Author: Roshnii Rose

I am a mother, writer, mentor and doula, passionate about creativity, spirituality, connection and birth. I bring these elements together in my work with parents and the community.
mentoring, our work

A New Chapter: Heart of Birthing

Roshnii Rose

The past year and more has been a journey of personal growth and discovery as Supriya and I followed the Birthing from Within mentor training programme, ‘Birth as an Heroic Journey’.

Now that we have become certified, a new chapter has opened up in our work together.

For me, the course surpassed my expectations in all ways. I hadn’t realised what a steep learning curve I would have to climb and what deep processing would unfold as a result. What I loved about the course was its focus on the internal preparation required to become a mentor and the multi-faceted practices we now have to support parents on the rollercoaster journey of family life.

The training invited us to question the assumptions and narratives that we have adopted in our own lives as adults, mothers and birth workers, and to look at the ways in which we are sometimes held back by these stories.

I came to realise that, in order to support people fully through the full spectrum of birthing and parenting experiences, I needed to let go of some of my attachments to certain approaches and birth outcomes.

As a reflection of our broadening perspective on our work and the acknowledgement that there are more layers of complexity to birth preparation than simply trusting in one’s body and the process, we have decided to change the name of our partnership.

The name ‘Heart of Birthing’ brings together many elements. It recognises that, as mentors, we dive with our clients into the depths of their experience; and that parenthood requires us to be compassionate both with ourselves and one another.
It also hints at the fact that navigating the unpredictable path of parenthood is, indeed, an art; as well as the important role of artwork in our exploratory processes.

So, if you are somewhere along this pathway; whether you are standing at the gateway of pregnancy, about to cross the threshold of birth; or finding your feet as a new parent; and you need support or to gain insight; get in touch to talk about how we, as mentors, can accompany you.

mentoring, motherhood, parenting, postpartum, pregnancy

Free Mentoring Support Line for Parents

Roshnii Rose
photo credit

Pregnancy and the early months and years with a new child provide ongoing opportunities to navigate unknown terrain and face emotional and physical challenges. 

This time of the covid-19 pandemic can create heightened anxiety and fear as we find ourselves teetering on the brink of yet another unknown. It is also proving to be a time of slowing down, simplifying our lives and finding new resources within ourselves to cope with what is unfolding around us. 

If you are pregnant or parenting a baby or young child/ren and you would benefit from the support of a compassionate mentor in this period of added uncertainty, we are offering free online mentoring sessions over the coming period. 

This is a chance to connect with yourself and to honour the rite of passage you are moving through at a time when the strange mix of news, social media and physical isolation may be adding stress or confusion to your daily life. 

As mentors, we offer a heart-centred approach that allows you to process what is arising for you and find your own meaningful and achievable solutions. 

We use tools such as empathic listening, meditation and visualisation, mindfulness practices, affirmations, journaling, creative writing and artwork.

For more information, read about our prenatal and parent mentoring services. 

You can speak with us via voice or (ideally) video call for up to 1 hour at a time.
Please message us to book a slot in advance, this way you will not be kept waiting and we can maximise the time we have. 

We will be available at the following times (GMT or, after 28th March, GMT+1)

Roshnii: Thursdays ~ 2-3pm, 3.30-4.30pm, 5-6pm
Supriya: Saturdays ~ 2-3pm, 3.30-4.30pm, 5-6pm       

Donations are welcome but not required. We do not want lack of money to be an obstacle.      
If you find it hard to reach out and ask for help, know that we too have been there and encourage you to push through the block that is holding you back. We all need one another during this testing time and this is a chance to receive some well-deserved support. 

If you have any questions, get in touch.

We look forward to connecting with you. 
Roshnii and Supriya

our work, pregnancy, reflections

Mentoring from the Heart

Roshnii Rose

Supriya and I are now three weeks into a year long journey that will lead to us becoming certified childbirth educators with Birthing from Within and although we have already dived in deep, I feel I am still just scratching the surface.

Rather than using the term educator, which could imply an old-school paradigm of teacher and student, we are encouraged to use the word mentor, which describes a person with experience and understanding who guides others to find their own wisdom and direction.

As you may know, if you’ve read some of read my previous posts, such as this one, Pam England’s (founder of BfW) work has been a great source of inspiration for our work with pregnant women and their partners.

What I love about the BfW approach is that it takes a completely different angle than conventional childbirth education, using a variety of creative and experiential tools to enable parents to access their inner knowing as well of making sense of the various information, opinions and decisions they may encounter through the childbearing year.

As someone who holds creativity and spirituality deep in the core of my daily life, I resonate with the use of art, archetype, story and metaphor that makes this practice so unique.

What is more, the course is causing me to explore and question my own stories and assumptions about birth which is a challenging but necessary process.

I look forward to the unfolding of inspiration and insights over the coming months as we add depth and richness to this rewarding work.

events, our work

New Spaces & New Faces

Roshnii Rose

This weekend saw us christening a new space for our pregnant mamas’ circle, which we are very excited about.

We are extremely grateful to those families, particularly Veronica and Andrea, who generously hosted the group at their homes these last months.

Now we have use of the beautiful, bright room at the Casa de Povo in Barril de Alva, where we have plenty of space to move around and expand into.

If you are interested in joining our fortnightly pregnancy circle, give us a shout.

The other exciting event of the weekend was the first in a series of screenings around Portugal of the feature length documentary Why Not Home?, which we helped to organise as part of our involvement in the home birth movement, Uma Mãe Nasceu.

Mike & Grace Delivery

The screening took place with a small crowd in the small town of Tábua and was met with interest and enthusiasm. The next one we hope will be to an audience of midwifery students at Coimbra University, which has the potential to be quite an eye-opener for those training within the hospital system who don’t often get to witness physiological birth.

The film is particularly interesting because it looks at medical professionals who work in obstetrics in a hospital environment but have chosen to give birth at home. For Portugal, a country where doctors are very much put on a pedestal, the idea that the professionals themselves acknowledge that a hospital may not be the ideal choice for every woman’s birthplace is somewhat controversial. Hence this feels like an important film to bring into the public arena.

It was a pleasure to meet the group of people who attended the screening and for me, rounded off a day that reflected so much of what I love about working with birth: Connecting with individuals at a transitional point in their lives and bringing awareness and positive change in this field to our communities.

Babywearing, motherhood, postpartum, reviews

How and why I wore my babies

Roshnii Rose

Before you read about my experiences of babywearing, take a look at these amazing images depicting Portuguese women in the earlier 20th Century carrying their babies.

portugal-babywearing

I loved using baby carriers to hold my babies close while on the move or at home, when they were little and needed cuddles while enabling me to keep my hands free.

By carrying my children I felt connected to women all over the world, through the ages and in different cultures who have done the same. It seemed the most natural way to move from place to place with a young baby as I was able to smell him, feel his body against mine, listen to his sounds, talk to him. He could see what I could see and be involved in my interactions with the world. I knew straight away when he was hungry and could also feed him while in the carrier if necessary. He didn’t need to cry to get my attention and he could sleep cuddled up against my body, where he felt safe and relaxed, not to mention soothed by my movements and heartbeat, which resembled what he felt in the womb. Continue reading “How and why I wore my babies” →

baby, birth, breastfeeding, motherhood, postpartum

The amazing benefits of Skin-to-skin: Investing in your long-term wellbeing

Roshnii Rose

There is nothing more beautiful than holding your bare baby against your skin in the magical moments after birth.

For some years now, the practice skin-to-skin contact, immediately or as soon as possible after birth, has been found to be beneficial to both mum and baby.

Newborn skin to skin

However, here in Portugal, it is still common practice for the pediatrician to take the baby away for medical checks in the first crucial minutes  or hours after birth. Here, I am going to explain why asserting your right to spend the first hour of life skin-to-skin with your baby is an investment in the long-term health and wellbeing of both of you.

You may want to discuss your preferences with your caregivers during your prenatal appointments so that they know how important it is to you that you have an uninterrupted hour of skin-to-skin time immediately after birth. Your partner, doula or birth companion will need to assert your wish to have this skin-to-skin period at the birth when you, the mother, may not feel like speaking up.

Skin-to-skin, or Kangaroo Care (KC) as it is known specifically when the baby is in an upright chest-to-chest position with the parent, is not just something nice to do with your newborn. There are many important and tangible health benefits for both mother and baby.

Continue reading “The amazing benefits of Skin-to-skin: Investing in your long-term wellbeing” →

our work

What is a doula anyway?

Roshnii Rose

Although the word ‘doula’ dates back to Ancient Greece, it is relatively new to the English and Portuguese language, but what does it actually mean?

Below is a (not exhaustive) list of some of the aspects of the role of a doula in this day and age, which I recently wrote for the Uma Mãe Nasceu website…

Doula is a word of Greek origin meaning servant or handmaiden. It has become the term used for someone who takes care of a woman during labour and birth and in the early days and weeks with a new baby.

These days, when we live in less close-knit communities than in the past, women are often choosing to hire someone to fulfill the role of a birth companion that might once have been taken by a grandmother, aunt or other experienced woman in the community.

doula-hug

Reassuring presence
A doula is often, but not always, a woman. She will have a positive perspective on birth and mothering either through her own experiences or by attending other women. Her role is to provide emotional and practical support to a mother, her partner and family throughout pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period. Continue reading “What is a doula anyway?” →

birth, labour, reflections

Leave the clock behind

Roshnii Rose

As a pregnant woman, surrounded by a birth culture that is obsessed with monitoring the progress of labour, it is hard not to focus on how long labour has lasted and how long and frequent your contractions are.

Yet it appears to me that the habit of ‘watching the clock’ from the first rhythmic twinges of early labour can make the process seem long, drawn out and eventually exhausting.

timing-contractions

Every woman’s labour is different to the next and the effacement and dilation of the cervix can happen in fits and starts rather than along a predictable curve, so even if you are closely timing your labour it doesn’t mean you know how far you’ve come or how far you have to go, which is ultimately what all women long to know.

In the world of birth, you hear a lot about long labours, fatigue and lack of progress, which then lead to interventions such as the use of synthetic oxytocin to speed up the labour or epidural anasthesia to enable a mother, who has been labouring for many hours, to rest .

But what if our image and expectations of labour were different? What if, instead of watching the clock or the smartphone app to time contractions, a woman in the early stirrings of labour set her mind on some other absorbing task? Continue reading “Leave the clock behind” →

birth, labour, pregnancy, reflections

Why trust in birth?

Roshnii Rose

Diving into Pam England’s latest book, Ancient Map for Modern Birth, I was faced with a section on the notion of trust in the realm of pregnancy, birth and post-partum, which urged me to unpick the phrase ‘I Trust in Birth’ – the name for our doula service.

The words ‘I Trust in Birth’ surfaced, as an affirmation for myself as an embryonic doula, in a session with a pregnant couple preparing for the arrival of their first child. The phrase encapsulated the faith in myself and other women to be able to give birth in their own natural way, given the right preparation and environment. My friend, who was my doula at my first two births, had embodied that unswerving trust in my ability to birth and I found it contagious. In both births, the staunch belief that she held in me helped me navigate some tricky twists and turns in events where I otherwise might have faltered. Continue reading “Why trust in birth?” →

birth, reflections

The gift of witnessing unassisted birth

Roshnii Rose

It occurred to me recently, after watching the videos below, how valuable and educational it is to be able to witness unassisted birth.

For mothers and fathers to be, their children, and medical professionals to see what birth looks like when nobody intervenes in any way is a gift in helping us to understand what birth can be in its natural form, uncontrolled or influenced by outside forces.

newborn-kiss

The decision to birth without the presence of a midwife or other medical professional is a very personal one, which only a small percentage of women in ‘developed’ countries consciously take.
My second child was born without a midwife present, although it wasn’t exactly premeditated. I considered the option of calling ‘them’ but it never felt like the appropriate time to allow a stranger into my birthspace – as having a homebirth with the UK National Health Service at the time would have meant that I would not have met the midwife who was sent out to my home on that early March night. And the second stage of labour, when the contractions accelerated massively in intensity and frequency, thrust me very quickly into natural pushing, which resulted in the sudden arrival of my baby boy. Continue reading “The gift of witnessing unassisted birth” →