Meet Katie! Guest blogger.
Katie is one of the graduating students of the Western College of Homeopathy this June. The graduates are an amazing group of homeopaths who know lots about helping kids heal…grown-ups too! Watch for future guest blogs from some of the other students in the near future.
This newsletter will mark the beginning of a series on birth and homeopathy. Hopefully you will be able to make some connections to the previous two newsletters on health of soil, health of immune system, and the health of new life that is birthed into this world of ours. My typo originally printed soul instead of soil…how utterly appropriate! You can read the above sentence with either soil or soul…works!
Shout Out!
As for me…I have just completed an intensive four-day seminar with homeopath John Melnychuk from California. John has decades of experience helping families recover their kids from diagnoses of autism. The Western College of Homeopathy students, Linda Miller (director of WCHM), and I learned SO much and we are eager to be of service to those in the autism community. With John’s considerable teaching, we feel better able to be a homeopathic support in helping heal those on the spectrum. Check out John’s website to learn more.
Take it away, Katie!
Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers ~ strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.
~ Barbara Katz Rothman
The majority of women can’t wait to have babies, a family, and someone to give unconditional love to without expecting anything back. However, what we sign up for as mother’s isn’t always what we expect.
Birth is a universal experience. It may be the most powerful creative experience in many women’s lives. It can either be a disruption in the flow of human experience, a fragment of having little or nothing to do with the passionate longing that created the baby, or it can be lived with beauty and dignity, and labor itself can be a celebration of joy. (Birth Reborn, Dr. Michel Odent)
Motherhood is a beautiful time in a women’s life when she begins to fill in her material space, leaving room and opening a residence for another soul. This is the one time in a women’s life where she will most likely embrace change upon herself for the love of someone else, her own child.
Balancing and Nourishing Our Personal Terrain
Anyone who has ever spent time gardening knows planting the seed is the initial phase, an easy one at that. However, in order that your seed may grow, it needs nourishment from the soil and the sky, care by weeding, and time to develop and mature. If the soil and terrain are well nourished and cared for, one can depend on a bountiful harvest season.
Due to the method of how the medicine is prepared (homeopathy is actually made by highly diluting crude substances from their original form into medicinal potencies), it is non-toxic and does not have adverse side effects — making it ideal for pregnancy and childbirth. It is also a medicine that neither interferes nor is it contraindicated with use of conventional medications and treatments because it cannot physically contend with conventional medicine on the level of chemistry, as it works by laws of physics and energy patterns.
Embracing Individuality
Pregnancy is a time to expect and predict nothing. It is a completely new experience your first time around. Although you will be bombarded with many glorious and horrific stories all at the same time, you must remember this is your story, your body, and your baby. From my experience as a Registered Nurse in the labor and delivery room, I know that not one woman, not one labor or baby is the same. We are all uniquely created, and so is our birth. Homeopathy is just as unique as us. It is a system of medicine that requires individual prescription.
During your pregnancy is a very good time to plan a consultation with a professional homeopath. A professional homeopath has experience and exactness in their prescriptions. A homeopath can provide what is called a constitutional remedy early in pregnancy or before getting pregnant. This type of prescription actually strengthens our vital force. Earlier, I referred to the “vital force” as our terrain. In health, this vital or life force is what keeps all parts in the organism in harmony. (Aph. 9, The Organon of Medical Art, Samuel Hahnemann) If the life force is strong, it would make sense that the bodies innate ability to labor and birth naturally would be optimal. I have personally seen home-births and hospital births where nausea is reduced, labor is increased, and discomfort is appropriate to the labor. (I say “pain is appropriate” because some women experience no pain, some experience unbearable pains —again it is individual and must be appropriate to the progress of the labor.)
Homeopathy can also be used acutely in situations such as discomforts of pregnancy, labor, and early postpartum. During labor the women’s state may change quickly, so remedies must be changed, as well, by keeping up with the pace of the labor. The best way to understand what a women needs in labor from a homeopathic standpoint is to observe her WHOLE labor — observe who she is, what is happening, what changes, what is normal for her, what is characteristic or strange.
A remedy is given based on a picture or essence, not on one individual symptom. So when you choose a remedy, you can consider 3 points: What is the women’s emotional state? What is the women’s physical complaint? What is one characteristic symptom? Then you match these three things to one of the most common labor remedies. You are in essence matching the symptom picture of the woman to the picture of healing properties of that remedy.
My favorite 2 books:
Guide to Childbirth, Ina Mae Gaskin
Homeopathy for Pregnancy, Birth, and Your Baby’s First Year, Miranda Castro
Katie Kiemeny is a traditionally trained Registered Nurse and specialized in obstetrics the last 10 years, working in labor and delivery in Calgary and teaching Natural Childbirth with the Academy of Husband Coached Childbirth. Katie is a student of homeopathic medicine at the Western College of Homeopathic Medicine and began to incorporate homeopathy as part of her life about five years ago. She has a Certification of Completion from the American Medical College of Homeopathy for attending their Homeopathic Acute Care Program and is now completing her final year of studies at WCHM.
Katie’s passion resides in preparing families to cope with reemerging childhood illnesses, educating families on new childhood epidemics, and supporting the childbearing family. It brings her much happiness to see the unique support homeopathy can give to autoimmune disease, among many other illnesses.
Thank you, Katie!
In health and healing,
Donna
