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The Birth Gem Doula

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Placenta Remedies

“It was such a wonderful gift to have Gemma in our home to prepare our capsules and fascinating to watch the process. I have been taking my capsules for a week and feel great. People have commented on my glow and how much energy I have for a new mother! I will be encapsulating for any future pregnancy.”
The Birth Gem Doula
2017-09-03T20:38:19+01:00
“It was such a wonderful gift to have Gemma in our home to prepare our capsules and fascinating to watch the process. I have been taking my capsules for a week and feel great. People have commented on my glow and how much energy I have for a new mother! I will be encapsulating for any future pregnancy.”
https://thebirthgem.co.uk/testimonials/109/
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The Birth Gem Doula

The amazing placenta

The placenta, the root of your origin is a miraculous organ that shares and protects your life. It is the conductor that unites you with your mother and serves as the control panel of the womb-ship that sustains you until you are born. It was conceived at the moment of your genesis. Though you share some of your parents genetic identity, unless you have an identical twin no one, except your placenta has ever been so perfectly, exactly you.

The act of creating new life only works because of the placenta, it is the mandala in the centre of the miracle of life.

Historically our creation stories tell of the Earth mother birthing the world: Her amniotic fluid became the oceans, the placenta became the tree of life. This demonstrates how essential the placenta is to our survival and how embedded it is in our psyche.

Robin Lim - Placenta, the forgotten chakra

 

Why is your placenta so important for post birth healing?

During and after a vaginal birth (including post-natal bleeding) a new mother will lose between 1/8 to 1/10 of her body’s blood supply. With cesarean section births, blood loss can be significantly more. Losing a large amount of iron so quickly can cause anaemia, leaving a new mum feeling tired, faint and exhausted. The blood needs high supplies of iron to carry oxygen to the cells. Low supplies of oxygen leave your cells starving and less able to heal after trauma.

The placenta benefits the new mother by supplying incredibly rich meaty iron, amino acids and essential fats which we believe is the perfect replenishment following the physical exertion of pregnancy, labour and birth.

Stem cells and growth factors in the placenta play a key role in healing the wound left inside the uterus after birth by the separation of the placenta from the uterine wall. A mother will typically bleed for between 3 – 6 weeks after birth. This blood loss stems from where  the placenta separated from the uterine wall.

We have found however that mothers who consume their placenta after birth, particularly after consuming raw placenta in a smoothie or other, bleed significantly less e.g. usually much lighter bleeding for between just 5 – 10 days after giving birth.

The most important nutrients found in rich supply in the placenta include:

  • Stem Cells and Growth Factors.
  • Iron – essential for oxygen absorption in the cells.
  • Vitamins B6 – aids in the making of antibodies.
  • Vitamin E – for healing damaged skin cells.
  • Oxytocin hormone – essential for facilitating birth and breastfeeding.
  • Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) – responsible for reducing stress levels.
  • Cytokines – Fibroblasts that trigger cell metabolism healing and replacing damaged cells and tissue.

Development and Physiology of the Placenta and Membranes

Placenta remedies have been reported by mothers to:

  • Reduce post ­birth bleeding quickly
  • Encourage a quick and healthy milk supply
  • Balance hormonal peaks and drops
  • Reduce stress levels
  • Prevent the baby blues and postnatal depression
  • Boost energy to cope with a busy day after little sleep
  • Improve the appearance of skin/hair/nails

The placenta benefits a healing mother after birth in many forms. Placenta smoothies, capsules, creams, tinctures, essences and homeopathic remedies can all be made using the placenta; each may have their own benefit to the body and encourage a quicker more natural recovery after birth. (Information provided by Placenta Remedies Network, Professional Training in Placenta Services).

There are a number of ways to benefit from your amazing placenta and I have seen them provide a wonderful service to new mothers.

I am a trained and certified specialist with the placenta remedies network and hold all relevant blood borne pathogen and food hygiene certificates. I am based near Uckfield and collect from Pembury hospital, Crowborough birth centre, Princess Royal hospital Haywards Heath and Brighton hospital. I also collect from home births up to 40 mins from my local area.

I offer:

  • Placenta burial rituals
  • Placenta Balm
  • Placenta Cream
  • Placenta Encapsulation
  • Placenta Essence
  • Placenta Printing
  • Placenta Smoothies
  • Placenta Tinctures
  • Simple Placenta Capsules

Please visit Placenta Remedies Network for more information.

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  • About
  • Doula Services
  • Massage and Reiki
  • The postnatal pantry
  • Blog
  • Birth Art Mandala and Belly Painting
  • Placenta Remedies
  • Contact
❤️Mother love from afar A gift from her villag ❤️Mother love from afar
A gift from her village, sent with love and a sweet note from the heart. 
I love preparing these postnatal boxes and feeling that sense of the village of now, we may sometimes feel that the village is lost, but it isn’t at all. The village is just different, reframed for how we live now. We may live further away from our birthing sisters than the villages of old but we can still support, share, connect and give love in traditional and nurturing ways. Our villages of now may be close by, in online communities, made up of friends, family and professionals in person or just on the end of a phone or screen. No less important, no less sacred. 
This gift that will arrive lovingly prepared and packaged contains 
Nursing tea 
Healing bath herbs
Body butter
Incense 
Flower essence 
All made with so much care and with a new born mother in mind. So that she will feel nurtured and held in her postnatal healing. 
#postnatal #thefourthtrimester #thefirst40days #traditionalpostpartum #giftsforher #sacredpostpartum #thevillage #newmother #nursingtea #traditionalherbs #postnataldoula
I really, really love cake! I love eating them an I really, really love cake! 
I love eating them and I love creating them, especially for special occasions. I believe that there really is a cake for marking and honouring almost everything, transitions, rites of passage, letting go’s and welcoming in. Making food for people is such precious work to me and 
If you’re familiar with my cake creations you will have seen vulva cakes, mother blessing cakes, postnatal cakes, birthday cakes, even a wedding cake and a boob cake on my Instagram grid! All made with great love and happiness, I’m often at my happiest when creating in my kitchen. 
Throughout history the giving of a sweet treat or cake would have been an honour to bestow, a big show of care and respect even mentioned in the bible! 
Food is so much more than just fuel, it’s celebratory, sacred and social, truly one of life’s most simple pleasures and every celebration across cultures has the sharing of special food at its centre and there is usually a cake! What good would a wedding be without the ritual cutting and sharing of a most beautiful cake. 
For me, a good birthday cake is precious. Birthday cakes can be such a dry and bland let down, an iced token and afterthought. What does that say to the person we are celebrating?! By creating or gifting a lovingly made cake we are recognising the person we are celebrating. Today you landed earth side and this sweet indulgent creation celebrates wonderful, magical you 💖
#cake #foodoflove #buttercream #vaginacake #baking #fooddoula #birthcake #lioncake #mermaidcake
🌸 Bloom 🌸 The beautiful process of becoming! 🌸 Bloom 🌸 The beautiful process of becoming! 
First of all, would you just look at this picture of an opening poppy. So gorgeous and amazing how much it resembles the crowning at birth! @vizzlesticks shared today her pondering of the poppy after our birth mandala session and it’s lessons in patience, the fact that it takes it sweet time from seed even, sometimes waiting up to 80 years to even sprout. Waiting in the dark soil for the perfect conditions for that individual seed to grow. 
As I watch the blooms around me I can’t help but think of pregnancy and birth. Every bud takes it’s time, some I watch and predict tomorrow she’ll open, then I return and she’s continuing to gently unfurl, that’s ok you take your time I say. Then one day I notice that she’s open in her fullness gazing into the sun just at the perfect time. 
We don’t rush nature, we just watch and admire the gifts trusting that everything knows just what to do and we nurture it when needed. This is how we should trust birth, nurture the mother when needed, of course some mothers and some babies need support some of the time. But unless truly medically necessary trust that she will bloom in her own perfect time. From estimated due dates to birth itself, softly, softly trusting the wise process. 
I notice that my rose bushes have all stages of flower right now, all perfect in their various stages and just as they should be, teaching us to trust and that we all bloom in our own perfect time, the one pictured even has flowers blooming in slightly different shades. The image of an opening flower is so helpful in so many ways and it’s a visualisation I use often. For birth the image of an opening flower is pretty much perfect in my opinion and definitely one of my favourites. 
Petals blooming and opening softly, cradling the baby as they make their way into loving arms. 
Softly, softly, in your own perfect time. Balance, trust, softly unfurl. Welcoming the soft but powerful bloom. ❤️
#sacredpregnancy #bloom #crowning #visualisationforbirth #open #birthart #visualisation #birthvisualization #opensoftly #lessonsinnature #floweropening #doula #birthdoula #sacredbirth #homebirth #duedate
Goddess day ❤️ Friday is my favourite day and Goddess day ❤️
Friday is my favourite day and this Friday evening we gathered again for our monthly Women’s circle, this time in the bowl my pear tree created. Somehow a fire didn’t feel right this month and this tree is pretty special to me, years ago I gathered with some sisters under her for the rite of the womb with @iam.sanita, I have held antenatal sessions here, closings, I make blossom essence with her gifts and more. 
❤️What a beautiful evening it was to honour our emotions, be with nature, share and connect as the new moon in cancer encourages. we shared in so many roses in so many ways! in meditation, song, poems, we planted small seeds to nurture and opened our hearts like the roses we laid in this safe and loving space until it was dark and a chill encouraged us to part.
❤️I truly believe that when women gather this way magic tends to happen, but Little did I know that while I laid offerings and sent love out to those who didn’t join including a sister full of baby, that she would be birthing that night! How perfect and fitting our song was knowing how she triumphantly roared her baby into the world in the early hours, fire in her heart. 
I woke Saturday morning to a call from her with that song on my lips and prepared her placenta listening to it. Thank you @rebecca_austin86 for the gift and thank you to this dear mama for trusting me with her precious placenta and for inviting me into her fresh, sacred postnatal nest. 
🔥Let the fire in your heart burn brightly 
Let the fire in your heart burn strong 
Let the flames of your passion burst the light in song (that’s what I heard anyway)
Let the fire in your heart burn strong 🔥
#womenscircle #womangathering #firesong #heartsong #goddessspace #plantsmallseeds #weareone #connectionmatters #birthsong #birth #placenta #placentaremedies
❤️ Raw vegan brownie ❤️ Good fats & magnes ❤️ Raw vegan brownie ❤️ Good fats & magnesium a plenty here.
Date full and soooo good, the perfect birth room snack for energy and a perfect treat for your postnatal nest. So easy to prepare even for those who claim that they can’t cook, and this freezes well too. I make these for my love to take to work as well as for my clients. If I’ve served you you’ll likely recognise them! 
I’m not one for measuring but that doesn’t matter here as you just adjust this until you reach the right amount of squidgy ness for it to press into the pan. Today I used pecans for the base but have used other nuts and oats before. 
❤️Ingredients
2 cup pecan 
2 cup dates (I used medjool) 
6 tbsp cacao powder 
2 tbsp maple syrup 
100g bar dark choc 
❤️Method 
Line a square pan with grease proof paper.
Put 2 cup nuts in blender and blitz until fine.
Add the rest of the ingredients and blitz until it kind of comes together. Test it by scooping out a small amount and see if it all sticks together well. 
Spoon into the pan and press down with the back of a spoon until even. 
Freeze for 30 mins. 
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. 
Pour onto the brownie *optional* top with crushed toasted nuts, a sprinkle of sea salt and dried rose petals. 
I happened to have a little of the trail mix I made left so used nuts from that but I recommend you get playful with it. Grated orange zest and coconut is good, any edible flower looks divine, goji berries or nothing at all. 
#rawbrownie #rawvegan #postnatal #the4thtrimester #theforst40days #brownies #recipeshare #feedwithlove #fooddoula #postnatalpantry #easyrecipes
I am absolutely disgusted by todays news and my he I am absolutely disgusted by todays news and my heart goes out to the people of the US most of who do not want this. But here they are, forced back to a time that should never have to be experienced again, the rights that so many women fought for over so many decades undone . Abortion is health care and restricting access to it does not make it go away, it only makes it more dangerous and life threatening as history has already shown, definitely most dangerous to the most vulnerable in society. This is just criminal, cruel and inhumane, people will die thanks to this vile decision. Just chilling really, We could see it coming and yet I am still shocked. You know all this and everything else I want to say of course and many could put it more eloquently but wow. Maybe one day women in America will have as many rights as a man that wants to carry a gun on his waistband?? 
To echo @hannah.dahlen , to those who say ‘only in America’ Since when has America not influenced the world?
“We are not without actions that we can take. We need to have hope, but we need to hang on to this anger because we can use that anger to fuel change,” ~ Elizabeth Warren 
#abortionishealthcare #womenshealth #roevwade #reversingroe #abortionrightsarehumanrights #wombwisdom
❤️Horchata where have you been all my life!? L ❤️Horchata where have you been all my life!?
Likely the roots of the plant milks we use a lot these days Horchata is a popular and often vegan drink usually served over ice throughout Spain, Puerto Rico, Central America & Mexico. It’s essentially a spiced and sweetened nut milk, traditionally tiger nuts it seems and strained just like other plant based milks. It struck me that a lot of the healing, comforting recipes I love from around the world include milk and rice, how comforting this would be alongside congee. During my self nurturing time I got a little playful with it and prepared a herbal Horchata for lung health, energy and immunity. It takes a while with the overnight soaking but is so worth it, I had mine this morning in my smoothie and will likely incorporate it into a few different dishes! I look forward to experimenting with variations on this gorgeous creamy drink, rose would be divine! 
Herbal Horchata - 
make an 8 cup serving of Mullein tea/ tonic (6 tbsp mullein 1tbsp dried ginseng root 8 cup boiled water steep 20 min) strain and set aside
❤️Ingredients 
1 cup cooked white or brown rice
1 cup almonds
1/4 cup marshmallow root 
6 tbsp dried mullein 
2 cinnamon stick 
1tbsp dried ginseng 
8 cup boiled water for the tea
4 dates or a couple tbsp maple syrup ( I used magnolia syrup)
1 - 2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup coconut milk
❤️method 
Soak the rice, nuts, cinnamon marshmallow root in the strained tea in the fridge overnight. 
In the morning transfer all the ingredients except the coconut milk to a blender and blitz. 
Pour through a mesh then a plant milk bag (I found this easier and less messy!) Then whisk in the coconut milk. 
Taste and add sweetness to your own taste but for me this was perfect dusted with cinnamon to serve. 
Enjoy! 
#horchata #herbalhorchata #comfortfood #herbaltea #plantbased #healing #nurturing #plantwisdom #mullein #ginseng #selfnurture #selfcare #radicalselflove
Happy birthing day to this absolute goddess! The s Happy birthing day to this absolute goddess! The surprise, joy and bliss in these pictures says it all. She waited so long and worked so hard to achieve the home birth of her dreams and achieved it. During the peak of covid lockdown #1 no less! 
I’ll celebrate you every year @s1naed and your absolute glory as I know you’re going to be busy with the double birthday! (Yes this mama only likes to have her babies on June 22nd )😆
This queen waited so long to meet her baby. When your 1st born arrived unexpectedly early going ‘post dates’ feels endless! So she waited, so full of baby in the heat and with the unique never before experienced challenge of parenting during the restrictions of a pandemic. We joked about baby choosing his siblings birthday to arrive on and of course it happened, the birth goddesses have a great sense of humour 😆
To support you on your journey as you achieved the birth you deserved was an absolute honour. I remember you saying that your biggest wish was to just go about your day and meet your baby. No fuss, no interference and I’d say you exceeded that. You took what you needed, left the rest and birthed your way, like an absolute goddess worshipped by your love and served by us just as it should be. Sending some big love out to you today, 
@s1naed YOU. ARE. AMAZING! 
#homebirth #birthworks #empowered #empoweredbirth #positivebirth #birthstory #waterbirth #birthdoula #birthingday #sacredbirth #birthyourway

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