Insightful Beginnings

11/10/2025

✨

This is crowning.

What you’re seeing is the baby’s scalp gently folding and molding as they navigate through the vaginal canal.

This isn’t swelling, trauma, or “pushing out a watermelon”.

It’s the body doing what it’s designed to do.

The baby’s skull is made of plates that overlap so the head can change shape to fit through the pelvis.

This molding protects parent and the baby, allowing birth to unfold safely and physiologically.

Too often, people only see birth through medical lenses, monitors, drapes, and sterile lights.

But this is the real view of emergence.

It’s raw, natural, and powerful.

This moment isn’t dangerous.

It’s not an emergency.

It’s life in motion.

The human body working in perfect rhythm.

Let’s normalize what real birth looks like.

Let’s honor how intelligent the body truly is.

-Love,
Flor Cruz
Badassmotherbirther

08/25/2025

💡The deeper the moans of the throat the more relaxed and open the cervix is while bringing your baby down and out! Try it, it really is amazing how helpful it can be!

08/13/2025

Doing inversions every day can help you lengthen and soften your uterine ligaments, as well as help resolve any twist in the lower uterine segment.

The weight of baby and uterus streeeeetches out those ligaments to reduce torque and helps baby get into a great position for birth.

⏩️For more info, visit our resources for parents and doulas at MotherboardBirth.com and make sure check out our digital products shop!

04/02/2025

Birth mothers are designed to sleep with their babies for both safety and comfort.

06/19/2022

And this here is why I NEVER break a woman’s waters at home - or anywhere (this, and a few other reasons). I’ll explain why in a second… but first… this is the placenta of a client of mine who recently gave birth at home. You can see there are some blood vessels placed in the membranes rather than in the placenta where they would normally be. The line represents the end of the placental tissue.

Breaking a woman’s waters in labour is called ‘artificial rupture of the membranes’ and your care provider might describe it as ‘breaking your waters’ or ‘JUST going to break your waters’.

In all the times I’ve heard maternity care providers ask for consent from a woman to break their waters, I’ve never heard one describe the risks of this procedure.

One of the risks is that there could be blood vessels placed IN the membranes rather than the usual placement of in the placenta. Remembering that ALL the blood in the placental vessels is the babies, you can imagine what would happen if one of the vessels of the ‘no placenta’ side got damaged. The baby would lose its blood supply faster than your care provider to get you to the operating theatre to get your baby out safely.

When midwives or doctors break your waters they use a crochet hook looking tool to break open the membranes and release the amniotic fluid from around the baby… they can also never truely know what they are doing because it’s all done by feel and not sight.

The risks include:
- cord prolapse
- physical damage to the baby from the tool
- exsanguination of the baby if blood vessels are ruptured
- increased labour pain
- increased risk of infection

Breaking a woman’s waters is never ‘JUST’ breaking waters. It’s an intervention and it has risks

01/13/2022

✨𝐖𝐎𝐌𝐁 𝐖𝐄𝐃𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐃𝐀𝐘✨ Repost | It's Not Cord Blood, It's Your Baby's Blood |

"At birth, ⅓ (or more) of your baby’s blood is still in the placenta.

That means if you immediately cut the cord, your baby is missing A LOT of blood.

If you were missing ⅓ (33%) of your blood, your heart and respiratory rates would increase, your blood pressure would drop, and you would become anxious and confused. If you lost 40% of your blood, all those symptoms would be worse and you would become lethargic.

If you lost more than 40% you would die.

So how long should you wait after birth to clamp the cord?

Ideally you would “wait for white”. This means the cord isn’t clamped until it has stopped pulsing and turned white because all of the blood is now inside the baby. This is usually over 5 minutes (I’ve waited until the birth of the placenta with my two homebirths [about an hour]).

But delaying cord clamping for even 60 seconds has been shown to have benefits including:

🔆 Increased hemoglobin
🔆 Increased iron
🔆 Increased blood pressure (early clamping means BP can be too low)
🔆 Increased urinary output
🔆 Increased body temperature (early clamping babies are colder)

If baby is having a slower transition to breathing outside the womb upon their birth, keeping them attached to the cord will also continue to provide them with oxygen until they begin breathing on their own." Fabulous quoted info by ❤

Currently in our communities, and generally, careproviders don't need to be asked anymore to delay cord clamping, but we always suggest that you tell them at birth that you want them too. Your Doula or partner can remind you. Delay is also possible during a cesarean birth, and is worth asking your OB ahead of time, for a scheduled birth.

https://instagram.com/thedoulagroup?utm_medium=copy_link

Amazing juicy cord photo by the talented ❤

https://instagram.com/birthuprising?utm_medium=copy_link

https://instagram.com/jennifermasonphotography?utm_medium=copy_link

09/22/2021

Spot on!!

From Peace with birth

How to change the narrative?
Start by changing language..
Pain > power
Contractions > expansions
I can’t don’t do it > I am doing it

Let’s support a positive birthing culture and cheer every woman right now bring their baby earth side.

You’re a warrior! YOU’VE GOT THIS

💗

11/16/2020

09/29/2020

👌🏼❤️

Before I became a mother, I was brain-washed by a society that values individual gain, status, competition & separation.

So when I became a mother, the very essence of motherhood opposed all that society had taught me.

This contributed to me initially feeling disempowered & inadequate.

Society celebrates productivity that CAN be measured. No part of motherhood can be measured, no score recorded & many of it is unseen.

I spent hours feeding my baby & many more settling her - both with challenges which at times I felt I was failing. I also spent hours staring at her, lying skin to skin, wondering how I could’ve grown her, bonding & falling deeper in love.

Yet going by society’s standards – I wasn’t doing much.

If society does not acknowledge, support or value this transformation a mother goes through & the role she has taken on, she often believes she is failing – when measured against society’s values it’s no wonder she feels like this.

I now know this was largely contributed to what we all go through - called ‘matrescence’ – the birth of a mother. Much like the transition a child goes through to become an adult – adolescence.

The moment a child is born, so is a mother & that mother never existed before. Her body, mind & soul need time & understanding to adjust, transition and transform.

The importance of maternal values – compassion, empathy & patience is often unseen, yet is just as important within our society & needs to be talked about openly for our new & to-be mothers. Those feelings of not feeling validated, feeling unseen by society can go on for years in some cases causing decline in mental health.

Your reminder mama - you are planting seeds that you may never see, but society will benefit from. Seeds of love, patience, empathy and compassion. You are not failing, you are the rock, the cement that holds not only your family together but ripples throughout the whole of society.

What you do matters. Look to your child for validation, not society and see the love in their eyes reflected back. Keep staring, loving & cuddling because it all matters & because your motherhood is beyond measure.

With love,

Gem Douglas x

Words: https://www.instagram.com/themotherhoodprojectnz

Image .photography

05/26/2020

I was just writing a post on space, I accidentally pressed the space bar and my work disappeared- perhaps this was a lesson on being spacious?

What is your relationship to space ? Not the stars and planets but to a sense of spaciousness?
Do you have much space In your life ? Is your world full of task, times and deadlines ?
Can you rest in space or do you find it to big and a bit scary ? Do you fill up any empty spaces with more ‘to do’.

Having space , as in a quiet moment to catch your breath, to be held and to soften into languid stillness can be so important for our nervous systems and our bodies to settle and reset.

In pregnancy there is another little person ( or two) taking up the available space on our bodies. Having a sense of spaciousness in our pregnancies can support physical comfort.
During labour and birth the more space we can allow and gift to our bodies and babies the more room there is ( usually ) the easier it is for our babies to be born. Birth is an expansion into the biggest space we can hold as our babies move from inside to outside of our bodies. Our pelvis has lots of space for our babies to move though.

After birth we need space and time to recover and adjust as we settle into the timeless space of feeding sleeping and carping for ourselves and our little ones.
Rather than trying to move, adjust or change mothers and babies both Spinning Babies (R) and Biodynamic Craniosacral therepy offer an invitation into finding more space or spaciousness.

As a Biodynamic Craniosacral practitioner, Spinning Babies (R) approved trainer and a midwife it’s amazing to see the changes that can occur during birth when the smallest amount of space is opened up and the Baby finds a way to glide though. It’s also amazing to witness how much more comfort and ease a pregnant woman can experience when she is able to rest into more physical spaciousness.
If you would like to explore spaciousness as a means to rest and body balance, to invite more ease in birthing and post birth recovery I offer one to one sessions in Auckland and occasionally Hamilton.

You may also like to look at the great information and suggestions of how to make more physical space in pregnancy and Birth on the Spinning Babies (R) website www.spinninganbies.com
For further information and to book a session I can be contacted at :
[email protected]

May the space be with you.