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MK Midwife - Milton Keynes Birth Art Cafe

Workshops to enrich your birth and motherhood journey.

  • Learn how to access your own inner wisdom through creativity
  • Access support if you are anxious about birth or a traumatic experience
  • Enhance your conection with your baby/child
  • Have fun and make new friends

My new classes help mums-to-be get in touch with their creative side...

The idea of the Birth Art Café™ was founded by Tamara Donn, a childbirth educator from Kings Langley. Tamara had been running 6 week antenatal courses but wanted more continuity with clients, ideally from pre-conception to post-birth.

I run the Milton Keynes branch, please get in contact if you would like to know more.

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Book Your Place Now:
Contact Michelle Twiselton
Independent Midwife on:
07852 100484
birth art cafe
Birth today

Birth and transition to motherhood is a rite of passage and as such is unpredictable. It is a right brain process – intuitive, instinctive and unfolds in its own time. We live in a left brain culture, focused on being in control of our lives. The types of preparation for birth and new motherhood tend to appeal to the left brain – lots of information (much of it practical and useful) but this is only half the preparation.

Being is the way of pregnancy, birth and new motherhood. When you are with a baby, the best thing to do is BE because that’s what babies know and can teach and remind us if we let them. Nowadays women are encouraged to be in control of their birth experiences. This can manifest in a number of ways by choosing to avoid pain, choosing the date of birth, wanting to be in control or stay calm.

All these choices go against the wildness, unpredictability and the essence of birth which is surrendering into the unknown. The choices give rise to unrealistic expectations of how the birth will unfold and attachment to outcome.
birth art cafe
Pregnancy is a time of great change on a physical, emotional and spiritual level. The Birth Art Café™ provides women with 2 hours of hours of space in time, a forum where pregnant women can come together to explore their feelings and emotions about pregnancy through creativity. It’s an opportunity to meet other pregnant women, make new connections, paint, sculpt and chat in a background of relaxing music.

Traditionally, women have turned to other women for advice and sustenance during pregnancy; nowadays women get their information from a culture of seeing birth as a drama or emergency.

Gentle exploration through birth art reveals resources and qualities that a woman may not have realised she has as well as highlighting perceived obstacles, fears and negative beliefs which are useful to identify during pregnancy while there is still time to address these before the birth.
Birth art

Each birth art session has a theme which the women can, if they choose, use as a starting point for the process. These themes are taken from the book ‘Birthing From Within’ by Pam England. If the women prefer, they can draw whatever comes to mind, there is no right way of approaching this.

There is no requirement of previous experience. In fact those who have none are at an advantage as they don’t have the preconceived idea of how it ‘should’ be done. It can be seen as a metaphor for how you approach other things in your life, especially unfamiliar ones – like birth.

The physical benefit for the pregnant woman is that painting, sculpting or any other creative process stimulates the primitive part (right side) of the brain which is the active part of the brain in labour. It allows women to move away from the decision making and thinking (a major part of the way we live in our society) to a state of simply being – the way we are in labour.

While working as an NHS midwife I had explored the concept of Birthing From Within and incorporated birth art, into some of my antenatal classes. As an Independent Midwife, I first met Tamara Donn at an event a couple of years ago and went along to a couple of her Birth Art Café™ sessions in Kings Langley. Following some formal training along with midwife and yoga teacher Sandy Sinclair, we are now providing Birth Art Café™ sessions in Milton Keynes for pregnant women to attend.

Some of the creative themes will be taken from books called Birthing From Within

Birthing From Within was created by an American midwife, Pam England who believed you have a good chance of birthing normally with lots of information, a positive attitude and a birth plan. When Pam gave birth by unwanted caesarean she asked herself, what did she need to know as a mother that she didn’t know as a midwife? This question lead to her to ask herself – what is it that women need to know to birth in awareness within a medicalised birth culture?

From here she created a holistic approach to childbirth education which prepares parents to birth in awareness however it unfolds.

A paintbrush could be the key to a happy pregnancy!

Please contact me if you are interested in finding out more.
 

With thanks to Tamara Donn for some of the text above.

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