Ruth Ehrhardt's Blog, page 2
July 9, 2025
Returning to the Source: Sitting Again with my Mentors in Birth
Fifteen years ago, as a student midwife and doula, I was beginning to question my place in the world of birth work.
Though the language of “trusting birth” was everywhere, the practices I witnessed told a different story. Coaching, managing, intervening—whether subtle or overt—seemed baked into even the most “natural” birth environments. I felt uneasy, isolated, and uncertain.
At that time, I found myself drawn again to the writings of Michel Odent. His words gave shape to something I instinctively felt but couldn’t yet articulate: that birth, as an involuntary process, cannot be helped—only protected. I searched to see if he had written anything about doulas and discovered something unexpected: a doula course in London, taught by Michel and a woman named Liliana Lammers. It was happening just days before I was due to attend a birth in Edinburgh. I changed my travel plans.
Those three days became a turning point in my life. I remember the feeling of finding my teachers—my mentors. Sitting in circle with Michel and Liliana, I experienced a kind of cellular realignment. Their presence, their stories, their science, their reverence for undisturbed birth helped clarify and confirm everything I had been feeling. It was like being handed a compass.
That experience birthed something else too: my book, The Basic Needs of a Woman in Labour, was a direct attempt to capture and share the essence of what I received from them.
Over the years, I’ve had the honour of reconnecting with them—teaching alongside Michel, attending their online courses, and most recently, sitting with them in person again in Amsterdam. But now, with Michel having just turned 95, and his public teaching naturally becoming more rare, each opportunity to sit at their feet feels even more precious.
This weekend, I’ll be supporting the upcoming Paramana Doula Course, and I’m filled with both reverence and joy. It’s open to anyone who wishes to protect and honour the physiological process of birth—from doulas to midwives to anyone called to this path.
Whether you are just beginning or coming full circle, I warmly invite you to join us.
Paramana Doula Course
With Michel Odent and Liliana Lammers
12–14 July 2025 | Online
Recordings available for all participants
True Midwifery community members receive a 10% discount.
To book: moonfeather7@gmail.com | +44 7443 656855
And as a gift to honour this return, my book The Basic Needs of a Woman in Labour will be available as a free Kindle download during the course dates (12–14 July):
https://mybook.to/basicneedsENG
With love and trust in the birth process,
Ruth
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June 24, 2025
The Basic Needs of Babies – a Time to Slow Down
In our fast-paced world, the arrival of a newborn offers an invitation to pause, reconnect, and reflect on what these smallest humans truly need from us.
Maria Montessori spoke of the spiritual embryo, a phase of human development that is as significant as the physical growth within the womb. She believed that after birth, the newborn still requires a special, nurturing environment — animated, loving, warm, and rich with nourishment — where everything is done to accommodate, and nothing to hamper their development.
This is the heart of The Basic Needs of Babies course and workshop.
Designed for parents-to-be, new parents, grandparents, educators, health professionals, midwives, doulas, and birth attendants, this online course is a space to explore how we can gently and practically meet the fundamental needs of newborns.
Whenever we gather to run this course, I am deeply moved by how it becomes a true time of deepening. Together, we slow down and become more present — for ourselves, for one another, and most importantly, for the babies arriving in our world.
Course topics include:
– Understanding the spiritual embryo and our responsibility in nurturing the newborn’s inner world
– Creating a sense of belonging and authentic connection for newborns and families
– Learning from pioneers such as Maria Montessori, Adele Costa Gnocchi, Frédérick Leboyer, Michel Odent, and Nils Bergman
– Exploring the basic needs of mothers in labour and the newborn child
– Becoming fluent in the language of newborns through behaviour and subtle cues
– The neuroscience of connection and secure attachment
This is a time to pause, to listen, and to remember what the youngest humans need to feel safe, seen, and welcomed into the world.
The Basic Needs of Babies Course runs from 30 September 2025 to 21 April 2026, with an early bird discount available until 31 July 2025.
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June 17, 2025
Returning Home with Salt in My Hair and New Seeds Planted
After a meaningful trip to Spain, I’ve just arrived home—blessed with a stretch of warm weather that gently welcomed me back. The heat of early Spanish summer is still lingering in my body, but the cooler air has helped soften the transition.
My time in Málaga was precious. The Birth First Aid course we held there was small, intimate, and deeply connecting. I felt that we weren’t just learning skills, but weaving threads of something much larger—something that may blossom into future collaborations and community roots.
Before heading home, I took my first-ever swim in the Mediterranean. As I floated in that salt-laced water, I imagined it absorbing into my skin like a protective layer of amniotic fluid from Mother Earth—a sacred cloak for the journey home.
Breech as a Variation of Normal: A Study SpiralThe first birth my mother ever attended was a breech birth. It was the experience that sparked her path as a local birthkeeper and wise woman for the women in our community.
Years later, when I was 28 weeks pregnant with my second daughter, I was told at a routine hospital check-up that she was breech—and that I would need a caesarean. I was shocked.
“What?” I exclaimed. I’d never heard of this variation of normal being met with such rigidity and invasive intervention.
With time, support, and gentle encouragement—using inversions and homeopathics—my daughter turned head-down at 36 weeks. She was born sunny-side up at the Southern Spring Equinox, a radiant and powerful entrance.
These experiences will guide our next Study Spiral on 26 June, where we’ll explore breech birth as a variation of normal. I’m honoured to be joined by wise woman Joy Horner, whose presence is sure to ground and inspire us.
Learn more or book your place here
The Self Sufficiency in Childbirth Course – Begins 3 JulyThis 4-week online course was born in response to a deep call from our community:
A longing for a space where pregnant couples can truly connect, explore, and prepare for autonomous, soulful birth.
This isn’t just another antenatal class. It’s a guided journey of self-inquiry, awareness, and connection—where your inner knowing is honoured, and your questions are held with care.
We’ll explore topics such as:
What self sufficiency in childbirth means to youAligning as a couple during this transformative timeProtecting your birth space and making empowered choicesEngaging with systems (when needed) with clarity and strengthSharing stories, learning birth basics, and weaving community
Limited to 6 couples
Live Zoom sessions on Thursdays: 3, 10, 17 & 24 July
Recordings available for a month afterwards
€240 / $250 USD / £205 / R2500 per couple
Book your place here
Questions? Write to us at truemidwife@gmail.com
After hosting two Birth First Aid workshops in Europe, I feel newly inspired by this ever-evolving offering. What I love most is how each person brings something of their own—how each session feels like a living organism, shifting and growing with every new group.
As we prepare for the next online series, I feel excitement and curiosity for who will gather this time—and what wisdom will unfold.
Thank you for being part of this ever-growing circle. Whether you’re walking beside us already, or feeling the pull to join, you’re held with warmth and reverence.
With love,
Ruth
True Midwifery
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June 9, 2025
Walking With Birth: Notes from the Road & What’s Next
For just over two weeks now, I’ve been walking a path of travel, connection, and learning—first to the Czech Republic, then to southern Spain. It’s been a journey full of beauty, remembering, and meeting birth workers who hold this work close to their hearts.
In the Czech Republic, I taught the Birth First Aid Course at Umeni Babictví (The Art of Midwifery) school. The days were full and deeply connecting, and we closed our time together with a collaborative song circle with Katcha—a soulful evening of women honouring birth through voice, presence, and warmth.
I then travelled to Da a Luz Oasis, a community and traditional midwifery school I last visited over a decade ago. It felt like coming home. I reconnected with old friends and finally met some of the beautiful souls I’ve come to know through our online circles. The nearby river’s cool waters, the sunlit days—it’s been a blessing.
Today I am travelling to Malaga, preparing for another Birth First Aid course (yes, there’s still space if you’re nearby and feeling called!). And soon I’ll return home to Cape Town, to winter’s invitation: to hibernate, be close to my family, and create from stillness.
And here’s what’s coming next…
Study Spiral: Breech Births with Joy Horner26 June 2025 | 11:00–14:00 SAST
A deep and rich learning space with UK birthkeeper and former midwife Joy Horner. Through stories and images, Joy shares decades of experience supporting breech births in a world that often says, “You can’t.” This is for anyone wanting to understand the real skill, strength, and stories behind physiological breech birth.
For Pregnant Couples | July 2025 | Thursdays via Zoom
A 4-part online course for couples who want to birth with inner clarity, shared vision, and practical wisdom. We’ll create a space of connection, courage, and care—together.
Join us from wherever you are for this beloved course on supporting birth safely and wisely.
From helping babies breathe to handling bleeding and breech births, we weave skill, story, and stillness into this global circle of learners.
Wherever you are on your journey, I hope to meet you in one of these spaces—or somewhere down the road.
With love and respect,
Ruth
True Midwifery
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May 12, 2025
The Power of the Lullaby
Written reflections for Mother’s Day — 11 May 2025
Yesterday was Mother’s Day — and with this commemoration of Mothers and Motherhood, I want to feel into the power of the lullaby: what it means for motherhood, and what it truly is.
The power of the lullaby.
There are a few threads I want to explore:
Discovering the power of the lullaby as a motherDiscovering its power in labourAnd witnessing how it settles the nervous system — not just for the baby, but for everyoneWhen I say “lullaby,” I don’t just mean Hush, Little Baby or Rock-a-bye Baby — though those songs have their place. It’s more than that.
Having had four children, I found myself — again and again — in the darkness and stillness of the night, alone with my baby. In those moments, I had to draw on an inner strength, very similar to how I had to tap into that inner strength in labour. There are times when every mother reaches that place — where it feels like you almost can’t go on, yet there you are: rocking, walking, lying with, or feeding your baby. Deep presence is called for. I believe that the essence of the lullaby was born from those moments.
It’s the rhythm, the repetition — that rocking motion, both sonic and physical — that makes a lullaby so powerful. Many are passed down through generations and across cultures. They’re usually very simple. Like the Zulu lullaby Tula Baba. Just Tula Baba, Tula Baba… over and over again. It’s not about the complexity. It’s about the transmission.
The lullaby is drawn from the place where you feel you have nothing left to give. It’s from that well that so much of motherhood is sourced. And it is a deep, incredible power to be able to tap into that.
In labour, I found something similar. Each of my births taught me something different, but in all of them, my voice became a tool. A resource. With my fourth birth, it wasn’t just a tool — it became a channel. When a surge came and I fully opened to it, a sound emerged that was high, pure, and clean. I wasn’t using my voice just to express; I was letting something move through me. It became a channelling of life force.
I’ve sung my whole life. It’s always been a way of expressing myself. But singing after birth — after having resourced myself through voice in labour and then using that same voice to connect with my children — something changed. I no longer feel like I’m singing from myself. I feel like I’m singing through myself. That I’m resourcing from the infinite.
That’s what labour teaches. What motherhood teaches. That we can only go so far within ourselves. There comes a point where we must draw from beyond — from life force, God, Great Spirit…
Now, when I sing, I don’t feel like I’m the one doing it.
My voice is the instrument, my body the tool, but what’s moving through is life itself.
That is the power of the lullaby.
The post The Power of the Lullaby appeared first on True Midwifery.
February 17, 2025
Childbirth, Eros and Sexuality
This has been a long requested Study Spiral and Debora is the perfect person to bring this offering to these sessions. She is a beautiful and tender birth attendant who truly understands what it means to guard and protect birth and she has immersed herself a myriad of teachings on intimacy, touch and sexuality. She has a deep understanding of how these worlds are intertwined and I very much look forward to what she will be sharing with us.
In this session, we’re going to explore something truly extraordinary—the deep, interconnected system that makes human life on Earth possible.
Menstruation, sexuality, orgasm, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding are all part of one grand design—a bridge between dimensions. This system connects cosmic and earthly consciousness, the divine and the animal, celestial mechanics and our physical bodies.
The reproductive-sexual system is the sacred shrine where life itself is propagated, and in this session, we’ll restore a vision that brings birth and sexuality together into a single, beautiful tapestry. We’ll uncover how the continuity of life—across all species—is intimately linked to pleasure and eros.
Join us as we honor the extraordinary system that sustains life and explore how birth and sexuality are woven together in ways that are both powerful and sacred.
About Debora
In the field of love and eros, I am an all-round activist, from the political-socio-cultural to the holistic-spiritual-shamanic perspective. I practice Yoga of Touch and facilitate circles, retreats and individual session on pleasure, intimacy, sensuality, relating, communication, emotional and bodywork.
I am a birthkeeper and doula, deeply involved in public speaking and advocating in this field. I deal with attachment parenting, spontaneous learning, non-directive education, trauma and conditioning related to the primal period and childhood, unlearning, paradigm shifts.
Death and grief doula.
Facilitator of group processes.
Passionate about deep ecology, bioregionalism, biophilia, I accompany groups and individuals in nature connection activities, wilderness awareness, outdoor education and experiential learning.
MusicArTherapist, percussionist, vocalist, performer, dance teacher. I make goddesses and vulvas from clay.
Traveller, expert in divergent lifestyles, activist.
Debora’s Social Media Links
To book for the upcoming study spiral see here
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February 10, 2025
Are you interested in joining A Journey of True Midwifery?
Are you interested in joining A Journey of True Midwifery taking place from 12 – 17 May 2025 in Southern Portugal but you have some questions or would like to just get a feel for the course, the facilitators and the content?
Ruth Ehrhardt, Samara Hawthorn and Alex Khula invite you to a free information session call this Wednesday the 12th of February
Please fill in this form to sign up for the call and we will send you the link to join the call an hour before we begin.
Thank you and looking forward to meeting you.
Much love,
Ruth, Samara and Alex
A Journey of True Midwifery
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November 7, 2024
What is it About Birth? (video reading)
What is it about birth?
It is as though time suspends itself and something unique unfolds from within the labouring woman.
She has purred, sighed, breathed, whimpered, cried her way through her contractions, these life giving pains which make her rock her hips, make her moan and groan, make her eyes roll back in her head, make her sweat, make her hate, make her angry, make her one, make her have to give in, give up, surrender.
And as she surrenders something primal is unlocked and this, this essence, this power takes over, her body is no longer her own.
She sits on the loo, or she squats, or she kneels, or she lies on her side.She grunts and moans, red slime drips down her thighs, she feels overwhelmed.
She may stand up, she may look up, she may feel with her hand as the head of the baby slowly stretches her perineum. She seems more alert now. There. Present.
She may crouch down, or breathe, or gasp, or moan, or scream as her baby’s head emerges, not quite believing the sensation of this slimy little head stretching stretching stretching her wide open.
The head emerges and hangs, almost lifeless.
The world holds its breath.
Then a splutter, or a crackle, or a bubble of spittle and a grimace. Then slowly, slowly, the baby’s head turns – as though ready to face the world and with a newfound power, the little body ejects itself, swimming forth in a gush of blood and water and shit.
Again, it is as though time has suspended itself as the baby, still aquatic in its features and colour, begins to move, sometimes throwing its arms back and stretching its back like a ballet dancer, and sometimes uncurling slowly slowly slowly as though waking from a deep sleep.
A gurgle, a crackle, a soft cry. Slippery body, oily white vernix, blinking eyes, stretching fingers and toes. Cord pulsating. Body breathing.
Mother touching. Stroking. Smelling. Kissing. Whispering. Crying. Laughing. Grateful. Astonished. Astounded. Holding. Loving. Ecstatic. Triumphant.
Perfect. Beautiful. Primal. Sublime.
What is it about birth?
This…
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October 14, 2024
Educational Expectations of The Silent Birthkeeper Course
Coming from a Montessori background I feel very aligned with the philosophy of freedom of choice and freedom of movement and this has always fed into how I hold space for birth. For me, it has always been more about creating a safe environment for birth that meets the basic needs of the labouring woman as opposed to dictating, managing, guiding or coaching. A space where the labouring woman can find HER unique way in her mothering journey. I feel similarly about the education of those attending births. I do not feel it is up to me to dictate to you what the right way for you to attend births is but to rather create a space where you can explore and learn at your own pace over a year, in a closed group, meeting regularly to share and discuss.
You can expect to immerse yourself in the following over the 12-month journey together:
⁃ What is ‘True Midwifery’? What does it look like?
⁃ A deep look at our collective and personal history as birthkeepers ⁃ Exploring and finding clarity on this path
⁃ Ceremony, dance, tradition, meditation, and song ⁃ Preparing an ideal learning environment for yourself and supporting one another
⁃ Listening skills
⁃ Self Care
⁃ Birth Stories, storytelling, and learning from birth stories
⁃ The Basic Needs of a Woman in Pregnancy, Labour, and Birth
⁃ Basic midwifery skills, terminology, and record-keeping
⁃ Antenatal/Prenatal care ⁃ If you are assisting at birth, what is your role in labour, birth, and postpartum
⁃ Immediate postpartum care of mother and baby
⁃ Introduction to care and assessment of the newborn
⁃ Breastfeeding
⁃ Cultural competency in childbirth and care of women
⁃ Sexual Abuse Triggers in Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Postpartum
⁃ Pregnancy and Birth Complications
⁃ Difficult outcomes, grief, and death
⁃ Homeopathy and herbs
⁃ Connection and support within your birthing community
BOOKINGS CLOSE 4 NOVEMBER 2024
For more information see here
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September 30, 2024
I hardly know where to begin to describe the impact of The Silent Birthkeeper course…
and the deeply safe and nourishing community that comes with it – has had on my life.
I just gave birth to my firstborn. Having had the immense blessing of having my pregnancy unfold in tandem with this course. Currently he is nuzzled up against my chest in our dimly lit birthing cave. He’s 5 days old.
I’ve felt the calling towards becoming a traditional birthkeeper ever since I was a little girl, listening to the tales of my grandmother. Of how the women of the frozen tundra gave birth, close to the fire, safely nestled inside their tents, with their sisters and grandmothers humming outside. The men out hunting, seeking an offering for a safe passage of the new soul.
Never until now though, have I actually been present in a birthing space. The arrival of my baby boy was my initiation. Both to motherhood, and to the deep deep certainty that supporting women to feel empowered, loved and safe during conception, childbearing, childbirth and beyond – is a prayer I’ll devote my life towards.
I’ve experienced first hand the impact that the teachings, love, support and wisdom offered through this course and its wonderful teachers – can have on a woman journeying towards motherhood. As well as on a birthkeeper at the very beginning of her path.
It has taught me why birthkeeping matters. The importance of self care as we aim to care for others. I has made me realise how common it is for women to birth without having the basic needs of a woman in labour met.
It has made me ask around among my own friends, sisters, mothers – and learn of their birth stories. Listening to them has made me realise even more the extent of the unspoken trauma that so many women experience during birth. Their feeling of loneliness. Of isolation.
I am so deeply grateful to Ruth, Lana, Samara and all the wonderful guest teachers coming to us from all over the world. Showing up in this deeply held container to share their stories, their work and their experience with us.
Truly it is such a gift.
The teachings I’ve received and the friends that I’ve made here,I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
– Noo, Artist, Mother and Silent Birthkeeper 2023-2024
Welcome little one!
Your magnificent Mama!For more information or to book your place on the upcoming Silent Birthkeeper one-year immersion please see here
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