Your baby has just been born. Would you let someone draw their blood and remove 30% of their blood volume? It would be senseless and highly dangerous and to remove a third of the baby's blood from their body before they were born, but doing this immediately after birth has become the norm.
March 5, 2011
Imagine a woman in labor at the hospital. How she is moving? Where is she in the room? What is she doing? Probably you see a woman lying down in the bed, wearing a hospital gown, hooked up to various monitors, straps and tubes. In some high-risk situations these things may truly be helpful for… [Read more…]
August 31, 2010
Last month we saw the pre-release of a homebirth meta-analysis piece that claimed worse outcomes for babies born at home than in the hospital. I wrote about it and the ensuing Lancet insult to women’s rights here. Decades of well-conducted research does in fact support the safety of planned homebirth for women and babies, although… [Read more…]
August 19, 2010
I’ve held off commenting on the now notorious, and as of yet unpublished, Wax homebirth meta-analysis and the ensuing hullabaloo because I had wanted to keep negative birth politics to a minimum here on my blog. Then, the viscerally disturbing Lancet editorial came out a few weeks ago and WHOA. We’re starting to see some… [Read more…]
July 26, 2010
Since recreating my website last month I have found myself stumbling around online, way too late at night, checking out birth blogs and advocacy sites, and loving all this birth change energy! I notice the recurring theme of feeling “safe” in birth. Folks in the birth change movement — midwives, doulas, CBEs, advocates — often… [Read more…]
June 30, 2010
There’s been a lot of talk lately about physicians responding to their ‘patients’ birth plans by providing a copy of their own written birth plans of what they will or will not do, allow, accommodate, or condone during a woman’s labor and birth. The Feminist Breeder and Stand and Deliver have written recently about the… [Read more…]
June 10, 2010
I recently attended a planned hospital birth of a client who transferred out of my care shortly before her birth. We transferred her care to our small, local, natural birth-friendly hospital. A gracious family practice physician took over her care. Two of my client’s main hopes for her birth were delayed cord clamping (of at… [Read more…]
June 10, 2010
from Birth Activist…. The United States remains near the bottom of the rankings. Among European nations, in the graph below, the seventeen countries above the US have better (lower) infant mortality rates. CDC Releases New Report Comparing U.S. and European Infant Mortality Rates
June 10, 2010
An OB candidly shares her remarkable journey though three inductions, two cesareans, two vacuum assisted births, and one unplanned VBAC. Now a VBAC advocate, she shared her story on her blog: My Surprise VBAC “Needless to say, like most OB residents, my experience with normal, low-risk physiological birth was minimal……..Reflecting back over my journey, I… [Read more…]
May 30, 2011
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