You are currently browsing the archives for May, 2009.
Before the Rally
I’d like to thank all of the folks who gave of their precious Saturday morning to come out to the rally today! If the Lehigh Valley Hospital security car showing up around noon was any indication, we did draw a bit of attention. 
Are you as upset as I am about the shrinking choices being offered to laboring women in the Lehigh Valley?
Then please join me for a peaceful rally this coming Saturday, May 30. Continue Reading…
A friend expecting her second baby this coming October recently lamented to me in an e-mail:
…most of the women who go to OBs do not know - or at least believe popular misconceptions - about what midwives do. Every woman would want midwifery care for herself and baby if they knew what it truly was…. All the women I know who used midwives were women who wanted individualized care and somebody to be there to support them through their whole birth experience. Somebody who knew them and who they trusted; rather than a practice where you rotate through providers and get whoever is on call. Some had natural births, some with epidurals, etc. but the most important aspect was that relationship and better care. (Jennifer Harper)
A Pioneer Midwife in Pennsylvania
As a childbirth educator and a doula, and most importantly as a mom of 5 children, I couldn’t help but Continue Reading…
When I was growing up in the early 80’s I could see 3 home swimming pools from my back yard–not a one of them were fenced. Two of them I swam in regularly. Now, in my development of approximately 200 houses I can count on one hand the number of swimming pools. I blame fences for the decreasing number of pools to be found in the back yards of young families. To be fair…there is a requirement in my development that all pools be “in ground,” which does make them too expensive for many families–but even in neighboring communities where above ground pools are not taboo, there is a scarcity of pools compared to my childhood memories.
Why do I blame fences? Because even if they are installed by the homeowner, they are hardly an “easy” solution since they can be prohibitively expensive to a working class family—costing many times more than the pool itself. Especially since many localities require fences for ANY pool, even a 12″ deep kiddie pool. How exactly does anyone over about 18 months old drown in a 12″ pool? I would think that even the smallest toddler is going to be able to stand up after falling into that amount of water.
The logic behind installing fences is Continue Reading…
Recently 3 major news organizations have had articles about birth related issues: The LA Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Time magazine. All of these articles have merit, but also have some short comings, which I’d like to address.
LA Times
The LA Times article, Childbirth: Can the US Improve?, I thought was over all very good. I liked that it featured a mom who not only had to look around to find a Dr. willing to support her VBAC, but that she successfully birthed a reasonably large baby (8 lbs 11 oz) vaginally. I thought it dealt with the risks of cesarean and interventions very well, such as the increased risk of “ICU” admissions (that should be “NICU) for babies with planned births–that is, planned inductions or planned cesareans. They pointed out that when some hospitals institute rules banning “planned” deliveries prior to 39 weeks that are not medically indicated, NICU admissions dropped by 46%. Amazing. Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“We’re going in the wrong direction,” said Dr. Roger A. Rosenblatt, a University of Washington professor of family medicine who has written about what he calls Continue Reading…
Childbirth Connection has issued a press release this week that I think is worthy of posting, in its entirety, on my blog. So here it is:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Kat Song – 212 777 5000 ext. 8
May 18, 2009 katsong@childbirthconnection.org
MATERNITY CARE, A MAJOR SEGMENT OF HEALTH INDUSTRY, MUST BE OVERHAULED FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM TO SUCCEED
New York NY – As competing interests work out the particulars of health care reform, a leading national advocate for families and the women who give birth to over 4.3 million babies each year reminds the nation that rapid gains in the quality, value and cost of maternity care are achievable.
“It’s crystal clear: Let’s start providing maternity care that is proven to be the best,” said Maureen Corry, Executive Director of Childbirth Connection, a not-for-profit advocating evidence-based maternity care (www.childbirthconnection.org). “Then, women and babies will get higher quality care with better results, and the savings from following best practices can be put toward providing health care to all.“
Maternity care is a major segment of health care:
What I would like to have is the year of the birth, the first name and last initial of the mother (this is so that I can make sure I’m not counting the same birth more than once), what baby this was for the mother, whether the primary care provider was a midwife or OB, and whether the birth was cesarean or vaginal. So that would look like this:
2007 Donna B first OB cesarean
2007 Jan H first midwife vaginal
2008 Renee C first OB vaginal
2009 Lynn D. second OB vaginal
Thank you!
May 21: An update on the stats so far….I have data now on 52 births.
Overall cesarean rate: 36.5%
Midwife cesarean rate: 16.0%
OB cesarean rate: 55.6%
Half of this data is from midwife attended births…but The Midwives attended less than 3% of births at LVH in 2008…so you can expect that LVH’s cesarean rate is much closer to the OB cesarean rate than the “overall” rate. I will note that I suspect that there might be a bias in the OB data in that women who have a cesarean birth for their first baby and then were seeing The Midwives for a planned VBAC might be highly represented in the data set…yet another reason for me to want data on a LOT of births.
After a “false start” with setting up a *group* for Knitted in the Womb, I realized that a “page” was really the correct choice…so now I’ve got one! Please visit and become a fan!
There is a discussion board on the page, so please feel free to start discussions there.
A page from our wedding album with our program, pastor
11 years ago today…I wore a dress that was about 20 layers thick on a day that was 98 degrees. Seriously…98 degrees. I couldn’t use a restroom for about 6 hours straight because it was wet from the previous 3 straight weeks of rain, and aforementioned white dress would have gotten ruined dragging in the water. I watched 4 waiters attempt to deliver beverages to 130 people seated under a tent with not a bit of wind–just 4 because the new owner of the facility had forgotten to account for college letting out resulting in most of his wait-staff quitting–those 4 waiters, who had been hired from a temp agency that week–ended up being blurs in the photos.
And that was one of the best days of my life…because that day I married my husband. We’ve had better and worse, been through richer and poorer (we’ve each been laid off multiple times in our 11 years), sickness and health (hubby had mono one year…and then shingles 2 years later…yeah, he can’t decide whether he’s a college student or a nursing home resident). And every year that passes, I know more and more how blessed I am.
My husband tirelessly gives me backrubs when I’m pregnant (and I’ve been pregnant a lot, right?). He trys to understand my logic. He prays with and for me, and is humble enough to admit when he is wrong and ask for my forgiveness. And just the other day, when I was saying “I really need some chocolate!” his face lit up in a smile, and he said “you haven’t found the bag I’ve been hiding, have you?” and pulled a bag of my favorite chocolates (Dove dark chocolate) out of a cabinet. He was “saving it for a rainy day,” and that day was indeed rainy! I’m tearing up now just thinking of that gesture.
So I wish me a Happy Anniversary! And I hope your day is filled with happiness too.
Over at the Independent Childbirth site, “Birth Wisdom Week” is being celebrated. I was supposed to write a post as part of this, but I’ve been a bit tied up planning some activism related to the situation with The Midwives, so I apologize profusely about how late this post is!
As a childbirth educator and doula, I have to admit, one of my greatest frustrations is that many women don’t even really seem to be bothered by the rising cesarean rate in America. If I thought that it was that the women didn’t care if they had a vaginal vs. cesarean birth, I’d be able to accept that. But I really don’t think that is the case Continue Reading…