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EcoBirth-Women for Earth and Birth

Uniting the earth and birth movements for the well-being of our world

Friday, November 27, 2009

Program of Making Healthy Babies, Raising Healthy Children: Living well in a toxic world

MAKING HEALTHY BABIES, RAISING HEALTHY CHILDREN
Living Well in a Toxic World

Where: UC Berkeley Art Museum Theater, 2625 Durant Ave. Berkeley, California
When: Saturday, November 21, 2009, from 9 am to 4 pm


The 2009 CIA World Factbook ranks the USA 45th among nations for infant mortality— the worst among all industrialized countries. The autism rate in our country is now 1 in 100.

How we can understand and take appropriate steps to ensure healthy mothers,
births and children? Take a unique look at the entire system that affects
our future generations- a mother’s current environment,
the birth environment and your child’s toxic world.

This symposium brings together scientists, doctors, researchers and professionals for a compelling conversation about environmental influences around birth and childhood. Featuring plenary speakers, panels, audience questions, and film clips.

Revolutionary new software will also be introduced that will help parents assess the risks our children may encounter from the environment before birth, at birth and during childhood. Our three part program will make clearer to attendees what they should know about environmental health, their world, and how it affects them and their children.

Session One: Preparing for Childbirth

Sharyle Patton, Director, Commonweal Health and Environment Program, presents several new biomonitoring studies documenting the ubiquity and complexity of chemical and environmental exposures that people experience every day, and how those exposures could influence pregnancy and the health of our children. Exciting new software will be introduced which gives parents-to-be the opportunity to evaluate environmental exposures, and the effect they may have, so lifestyle changes can be made to ensure healthier outcomes for families and children. This session concludes with an expert panel including Ms. Patton; Dr. Joanne Perron OB/GYN who will correlate the environmental science with her own personal experience; and Julie Matthews, Certified Nutrition Consultant, who will describe the best diet for pre-pregnant women

Session Two: The Birth Experience

Robbie Davis-Floyd, PhD, medical anthropologist and author of eight books including Birth as an American Rite of Passage, presents a brief history of birth in the USA. This presentation will focus on women’s ideas and cultural values about childbirth. The session concludes with a panel consisting of Dr. Davis-Floyd; Elizabeth Davis, a Certified Professional Midwife, who will touch on an integrated view of birth; and pediatrician Dr. Marshall Klaus and his wife, Phyllis Klaus C.S.W., M.F.C.C., who discuss the care and support a woman needs during birth. A new film by Diana Paul of Sage Femme will introduce this session.

Session Three: Healthy Childhood

Dr. Andy Wakefield, academic gastroenterologist and Director of Thoughtful House Center for Children in Austin, Texas, presents new information and good news about the treatment and prevention of autism (now affecting 1 in 100 children). A ChARMtracker demo will be featured introducing this web-based treatment tracking software for autism. The session will conclude with a panel consisting of Dr. Wakefield; Pramila Srinivasan (ChARM founder); Kenneth Bock (an integrative family practitioner whose practice is a beta site for the ChARM Physician product); and a returning Julie Matthews, nutrition consultant for children with autism. Clips from Elizabeth Horn’s film "Finding the Words" will open this session.

Audience questions and answers will be taken at the end of each session.

Master of Ceremonies

Carolyn Raffensperger, M.A, J.D. is the Executive Director of the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN). In 1982 she left a career as an archaeologist to work for the Sierra Club, where she addressed an array of environmental issues, including forest management, river protection, pesticide pollutants, and disposal of radioactive waste. She began working for SEHN in 1994. As an environmental lawyer, she specializes in fundamental changes in law and policy necessary for the protection and restoration of public health and the environment. Carolyn is coeditor of Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle (Island Press, 1999), the most comprehensive exploration of the history, theory, and implementation of the precautionary principle. She coined the term "ecological medicine" to encompass the broad notions that health and healing are entwined with the natural world. She wrote a bimonthly column for the Environmental Law Institute's journal Environmental Forum from 1999 until 2008.

Sponsors: Sage Femme, Ryder Foundation, Midwifery Today, Autism Recovery Consortium


THE DAY’S EVENTS

9 a.m. Registration

9:30 a.m. Welcome — Host Carolyn Raffensperger, Executive Director, Science and Environmental Health Network

9:45 a.m. Session One: Preparing for Childbirth
Sharyle Patton, Director, Commonweal Health and Environment Program, discusses the effects of the environment inside and outside a woman’s body.

10:15 a.m. Panel and Q & A
Sharyle Patton, Julie Matthews, Certified Nutrition Consultant, and Joanne Perron, MD, FACOG, RYT, examine the route to a healthy pregnancy.

10:45 Break
11:05 Short Film: “Besos” by Diana Paul
11:20 Session Two: The Birth Experience
Robbie Davis-Floyd, Ph.D, medical anthropologist, presents a brief history of birth in the USA, focused on how to have a “healthy” birth and baby.

11:50 a.m. Panel and Q & A
Robbie Davis-Floyd, Marshall Klaus, M.D. and Phyllis Klaus, L.C.S.W, M.F.T.
and Elizabeth Davis, Certified Professional Midwife, discuss the birth experience.

12:30 p.m. Lunch
1:45 p.m. Short Film: “Finding the Words” by Elizabeth Horn
2:00 p.m. Session Three: Healthy Childhood
Dr. Andy Wakefield, academic gastroenterologist and Executive Director of Thoughtful House Center for Children in Austin, Texas, presents new information about the treatment and prevention of autism (now affecting 1 in 100 children).

2:30 p.m. Dr. Kenneth Bock and Pramila Srinivasan, Ph.D, will present a demo of ChARMtracker, a new ground-breaking web-based treatment tracking software for autism.

2:50 p.m. Panel and Q & A
Andy Wakefield, Kenneth Bock, Pramila Srinivasan and Julie Matthews talk about the latest developments in autism research and treatment.

3:45 p.m. Concluding Remarks by Carolyn Raffensperger

4:00 p.m. The sessions close
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Molly Arthur's Maternal Lines digital story from molly arthur on Vimeo.

We women can face the pain and grief we have for our suffering Mother Earth and reclaim our story of creation and redemption with the power and beauty intimately held in our body’s cells from our maternal lines since the beginning of the cosmos. Our existential and communal grief heals within the loving gathering of our feminine compassion, connecting us to the truth and strength of our Mother Earth and all our kin. We start with Molly’s Personal Environmental Story-to explore the birth stories and places and times of ourselves, our mothers and grandmothers.Using the stories of our own maternal lines, with sharing, active listening and intention, we call on our ancestors, our inner wisdom and the shared circle to witness our story with compassion. Using ritual, song, movement, and sharing of our truths, in community and powerful circle as well as spending time on the land - we can acknowledge the oppression in our lives, feeling it in our bodies, grieving it, transforming it and ourselves in a safe, loving space. Our healing path connects our sacred lineage from the womb of our Mother Earth to integrate our inner and outer lives and discover our place in the connected caring cosmos. We are a part of a continuum of sacredness, lifeforce, divine energy including our Ancestors back to the stuff of the stars. We can reclaim our cells, our lineage and our legacy to the future generations. Like in birth labor, we must yield to our bodies innate knowing, to progress, to open, to birth our love. With our active surrender to fierce compassion we can restore our connection to the natural world and our own inner wisdom. We can drop our obsessive addictions to control and return to our healing, caring, befriending tendencies- innate for us nurturers. And then we can repair, regenerate, and renew our culture for tenderness and kindness, naturally embodied by us. We will be able to guard and protect ours and all descendents - becoming their Beloved Ancestors- by asking - What is possible now to transform our world for Future Generations?

Molly Arthur of EcoBirth- My Personal Environmental Story November 2012 from molly arthur on Vimeo.

Why EcoBirth’s My Personal Environmental Story
EcoBirth’s My Personal Environmental Story will help women tell their life story by considering the two primary environments- place and birth- for themselves, their mothers and their maternal grandmothers. Through this process each participant will come to realize the hazards in their environmental genealogy and realize the healing in telling their own story. And they will be empowered to affect the changes that are necessary for our Mother Earth and our children and grandchildren to thrive.
Imagine looking back to your grandmother's and mother's birth time to figure out what environmental influences you might have inherited? And have passed onto your children and grandchildren? Would you wonder what was in the air, water and food in their lives- and look twice at what diseases, birth defects, addictions there are in your family?