CHOICE - Birth Options in Columbus

CHOICE is an organization of parents and professionals supporting the rights of parents to choose more humane options in their birth experiences.

CHOICE offers a unique program to the community, not found in most midwifery practices. As a non-profit organization, CHOICE provides the following services:

• CHOICE Services:
  • Free one-hour consultation with midwives, regardless of whether or not you choose to use our services.
  • Free Lending Library (including books and videos and DVDs)
  • Childbirth Preparation Classes
  • Birth and Postpartum Doula Services
  • Parent Support Group with weekly meetings and an active e-list
  • Referrals to practitioners who can meet your needs
  • Public Speakers for community education
  • Supplies and Products:
    • Slings
    • Supplements
    • Herbal Products
    • Parent Resource Center (free maternity clothes, baby clothes and baby equipment)

• CHOICE Midwives:
  • Our midwives have over 30 years of experience and are committed to providing individualized midwifery model of care.
    • CHOICE believes that skilled and responsible midwives should be readily available to all families in our community.
    • CHIOCE believes midwives are the guardians of normal birth.
    • CHOICE believes that midwives provide compassionate, skilled, and woman-centered care.
    • CHOICE believes in a woman’s right to choose her birth attendants and place of birth and to involve those she identifies as her family in the bonding of the birth experience.
  • CHOICE requires all their midwives to be Certified Professional Midwives (CPM).
    • CPM certification validates entry-level knowledge, skills, and experience vital to responsible midwifery practice.
    • CPM certification preserves the unique, woman-centered forms of practice that are common to midwives attending out-of-hospital births.
    • The North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) guidelines for certification approval have been developed to meet national certifying standards formulated by the National Organization for Competency Assurance (NOCA).
    • CPM certification assures our midwives:
      • will provide the skills and experience vital to responsible midwifery practice.
      • meet professional standards of accountability that support midwives to remain active lifelong learners, confirming the ideals of competent practice.
      • meet NARM’s continuing education requirements that provide consistent opportunities for current knowledge and growing professional awareness.
      • maintain confidentiality, current practice guidelines and CPR certification.
      • practice informed consent which provides flexibility for individualized care.
      • have the benefit of continued understanding and problem solving through weekly CHOICE Peer Review.
      • participate in NARM’s accountability process to address concerns regarding competent midwifery practice.

• CHOICE Policies
  • Unlike most midwifery practices,
    • CHOICE requires two CPMs to work with each client who desires a home birth.
    • CHOICE requires that at least one of these two CPMs must be an “experienced midwife”. CHOICE defines “experienced midwife” as a midwife who:
      • has attended at least 75 births AND
      • has been in practice at least 5 years.
      • This policy assures that:
        • at least one of the two midwives assigned to each birth will have skills and experience that exceed the national standards for competent entry-level midwifery practice.
        • even when more than one client is in labor at the same time, the client can be assured that she will have at least one of her assigned midwives present during her labor and birth.
        • two fully qualified midwives will be present at each birth to deal with complications that may develop with either the mother or the baby. Should complications develop with both the mother and the baby simultaneously, a fully qualified midwife will be available to handle each situation.

• CHOICE Home Birth Midwifery Services include:
  • Complete Prenatal, Labor/Birth and Postpartum Care
  • Support for:
    • Waterbirth
    • VBACs
    • Breastfeeding
    • Nutritional Counseling

• Area Served: Central Ohio (Franklin County and all adjacent counties)

CHOICE
5721 North High Street – Worthington, Ohio 43085 – 614-263-BABY (2229)

Mother's Touch Stimulates Child's Brain Development

UCI child neurologist and neuroscientist Dr. Tallie Z. Baram has found that caressing and other sensory input triggers activity in a baby’s developing brain that improves cognitive function and builds resilience to stress.




Baram has found that maternal care and other sensory input triggers activity in a baby's developing brain that improves cognitive function and builds resilience to stress. For an infant, a mother’s touch provides a feeling of security, comfort and love. But research at UC Irvine is showing that it does much more.

The finding contributes to growing knowledge about epigenetics, the study of how environmental factors can reprogram the expression of genes.

In a study published earlier this year in The Journal of Neuroscience, Baram and colleagues identified how sensory stimuli from maternal care can modify genes that control a key messenger of stress called corticotropin-releasing hormone.

In earlier work, Baram helped discover that excessive amounts of CRH in the brain’s primary learning and memory center led to the disintegration of dendritic spines, branchlike structures on neurons. Dendritic spines facilitate the sending and receiving of messages among brain cells and the collection and storage of memories.

“Communication among brain cells is the foundation of cognitive processes such as learning and memory,” says Baram, the Danette Shepard Chair in Neurological Sciences. “In several brain disorders where learning and similar thought processes are abnormal, dendritic spines have been found to be reduced in density or poorly developed.

“Because an infant’s brain is still building connections in these communication zones, large blasts or long-term amounts of stress can permanently limit full development, increasing the risk of anxiety, depression and dementia later in life.”

Her most recent study describes for the first time the cellular pathways of the epigenetic process by which maternal care reduces the expression of CRH in the hypothalamus. Detecting sensory input, DNA in brain cells in this stress-sensitive region activates a neuron-restrictive silencer factor, which limits CRH. Without the interference of excess stress-triggered CRH, neural dendrites in the hippocampus can fully develop, which leads to stress resilience.

“What’s noteworthy about this study is that it reveals that brain structure is influenced by the environment early in life, and especially by maternal care,” says Baram, whose research on early-life factors in neural development has fundamentally altered the understanding of disorders such as epilepsy.

“There has been a belief that the brain is hardwired ­ that once it’s established, it’s that way for life,” she says. “But we’re seeing that the brain is actually ‘softwired’ ­ that changes in stimuli alter the wiring ­ and that it’s not predestined to be a certain way. I find this fascinating.”

Provided by UC Irvine

photo: http://www.massagetableoutlet.com/images/blog_images/mother-child.jpg