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Medicine Stories

Maternal Mammalian Ecstasy: The Ancient Hormonal Blueprint for Optimal Birth and Bonding - Sarah Buckley

Medicine Stories

Amber Magnolia Hill

Alternative Health, Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2019

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Through untold eons mammals have evolved a beautiful birth-giving physiology based around a complex cascade of hormones that are released during labor. We give both mother and baby the best chance at a peaceful, ecstatic birth and postpartum period when we remember and respect this ancient dance.

IN THE INTRO:

  • Complex parenting topics: sleep, immunity, birth

IN THE INTERVIEW:

  • Sarah's mainstream doctor grandfather and how she got interested in natural birth
  • The exquisitely designed ancestral/mammalian hormonal blueprint of labor 
  • The impact of (unnatural, external) stress on a laboring woman and how it disrupts the optimal hormonal flow
  • Creating optimal conditions for birthing and for bonding
  • The hormonal consequences of bypassing the natural physiological onset of labor (such as by induction or scheduled C-section)
  • How feeling unsafe (at a subconscious, limbic system level) disrupts the flow of birth
  • The irony of how we treat animals in labor v how we treat human women in labor
  • The ecstatic, altered state of mind we enter into during labor 
  • What first time mothers need to know but are often not told
  • Fear and mystery in birth
  • The body is designed to transcend the (natural, intrinsic) stress and pain of labor and they play a critical role in bonding
  • The role of vocalization in labor
  • Newborns need placental blood: cord clamping and how our cultural beliefs around that have changed over time
  • What "No hatting, no patting, no chatting" means for the postpartum period
  • Ancestral family sleep and motherbaby biological regulation: the many reasons that co-sleeping is best for babies and the science that backs it up
  • The fascinating phenomenon of some birth attendants being able to smell the moment before the baby is born

LINKS

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

mammals have been giving birth as far as we know for about 63 million years so that's how long human birth is evolved for and you know for 99.999% of that time as my anthropology lecturer emphasized.

0:14.0

You know, we've lived in the wild.

0:15.9

It's only the last 10,000 years of that huge time that we've lived in settled villages

0:20.7

and, you know, and farmed and things like that. So that so you know birth is designed to work in the context of the wild

0:30.0

Hello friends and welcome to the Medicine Stories podcast where we are remembering what it is to be human upon the earth.

0:38.0

This is episode 51 and I'm your host Amber Magnolia Hill today sharing my interview with Sarah Buckley.

0:47.6

I'm really excited to talk about birth again, the reaction to my interview with Emily Sallea, number 38, was through the roof, truly, truly, truly. And as I spoke about in that interview, Berth is so so close to my heart and I always envisioned it being part of this podcast. And as I tell Sarah, her work made a huge impact on me when I was pregnant with my first 13 years ago.

1:20.0

And it's just an honor to be able to bring her work to my audience now.

1:25.9

So thank you so much for listening.

1:30.9

Let's do a little listener spotlight first. This is an iTunes review from Botany of Being.

1:37.0

A wealth of wisdom. I have been listening to the Medicine Stories podcast from the first episode,

1:43.6

please pardon that has taken this long to review.

1:46.9

The wisdom shared in this space spans a vast array of subjects

1:50.6

and yet all woven together by a common thread.

1:54.0

Each episode gets to the heart of the true human experience.

1:57.8

I am so grateful, Amber, for all that you have gathered together

2:00.6

in this space, especially for your episode on Immunity with Silawatkot.

2:05.8

This episode was deeply healing for past challenging conversations about immunity.

2:10.9

I feel an inner power with which to move forward. Thank you. So that's episode 30 and it's

2:20.0

relevant for parents and anyone on the parenting path so mention that here I chose

2:26.5

that review to talk about because I think you know birth sleep which I'm going to talk about after this interview. I recorded a special

2:36.7

outro, immunity and vaccines, it's all super complex, tons of gray space, not a lot of black and white thinking so many

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