YDGM Ep 006: Charlotte Lomas

You're Doing Great Mom

“No one wants to say vagina. I didn’t even know it was called a vagina ’til I was about 14 year old. I thought it was called a tuppence.”

One of the best things I love about practicing chiropractic is meeting such wonderful women. Because I have a large pregnancy practice (and paediatric practice), I'm adjusting a good number of women who need the pregnancy adjustments. Every week.

(If you've never heard about pregnancy chiropractic care, take a look at my practice website to learn more.)

Charlotte came to my practice because she heard about me when she was taking courses with Hollie de Cruz from the London Hypnobirthing group. I'm certified in the Webster Technique, which is a chiropractic technique that is specifically to help realign the spine and pelvis to ease the tension and free up the space to allow for the uterus to relax. Often, because of the great results in the Webster Technique, a baby in a breech or undesired position, such as transverse, will move into a more ideal head-down position for an optimal vaginal birth.

Charlotte mentions in this episode: “There was this study done on breech births about fifteen years ago, and overnight it changed the way breech births were perceived. And later on when the study was reviewed or they looked into it more, some of the results called into question the integrity of the study and the fact that a lot of problems that had been attributed to breech births were actually incorrect.”

“I remember being in Hollie’s hypnobirthing course and in the booklet it was talking about the sort of language that you use, and how you get called a patient when there’s nothing wrong with you. And I remember being in the hospital in a theatre gown, with a drip, with surgical stockings on thinking, I’m not ill. What is going on?”

“I went in there [the hypnobirthing course] thinking, ‘I’d never want a home birth, and I walked out thinking I want a home birth. You know, it’s like a party and someone cleans up after you and then leaves. You’re at home with your baby, I just thought that sounds amazing. Because she was breech, it wasn’t going to work out that way. I just felt really empowered at the end of it. But there’s always a little voice in the back of my head that say, but you sound like such a hippie, talking about vaginas, women, feminine power. But it just gets overlooked so much. The power of it can be diminished, but it’s an amazing thing to do.”

Now, since her daughter's birth nearly a year ago, Charlotte has continued her family wellness care for herself and her daughter. It's been fantastic getting to know Charlotte and her daughter this past year. They are both an adorable mother/daugher duo, and it's an honour to be part of her 'health team'.

I've always loved seeing Charlotte and getting to know her more and more. Her personality is fun, down-to-earth, flirty, and she also has this great rocker-chick vibe about her. If I knew her when we were single, 'Girls'-TV-show scenes would have manifested in real life, which means lots of crazy fun and trouble going on. I could just see it.

Our evening recording this podcast episode was a barrel of fun, talking about lots of mummy topics such as her breech baby and the stress it came with it, her hilarious tales with her husband, and how difficult breastfeeding was for her including how her daughter had a tongue-tie. We also did a lot of fun girly talk about vaginas and body parts.

“You should have a t-shirt that says, ‘look at your vulva’. You could definitely sell that in Brixton, or in Hoxton.”

Tune in to listen, and I hope you enjoy it!

For more information on the Webster Chiropractic Technique, visit the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association (ICPA) website. To reach out to lactation consultant Imogen Unger, go to http://www.londonhypnobirthing.co.uk/team/imogen-unger/