Pomegranate Community Midwives | Vancouver Midwifery

This is unique opportunity to participate in both a fundraiser for Shanti Uganda and childbirth education classes taught by Sarah Juliusson of Dancing Star Birth, with a special focus on birthing traditions from around the world.

This 100% by donation prenatal class is an extraordinary opportunity to prepare for the birth of your child while also supporting the important maternal-child health work of Shanti Uganda. The regular cost for a prenatal class with Dancing Star Birth is $260. We welcome donations of any amount for your participation in this class – suggested range $100 – $500. Whatever amount you are able to donate, we recognize that each of you is making a real and important contribution to global maternal-child health. All contributions of $280 or more will receive a tax receipt from Shanti Uganda for the amount beyond the regular class cost of $260. All course costs (instructor, supplies, food & location) have been donated by Dancing Star Birth and Pomegranate Community Midwives. 100% of your donation will go to support the work of Shanti Uganda.

To register for this unique experience, please click here.

Cost: 100% by Donation – all proceeds go to Shanti Uganda. *All participants will receive a free postpartum booklet from Pomegranate Community Midwives.

Pomegranate is looking for a part-time RMT!

admin — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:05:46 +0000

Are you a Registered Massage Therapist with an interest in mother-baby wellness? Are you looking for a thriving community of families to be a part of? Do you want to work in a positive and beautiful working environment?

Pomegranate Community Midwives has had a long history of partnering with massage as a meaningful service for pregnant and postpartum women to provide at our clinic. Please send your letter of interest and resume to:

office@pomegranate-midwives.com

We are looking for a Registered Massage Therapist with experience providing care to pregnant and postpartum women. The ideal candidate would also be enthusiastic about teaching infant massage and providing occasional in-services to families at the clinic, such as information nights. We have a dedicated room for massage that includes a portable table, laundry services and lighting/music. We provide referrals from our midwives. The room is available 5 days a week.

pomegranate Postpartum Drop-In: Fridays, 1:15-2:45pm

admin — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 01:42:52 +0000

Pomegranate Postpartum Drop-In

We would love to see you and your baby!

If you had your baby with us and you are less than 4 months postpartum, you and your baby are welcome to join us every Friday for a free drop-in from 1:15-2:45pm at the clinic.

Updated Schedule and Topics

September 30: Self Care

October 7: Pumping

October 14: Communicating with your baby & Baby Sign

October 21: Motherhood

October 28: Communication

November 4: Diapers

NOVEMBER 11: REMEMBERANCE DAY CLOSED

November 18: : Home Safety & Infant First Aid

November 25: Crying

December 2: Community Resources

December 9: Guest Speaker TBA

December 16: Massage: self & baby

Pomegranate Midwifery Care Evaluation

admin — Sat, 21 May 2011 17:59:05 +0000

At the end of your care with us, we hope that you will take a moment to complete an evaluation form. We take your feedback seriously and use your input to improve the care we give to clients at Pomegranate. Thanks for taking the time to tell us how we are doing – we know how precious free moments can be!

Pomegranate Midwifery Care Evaluation

May, TBA – Kirsty Elliot – Poetry Reading

admin — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:38:50 +0000

These poems are like valentines dropped in the snow.
Pink feather boas and spruce trees. Glitter and firelight. But don’t let the stardust fool you. There’s something visceral and warm-blooded just under the surface.
Simple, lovely and true.
Charlotte Gill

Kirsty Elliot was accidently born in England because she’s Scottish. Her mom was a midwife and her Dad was a chemical engineer. She lived in Carnoustie until she was three and then moved to the Bahamas until she was seven. Life was all glass bottom boats and swimming all day until her dad was recruited by a nuclear power plant in Ontario. She spent the rest of her childhood in Inverhuron and then she thinks she went to high school in Port Elgin but she’s kind of blocked it out.

She attended Trent University until a global cycling addiction prevented her from finishing her Native Studies degree. She spent a decade living in the Yukon and Northwest Territories before moving down south to caretake a dreamy, private island. She spent three years living all alone in a house that floated in the ocean and looked like a walnut that fell from outer space. It was here that the poems in this book began to make themselves known.

She now lives with her husband and their two children on Lasqueti Island where they cleared some land, dug some ponds, made a garden and built a cute little plastic shack. They just spent their fourth winter all together in the plastic fantastic. So please buy this book. Hell, buy two.

twitter.com/kirsanthemum

PAP-apalooza! Time for a Pap?

admin — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:38:38 +0000

Writing Down the Motherhood Journey

admin — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:19:56 +0000

Writing Down the Motherhood Journey

It’s a Tuesday night and I’m sitting in a Vancouver café surrounded by ten other moms. The café is closed and we are just getting to know each other in this warm, cozy, intimate space. There are new moms and moms of toddlers and teenagers. There are grandmoms, adoptive moms and stepmoms, and they’ve come from all over the city to be here—at a writing class.

Many people ask me why mothers would want to take a writing class – why they would want write their stories when they often seem so trivial, full of the day to day mundane details that make up a mother’s life: diapers, tantrums, carpools, soccer practices. It’s the same question often asked of mommy bloggers. But they’re missing the point. What defines our lives is struggle: struggle to reconcile our pre-baby selves with our post-baby reality, struggle to get through a miscarriage, struggle to get through loss, divorce, exhaustion, job loss, mental illness, death. This is the stuff of good storytelling and it is worth recording every detail, before we forget how the struggle transformed us, enlightened us and made us who we are today.

One of the coolest things about writing our motherhood stories is the process of self-discovery that comes along with it. There’s something about writing down the details of your life that forces you to see things in a new way and to ask yourself questions you’d never before considered. Here are some words that have emerged in my writing for moms classes:

“I offered a watery smile and let the tears pour. ‘I just took my daughter to pre-school for the first time.’ I warbled. The old lady patted my shoulder and told me to go shopping and enjoy my baby who was babbling in the stroller in front of me. But I couldn’t.”

“The first time my husband told me he didn’t love me anymore, I didn’t believe him.”

“I came to motherhood at knifepoint.”

Writing has always been therapy for me. A journalist, I turned to writing personal stories about motherhood when my first child was born 9 years ago. Becoming a mother, for me, was such a crazy and transformative experience, one that involved simultaneously a career crisis, a friendship crisis, a marriage crisis and an identity crisis. I turned to what I knew best to work it all out: words. I wrote about how difficult it was to go back to work to a corporate 9 to 6 office job, leaving my one-year-old son in daycare. I wrote about the effect children had on my marriage. I’ve written about playdates and nannies and green parenting. I’ve explored the myth of having it all. And it has been through writing that I have learned the most about myself as a mother and as a human being.

Writing is a mysterious and beautiful process, for professional writers as well as for first-timers. Often, what we think we are going to write isn’t what comes out on the page at all.

Words can document our journey and help us grieve, share and move forward. Words can validate our experiences and give us the confidence that our own stories are worth telling and valuable sharing. Words can ease the pain of reality because by putting them on paper, you are letting that pain go. Giving it a name, a story, a history. This happened to me. I survived. I grew. I am better because of it all. I am not a perfect mom, nor the mom I expected to be. I am me.

Cori Howard is the founder of The Momoir Project, teaching writing classes to moms in Vancouver and online. She is also the editor of the best-selling anthology,Between Interruptions: Thirty Women Tell the Truth about Motherhood. For more details, check out: www.themomoirproject.com