing process. These practices include scar tissue massage, acupressure, and ingestion of healing promoting nutrients  & minerals and the whole foods in which they can be found.  This aricle is a great introduction to these methods.  

Read more about these techniques here and don't forget to discuss with your practitioner at an appointment or by phone to make sure they are safe for you.  

The decision of when, how, and why to vaccinate (or not vaccinate) your young child is a hot topic spanning personal health, public health, spirituality, freedom, environment, and parenting forums nationwide.  How can one sort through the loaded arguments, personal anecdotes, reasonable assumptions, hypotheses, and scientific research to come to an fully informed decision that is yours and yours alone?  

One resource to start you off is an interview with Midwife and MD Aviva Romm. She discusses the many options and challenges facing families making these tough decisions in this recorded webinar.  Her approach to medicine is holistic and natural and she also has the research and clinical knowledge to balance the potential pros and cons of the both sides.  Best of all she truly approaches the topic from a unbiased, nonjudgmental perspective, presenting any and all relevant evidence.  More information can be found in her book, Vaccinations: A Thoughtful Parent's Guide.   

Topics include:
- Reasons people choose to not vaccinate or vaccinate their kids
- Benefits and side effects of vaccination
- How spacing vaccinations alters and fails to alter the potential side effects
- The most important vaccinations for children in the US
- Which vaccinations might be needed for international travel
- How to minimize reactions to vaccinations
- Natural methods of supporting the immune system

The placenta- this incredible organ that your body built from scratch and is the link between you and your baby for nine months.  It is the only truly disposable organ we create.  There are lots of interesting ideas and traditions of what to do with the placenta after birth.  While science still hasn't proven the physical benefits of any, they may still be worth looking into. In many cultures, the placenta is highly respected.  
 
Placentophagy (eating it!) is probably one of the most common, be it in a stir fry, raw, or encapsulation (putting it in pill form).  There are options.  The jury is still out with regards to scientific evidence on the benefits of consuming a placenta.  But people draw on research and observation of other mammals and anecdotal evidence to draw conclusions about why eating it might be a beneficial.  Read more on the Lamaze blog, Science and Sensibility, about the proposed benefits and ongoing research on placentas and what to do with them.  

If you are one of the many that think consuming the placenta is not for you, there are plenty of other options you can consider for it and/or the cord.  

- Taking a peek at it before your pracitioner takes it away for disposal (It's a pretty beautiful organ, particularly the fetal side whose branching veins, arteries, and cords, resemble a tree)
- Leave it attached to the baby (Lotus birth)
- Placenta printing
- Plant a placenta tree
- Umbillical cord teething ring- The cord can shapred into a circle, dried or dehydrated, and stored in the freezer and used as a teething ring later on.  

Talk with your practitioner if you make plans to take home or take a look at your placenta.  It's yours to take, but you may need to sign for it.