"It's Beyond Water": Stories of Women’s Experience of Using Water for Labour and Birth

<p><b>This study looks at stories of women’s experience of using water for labour and birth and has explored them to reveal the meaning women make of the experience.</b></p> <p>Randomised controlled trials report that there are no statistically significant differences in the outcomes for women who use water when compared to those who do not. It has also established that there are no adverse effects on the mother and baby. However, most of the research to date largely ignores what women have to say about the use of water for labour and birth. This study employed an interpretive design using audio-taped conversations with women as the method of data collection, and a thematic analysis of the stories, to identify the meaning women make of their experiences. The research is informed by a feminist perspective, which honours the women’s voices and knowledge.</p> <p>The women's stories reveal that the all-encompassing warmth associated with being enveloped in warm water cradles, supports, relaxes, comforts, soothes, shelters and protects the woman, creates a barrier and offers her a sense of privacy. Water can be used in any form, even the act of thinking about, preparing for and anticipating the water opens possibilities for women. Women use water to reduce their fear of pain and of childbirth itself. Women use water to cope with pain, not necessarily to remove or diminish pain and to maintain control over the process of birth. It is not necessary to actually give birth in the water to achieve these benefits.</p> <p>Recommendations for midwifery practice include the need for midwives to reflect on their role as guardians of normal birth by examining their personal philosophy of birth, critically examining their outcomes and honouring women's knowledge.</p>

"It's Beyond Water": Stories of Women’s Experience of Using Water for Labour and Birth

<p><b>This study looks at stories of women’s experience of using water for labour and birth and has explored them to reveal the meaning women make of the experience.</b></p> <p>Randomised controlled trials report that there are no statistically significant differences in the outcomes for women who use water when compared to those who do not. It has also established that there are no adverse effects on the mother and baby. However, most of the research to date largely ignores what women have to say about the use of water for labour and birth. This study employed an interpretive design using audio-taped conversations with women as the method of data collection, and a thematic analysis of the stories, to identify the meaning women make of their experiences. The research is informed by a feminist perspective, which honours the women’s voices and knowledge.</p> <p>The women's stories reveal that the all-encompassing warmth associated with being enveloped in warm water cradles, supports, relaxes, comforts, soothes, shelters and protects the woman, creates a barrier and offers her a sense of privacy. Water can be used in any form, even the act of thinking about, preparing for and anticipating the water opens possibilities for women. Women use water to reduce their fear of pain and of childbirth itself. Women use water to cope with pain, not necessarily to remove or diminish pain and to maintain control over the process of birth. It is not necessary to actually give birth in the water to achieve these benefits.</p> <p>Recommendations for midwifery practice include the need for midwives to reflect on their role as guardians of normal birth by examining their personal philosophy of birth, critically examining their outcomes and honouring women's knowledge.</p>

“Heart and Soul of a Prosecutor”: The Impact of Prosecutor Role Orientation on Charging Decisions

In most research, prosecutors are depicted monolithically as “interchangeable parts” rather than as individuals with varied perspectives. Yet, the prosecution is becoming increasingly diverse, a shift that is likely accompanied by different approaches to prosecution. Drawing upon the concepts of role orientation and job crafting, we identify three primary orientations to the job of a prosecutor, that of the Enforcer, the Reformer, and the Advocate. Whereas Enforcers view their job as merely to apply the law, Reformers focus on rehabilitation of the defendant, and Advocates are instead concerned with retribution for victims. These three interpretations of prosecutors’ responsibilities translate into different approaches to charging. Furthermore, when there is a disconnect between a prosecutor’s personal philosophy and that of their office more generally, prosecutors develop covert ways of exercising their priorities.

‘O Plato! Plato!’: Don Juan versus the Philosophers

Critics who take Byron seriously as a thinker tend to locate his personal philosophy within the history of scepticism. In Cantos I and II of Don Juan, Byronic doubting takes the form of a critique of idealism, with a particular focus on Plato. This essay argues that Byron’s scepticism has philosophical implications beyond the critique of Platonism, that it works also to undermine the major idealist movement of his day - German absolute idealism. Byron’s embodied ethic is evident both in the narrator’s comments and within the narrative of Juan’s affair with Haidée. The form this critique of idealism takes anticipates Nietzsche’s ‘revaluation of values’ as well as Derrida’s deconstruction in that it isolates a traditionally hierarchised pair of oppositions and revalues the hierarchy.

The Human Being in The Philosophical Thought

The human being is the basis of philosophy, and this concept has crystallized mainly in most philosophical currents. Therefore, we see that these trends fall into one subject, which is (man), and every philosophy of these philosophies and currents or philosophical trends tries to set a concept for the human being of its own, and therefore we see a clear difference in Interpretations of these conflicting philosophical currents among themselves, which consider the human being and problems are the core of the topics of their thinking and with this research which is (the human being in the philosophical thought), so we see that Jaroudi's cognitive, philosophical and cultural system is poured into one topic, which is the human being, and this is what we found when talking about the concept of the human in Marxist thought, which was embodied in the principle of freedom, equality and respect for the other, then moving to the concept of man in existential philosophy, with its atheistic and believing parts, and its characterization of the human being because it is considered the fundamental difficulty in existential philosophy, and after that, Jarudi moved to the study of man to the personal philosophy of Jean Lacroix and Monet, which emphasizes the individual's responsibility and emphasis On a position on nature and history, and finally he studied man in structural philosophy. We see that the research began with a general introduction in which the human being is its main focus, and many researchers attribute their writing on the subject of man and humanity to Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi and Ibn Miskawayh, as two of the flags of humanism in the Islamic civilization, and how these successive currents have looked at the human being and have been interested in all aspects of man Not only what he is aware of and what he thinks about or what he intends, because there are things in him that always go beyond awareness, thought and intent, and we see from the important results at the beginning of the conversation the consequences of studying a person from the deep crisis that he lived with all his conscience due to his presence in a concerned world, a world from which there is no way out. Likewise, Arkoun stems from the necessity of re-regard for philology as an indispensable approach in establishing the scientific approach to texts as a primary entry point for dropping sacredness from it and thus liberating the Islamic mind from the mythical thought that was associated with it with the Islamic vision of the phenomenon of revelation. On the other hand, existential philosophy emphasized the ability of man to conquer reality, transcend it and give it a special meaning.

“Nothing is any longer one thing”:

Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando challenges the very validity of socially constructed ideologies by allowing its titular character to transcend not only the boundaries of physical sex, but also those of time and space. Thus, through the character of Orlando, Woolf explores the farcical nature of ideology by affording them a four-dimensional experience of their own life that exposes their own true nature at the same time as it establishes their connection to capital-N-Nature. Through a close reading of Orlando, interspersed with secondary scholarship and framed with reference to three of Woolf's other works—To the Lighthouse, A Room of One's Own, and Three Guineas, this essay situates Orlando's four-dimensional phenomena within Woolf's larger personal philosophy as it is articulated across her body of work.