For those who are not familiar with the organization, AWHONN stands for the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses. The Association is a nonprofit membership organization that promotes the health of women and newborns. Their mission is to improve and promote the health of women and newborns and to strengthen the nursing profession through the delivery of superior advocacy, research, education and other professional and clinical resources to nurses and other health care professionals.
Marlo has been asked to present at local AWHONN conferences before and this year she did yet another amazing job!
The presentation was titled, "The Sensualist, R.N." and its goal was to offer the Obstetric and Neonatal Nurse the opportunity to learn new and helpful ways to provide alternative methods of care to their patients. It also had a focus on teaching nurses inventive ways to take care of themselves so that they can be the best nurses they could be!
Here are some amazing highlights:
© 2012 Mother's Care Doula Services, Inc.
Endorphin's are released in response to stress and pain. The body produces these calming and pain-relieving hormones. In unmedicated labors, endorphin's continue to rise steadily and steeply through the birth of the baby.
High endorphin levels during labor and birth can produce
an altered state of consciousness that can help a laboring woman flow with the process, even
if it is long and challenging.
Despite the hard work of labor and birth, high endorphin
levels can make her feel alert, attentive, and even euphoric after birth!
Low levels of endorphins can cause special circumstances in labor and birth by:
Low levels of endorphins can cause special circumstances in labor and birth by:
Causing labor to be excessively painful and difficult to tolerate
leading providers
to respond to this problem with interventions.
Nursing Tips:
1) Encourage the laboring mother to rest and relax during her surges. To keep her
body relaxed and at ease and to trust her body's ability to help her through each
surge.
Teach her a quick breathing and relaxation exercise that she and her partner
can follow.
2) Encourage moms to smile during labor and teach her partner to smile with her.
3) Use positive triggers to remind the mother that she can stay relaxed during her birth.
Dim lights, use soft music, encourage her partner to hug and hold her and
use gentle massage.
© 2012 Mother's Care Doula Services, Inc.
4) Remind her that birth and labor are NORMAL and should be treated that way.
Remind her that fear impedes her body from releasing its natural pain killers and
makes pain worse.
© 2012 Mother's Care Doula Services, Inc.
Using Dr. Suess' children's story, "Horton Hears a Who", Nurse were reminded of an important fact...
"A person's a person...No matter how small."
© 2012 Mother's Care Doula Services, Inc.
Treating the small patient with gentleness can assist the baby in releasing their body's own healing and recuperating abilities.
Nursing Tips:
1) Utilize and teach parents about the importance of Kangaroo Care
2) Use dim lighting in the NICU
In the womb, a baby spends her time curled up, cozy and warm in the dark, listening
to her mother’s heartbeat and muted sounds from the outside world. Meanwhile, her
nervous system is developing at astonishing speed, forming thousands upon
thousands of essential nerve cell connections. When a baby is born prematurely, her
immature, disorganized nervous system isn’t ready to handle all of the sensory
messages bombarding her. NICUs should do their best to minimize over stimulation.
3) Use therapeutic touch or Gentle Human Touch (GHT)
GHT has been shown through research to have no adverse effect on heart rate or
oxygen saturation levels and that most of the babies are able to tolerate this kind of
touch without any problems. It has also been found that when GHT is performed
babies show significantly fewer behavioral signs of distress during the touch. These
findings suggest that GHT is calming to babies when they are very sick, and that it
may be beneficial to teach parents to interact with their preterm infants using GHT.
© 2012 Mother's Care Doula Services, Inc.
A closing exercise in teaching Nurses how to care for themselves and how small positive changes can affect their interactions and care for their patients, family and life.
© 2012 Mother's Care Doula Services, Inc.
As healthcare professionals nurses often get overwhelmed with the work they do. Always caring for others and forgetting to take time to care for themselves can often lead to a stress-out, over-worked and drained care provider. Reminding the nurses that THEY MATTER and that they can create a positive work day for themselves so that their positivity can influence others around them was a definite highlight of the presentation. Marlo was able to teach a few fun things nurses can do to get themselves relaxed, happy and moving!
1) Aromatherapy
Using essential oils such as Orange Zest, which is known to relieve anxiety and aide
with stress
2) Remembering the 3 R's - Relax...Relate....Release!
3) Exercise in a new and fun way!
Marlo ended the weekend getting all the nurses to try something...a little different!
Bellydancing!
© 2012 Mother's Care Doula Services, Inc.
Mother's Care Doula Services, Inc. was proud to participate in AWHONN's Section Conference. We hope that all of you reading this might also take away one or two interesting facts and apply them to your everyday life!
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