Natural childbirth - Is it for you?

Take a look at the story today in Huffington Post "New Mom's Uncensored Photos Reveal The Beautiful, Messy Reality Of Home Birth"

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Natural births difficult unless you prepare for it correctly. 

In Finland it is not permitted. I have covered this in one of my tutorials.
Although Finland has the lowest mortality rate with regard to childbirth, something is missing in the mother/child relationship. 

That develops out of natural childbirth.

Please see the details in my book "Raising a Child the Montessori Way" where the importance of natural childbirth is discussed.

In my case, our first daughter was born in a hospital in an English village (Cross Houses), the second, our elder son was born in our home in a very small English village (Shawbury), while the next two, a daughter and then our youngest son were born in Willingdon Hospital, in Chennai. Each was difficult in its own way.

I have just uploaded Tutorial 5 A, 5 B and 5 C on Scribd.com

Tutorials 5 A, 5 B, and 5 C by Annikki Matthan

The next upload of the Tutorial series will be in a couple of days.

Choosing the environment

In yesterday's blog I showed one aspect of creating the right milieu for a cake. This one is far more emphatic.

After hearing my stories about our friendly and not so friendly (our son, Jaakko, mercifully survived a deadly snake bite of a krait) encounters with snakes in India, Samu asked for a snake as a birthday cake. 

I created it without a problem. 

It was a combination of my hill (mound) cake into which I created the snake grotto. The hill and grotto entrance can be seen in the first photo. More intricate details of what I created from sweets, as the butterflies, and other decorations can be seen in the pictures.

Snake grotto in a hill (mound)

Global view of the snake entering the grotto

As presented to the audience with the snake in the shrubbery.

However, the third picture shows how it was presented to the audience with the green shrubbery carefully placed in the vicinity to create a beautiful very natural appearance of a snake moving into its grotto.

The reception was one of awe when those present saw this snake in its very natural setting. A sight to be remembered for a lifetime.