NCT fundraising tea parties are happening across the UK in June. Here Paola Davis explains how she became involved

As a first time, and quite uncertain, mother-to-be, I attended NCT antenatal classes with my husband. My husband thought I should attend the Early Days course too and I signed up for a course that started four weeks after our daughter Lucia was born.

It was the best thing I could have done as I felt really out of my depth, I hadn’t fully bonded and, while putting a brave face on it, I was beginning to wonder what I had done. To go to these classes and say what I was actually feeling and find out I was normal was such a relief and I started to relax and enjoy the gift that my daughter truly was.

A friend then let me know that that NCT Bristol were recruiting numerous roles to grow the branch. One of the roles was as an event coordinator, and as I am an event manager by trade I offered my services to help them out because NCT had helped me.

My first job was to organise a Cheeky Monkey Tea Party for about 500 people, with the vision of it being held at Bristol Zoo, to coincide with their 175^th Anniversary. This was slightly daunting as I hadn’t worked for a charity before, not to mention that I had been out of the work place for nearly a year!

We were offered a generous donation from a local business so that we could reduce the ticket price. The zoo helped us find a date to hold the party and also provided a treasure hunt as well as all the facilities we would need free of charge. They were very flexible and helped us out in every way they could, even though they themselves are a charity as well. The entry to the party also gave full day access to the zoo so we encouraged people to bring along picnics and stay all day.

The objective of the party was to reach as many people as possible who wouldn’t ordinarily be in contact with the NCT or be able to afford the zoo, to give them a day out while at the same time raising the profile of the services and support NCT can provide. So we contacted Children’s Centres in north Bristol and the response was overwhelming. One Children’s Centre even organised minibuses to bring families down for the day and organised their own picnic.

It was hard work setting up all the activities and packing the goody bags, especially in 90 minutes with a very heavy downpour to contend with! But then the sun came out and it turned into a lot of fun for us as well as the families. Seeing everyone having a great time really made all the hard work worth it.

Paola Davis lives in Bristol with her husband Rich, their two-year-old daughter Lucia and baby number two on the way at the end of June (shortly after this year’s party!) Paola has volunteered for her local NCT branch for just over a year as their Event Co-ordinator. Apart from organising their Cheeky Monkey Tea Parties, she also liaises with traders for their regular NCT Nearly New Sales.

To find your nearest local NCT Cheeky Monkeys Tea Party, visit http://www.nct.org.uk/branches

The 2012 Bristol NCT Cheeky Monkeys tea party is taking place on Thursday 21 June at Bristol Zoo.

Lucy Pearce reviews The Oxytocin Factor by Kerstin Uvnäs Moberg. Dr Moberg will be speaking at the Light on Parenting Conference in London in May

What if the key to creating a harmonious world were hidden in our hormones? What if peace and love were chemically coded into our bodies?

According to Kerstin Uvnäs Moberg they are – in the form of the “love hormone”, oxytocin. Oxytocin, which takes its name from the Greek words meaning ‘quick’ and ‘childbirth’, was discovered exactly a century ago. However, until very recently only its mechanical role in birth and breastfeeding were understood.

Early on in her book The Oxytocin Factor: Tapping the Hormone of Calm, Love and Healing, Moberg tells us why this is: “The neglect of this system [oxytocin] tells us much about the values that underlie scientific research. The calm and connection system is certainly as important for survival as the system for defense and exertion, and it is equally as complex. Nevertheless, the stress system is explored much more frequently.”

The reason that we know so little, comparatively speaking, about this hormone, which is essential for natural birth, breastfeeding, bonding, sexual love, is that our culture values these so little. It is more interested in adrenaline rushes, and the primal fight-or-flight, dog-eat-dog approach to life, than in the values (and therefore the biochemistry) of peace and love.

Moberg’s transition to motherhood created a “systematic change in my behavior and way of thinking” – an experience I am sure many parents reading this can attest to. “In pregnancy, nursing, and close contact with my children, I experienced a state diametrically opposed to the stress I was familiar with in connection with life’s other challenges. I was aware that the psycho-physiological conditions associated with pregnancy and nursing fostered something entirely different from challenge, competition, and performance. Inspired more than two decades ago to explore this life experience scientifically, I learned that there is a key biological marker – oxytocin – on the trail to a physiological explanation of this state of calm and connection.”

Before I read this book it had never really occurred to me that motherhood had wrought in me a permanent biochemical reconfiguration: that the prolonged exposure to peak oxytocin levels through pregnancy, natural birth, breastfeeding and attachment parenting had chemically rewired me – and my children!

In Moberg’s view, and that of Michel Odent in his two most recent books, the impact of our modern culture being driven by adrenaline from birth onwards, rather than by oxytocin as it has been for most of human history, has profound implications. However, these are completely reversible once we understand, and learn to value, the oxytocin system. What previously was natural, and taken for granted, now needs to be chosen and engaged with. We are a culture that currently runs on adrenaline, which – like sugar and oil, our other fuels – is an unsustainable power source. It gives an initial high, but no long-term wellbeing, and it ultimately leads to burnout.

“Instead of tapping the internal ‘power drink,’ our bodies offer a ready-made healing nectar. Under its influence, we see the world and our fellow humans in a positive light; we grow, we heal.”

Beautifully written, and completely accessible for a lay audience, The Oxytocin Factor focuses on the science behind cultivating peace and love in our and our children’s lives, providing us with the scientific understanding to make informed choices for our physical wellbeing, in tune with our own biological, hormonal systems.

Parts one to three explain what oxytocin is, describing it as “the body’s own system for calm and connection”, and how it functions in the brain and nervous system, including its key role in birth and breastfeeding. Part four focuses on its role in touch, sexuality and relationships, and part five on ways we seek calmness, which move far beyond the sphere of birth into all aspects of life, including why we smoke and drink and the role of meditation and other ways humans learn to induce their bodies to produce oxytocin for that feel-good rush.

The book provides a steady stream of aha moments, as things that you may have experienced physically or emotionally but had no rational explanation for become clear to you. It seems extraordinary that we are not taught about oxytocin in school, that our doctors do not share it with us if we present with depression, and that no mention is made of it in standard antenatal visits.

For me oxytocin has become the missing link, the nameless common denominator in pretty much all that matters to me. For us to be natural parents, creating deep bonds with our children and partners, committed to natural birth and breastfeeding, we need to understand the role of oxytocin and cultivate its production in our life choices. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to be your guide along the biological path to peace and love.

Lucy Pearce is contributing editor of JUNO.

Kerstin Uvnäs Moberg is a Swedish professor with over 400 scientific papers to her name and is an acknowledged world expert on oxytocin. She will be speaking alongside Michel Odent, Naomi Aldort, Naomi Stadlen, Margot Sunderland and many other luminaries at the Light on Parenting conference, which takes place in London on 5 and 6 May 2012. Suzanne Arms will be chairing the discussion panel at the conference on Sunday. For more details visit www.lightonparenting.com.

The Oxytocin Factor: Tapping the Hormone of Calm, Love and Healing by Kerstin Uvnäs Moberg with foreword by Michel Odent, Pinter & Martin