Friday, July 18, 2008

Two Guilty Secrets and their Link to Natural Parenting

I'm going to write today about two of my small guilty pleasures/secrets and a link between them related to natural parenting and a surprising advocate for it.

As many of my friends know I enjoy watching the Oscars every year. What they might not realize (or maybe they do) is that it's not so much the awards show I enjoy the most, but the fancy dresses and style on the red carpet. On of this year's oddest red carpet moments was when Ryan Seacrest asked a pregnant, glowing Jessica Alba if she planned to breast feed her baby. Not quite the usual red carpet question, but I thought Jessica Alba answered it with grace saying that she did plan to breast feed as it was good for the baby. A surprise moment in which she proved to be an advocate for breast feeding. Good on her.

Well another of my guilty secrets (not so secret anymore) is Celebrity Moms, which is a blog of pictures of celebrities and their children. The reason I'm writing about this is that in a recent post about the birth of Jessica Alba's baby she discussed her natural meditative birth. How fantastic and unusual to see a positive natural birth story from a celebrity. We seem to be inundated with messages about how painful birth is and that most women need complicated medical interventions to the point that we're all terrified of giving birth. It's just so nice to hear of a calm natural birth. I also had a great natural birth experience and it's something I will hold with me forever. I credit my prenatal yoga practice and reading "Ina May's Birth Book", by Ina May Gaskin for giving me the confidence that I could have a natural birth. Perhaps more stories like Jessica Alba's will encourage more women to become educated about their birth choices and find out about normal birth (instead of the crazy strssful ones you see on the Discovery Channel and depicted in movies and TV shows).

Anyway good luck to Jessica Alba on her new life as a Mom. I look forward to seeing if she continues to be an advocate for natural parenting.

1 comment:

ScienceMama said...

Good for her! I imagine there's a lot of pressure in Hollywood not to breastfeed so you can avoid those saggy breasts. So good for her for doing it.

I wanted a natural childbirth but Bean was breech so I had a C-section instead. I still mourn over this (something Husband can't seem to understand). But I'm hoping for a VBAC next time around.