Look and Listen

Biography

With over seventeen years experience working with women in the childbearing year, Laurel Wilson, IBCLC, CLE, CCE, CLD takes a creative approach to working with the pregnant family. Using journaling, birth art, visualization, experiential exercises, and the yogic tradition, Laurel helps women connect with their inner resources to discover their true beliefs about themselves, their relationships, and their abilities to birth and parent their children. Laurel is Executive Director of Lactation Programs and Faculty for CAPPA, Childbirth and Postpartum Professional Association. She acts as the Customer Advocate for InJoy Birth and Parenting, teaching webinars and producing podcasts for professionals. She served as the Program Coordinator for Swedish Medical Center and Presbytarian St. Luke's Medical Center in Colorado, which combined serve nearly 4000 expectant families a year. She owns MotherJourney Childbirth Services--training childbirth, lactation, and postpartum professionals, as well as expectant families on integrative and holistic information as it pertains to today's Millennial family. She has her degree in Maternal Child Health: Lactation Consulting and is an internationally board certified lactation consultant. Laurel has received her training with Union Institute and University, Healthy Children, DONA, ALACE, CAPPA, Birthworks, Whole Birth Yoga, and Prenatal Parenting. She strives to provide the latest techniques, research, and programs to her clients by attending yearly conferences and workshops in the birth and lactation field. Laurel loves to blend today's recent scientific findings with the mind/body/spirit wisdom she has gleaned throughout the years.

Inspiration

Unfortunately, our society tends to value things that are truly inconsequential in the great scope of humanity. We are a society that honors hard work, money, the acquisition of material objects, and the ability to multitask. While these values are not “bad,” they allow us to misdirect our attention, changing focus from what really matters to the human being to the ideals of the ego. The famous leadership consultant and teacher Steven Covey said, “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” Today there is a lack of human connection during pregnancy; a societal lack of honoring this sacred and integral period. How we come into existence matters. How we are conceived, what our parents think, and how our parents love themselves and one another matters. Merriam-Webster defines consciousness as “the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself.” Our culture is in a state of unconsciousness; our internal awareness is dulled. We no longer trust our instincts for pregnancy and motherhood. Families seek 4D ultrasound, consult with machines and lab tests, and compare their own experience with strangers on television. The beautiful stillness of our beginnings has been lost; the peacefulness that invites a women to place a hand over her belly and know, really know in every cell in her body, that this being inside her is beauty personified has somehow been lost in the shuffle. The exquisite beauty of parenthood is the story being told with each and every pregnancy and birth and in every moment that a baby finds her entire world at her mother’s breast. We have the ability and the responsibility to create peace in these moments. I wish to share the information in this book so that a shift can take place in our societal expectations of pregnancy and mothering. I want you to experience how spirit and science combine to make us who we are.