The Rhythms of Labour – Denis Walsh

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For those who don’t know Denis, and I hadn’t heard him speak before the MAMA conference, he is a midwife.  A rare thing to find a male midwife, but I have to say that those I have met along the way have been fantastic, and I have come to believe that if a man decides to pursue midwifery he really must have a calling and a passion to do it, given that it is such a woman-dominated profession.  Denis is now Associate Professor of Midwifery at Nottingham University, having done his PhD in the Birth Centre model, and his research awareness is second to none.  I have to admit that I (and a few others whose names I shan’t mention) now have a bit of a crush on him – I found him truly captivating to listen to and would love to hear more.
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The Oxytocin Factor

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Kerstin Ovnas-Moberg – Oxytocin and the impact on motherhood

I have long wanted to hear Kerstin speaking as I was introduced to her work before I became a doula, and her book, The Oxytocin Factor, became one of the first in my ever-expanding doula library. She described herself as having a helicopter vision, having been an MD in Pharmacology and Physiology. The focus of her work has been oxytocin which she says is the same in all mammals. She describes sex, birth and feeding as the 3 main activities for oxytocin release (though Mars Lord, fellow doula, thinks that eating chocolate is a fourth, and who am I to disagree with that!). What she described is that oxytocin is needed both to initiate and perpetuate bonding; that raised oxytocin levels increase curiosity in the mother, but also encourage the body to work better – our digestive systems are more effective, our skin more sensitive. If regularly administered, oxytocin influences other more well known neurotransmitters which leads to less stress, more growth and healing, and reduced blood pressure levels. It reminds me of the TED talk on oxytocin which summarises that if we all received 8 hugs a day the world would be a very different place.
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