Archive for Home Birth
New Study on Home Birth is Skewed
All of my birth-obsessed friends on Facebook have been buzzing about a recent home birth study published by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG). Everyone, including the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS), is outraged that the publishers of the study “accepted a poorly designed and methodologically unsound study in which authors concluded there is a 3-fold increase in neonatal mortality in planned home births compared with planned hospital birth.” You can read CIMS’s full response to the study on their website. [...]
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Prenatal Pilates and Birth Education
I have been reminded, once again, how lucky we are here in Spokane to have so many passionate, smart, skilled and caring people working to educate and empower the women in our community! I recently met Elizabeth Jones, a local Pilates instructor and physical rehabilitation specialist who has focused much of her career on working with pregnant women. As we began talking, something Elizabeth said captured my attention. “Society has lost interconnectedness with families and with birth.” I was drawn to this statement because it encapsulates the core reason that so many of us (midwives, doulas, educators, etc.) do what we do. We are trying to reconnect women and families to the importance of birth in our lives. Elizabeth Jones does this by providing women a way to stay in good physical health while preparing their bodies and minds for birth. [...]
The Bradley Method: Up Close & Personal
Even though I’ve had two children myself, until this past week I had never attended a Bradley Method class. I title this post “Up Close & Personal” because I don’t think there’s another pregnancy or birth preparation class out there that provides such complete information on the physical and mental aspects of natural birth…and it doesn’t leave out one juicy detail. The idea is that with such intense preparation, couples will be prepared to achieve a natural birth and/or make knowledgeable decisions about medical interventions should they become necessary. [...]
Oprah.com Reports on Alternative Birth Options
I am always beyond excited to see a non-sensationalist article about natural birth appearing on any mainstream website, television program or other media outlet. Though natural birth at home has been the norm throughout history, in recent times it has become a radical, outsider and even legally-banned practice in the U.S. That’s why I’m giving Oprah.com a gold star for raising awareness about the subject and letting American families know that they have other options besides hospital birth attended by obstetricians!
A recent article appearing on Oprah.com, by Fritz Lenneman, begins “With Caesarean section surgeries occurring in nearly one in three pregnancies and traditional hospital births by obstetricians costing an average of $8,000 to $10,000, some pregnant women are exploring other options. And the future of childbirth in America might start looking more like the past.” He then describes the roles of midwives and doulas in the birth process and talks about the legal challenges faced by some home-birth midwives. “Though about half of states allow at-home birth, it remains uncommon in the United States—just 1 percent of births occur in nonhospital settings including home births and birthing centers.” He also discusses alternative methods for inducing labor such as acupuncture, acupressure, walking, eating spicy foods and sex. Yes SEX! [...]
Pediatric House Calls
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Brenda Stoudt, a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (PNP) who makes house calls in the greater Spokane area. Having given birth to her own children at home, she understands the needs of home-birth families who wish to remain at home after the birth of their babies rather than running to a doctors office for newborn checkups. As well, she is a lactation counselor who works with moms and babies to ensure successful breastfeeding is established.
Beyond the newborn phase, Brenda provides preventative care and makes sick calls for children of all ages within the comfort of your home. What’s best…these house calls are not any more expensive than the average visit to a doctors office and can be covered by your health insurance. [...]
Introduction to Pregnancy Class
If you are thinking about trying to conceive or are newly pregnant, you might be interested in a new introduction to pregnancy class being offered in the Spokane/Coeur d’Alene area. Starting Your Birth Journey will help you make sense of the overwhelming amount of information you’ll encounter as an expectant parent and think through critical decisions you’ll have to make regarding your health and that of your new baby. Which books should you read? Where will you give birth? Breast or bottle? You can see there are a lot of things to consider that you have likely not given much thought to up until now. [...]
Taking Back Our Right to Birth
In a recent article on Huffington Post titled, “A Woman’s Nation: Reclaim Your Right To Birth Right,” Christiane Northrup, M.D. encourages women (who now make up half the work force!) to use that power to influence the future of health care in America, beginning with labor and birth. She argues that the media’s portrayal of birth as a medical emergency and the actual medicalization of birth has done us more harm than good. She makes great arguments, loaded with fascinating and unbelievable statistics that should be making headlines. [...]
VBAC Support and Info
I have been asked a couple of times now if Bloom has information about VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean), and I realized that it doesn’t. Well, at least not much. I LOVE emails requesting new information because this lets me know what women in our community need. I may not be an expert on the subject—never having had a c-section myself—but that’s not reason enough to stop me from writing a post all about VBAC. Keep the requests coming and I’ll do my best to bring you the best information and resources out there!
As always, my aim is to provide Bloom readers with the most recent, solidly-researched educational information that I can find. I hope this list is helpful to you. If you know of other websites or local providers who support VBAC and want to share your resources with us, I encourage you to leave a comment below. We are a community of women and families who must help each other by sharing the wisdom garnered by our own experiences of childbirth!
Prevent Cesarean Surgery is a short inspirational and educational video, using real quotes spoken by women who have had both a cesarean and vaginal birth. It was the winner of the Birth Matters Virginia video contest.
Beautiful Natural Birth Video
This touching video shows a gentle water birth at home attended by a midwife. With the help of her husband and a doula, this mom calmly brings her baby into the world. It definitely brought a few tears to my eyes as I remembered the wonderful feeling of having my own son.
Hooray for Washington & Idaho
It wasn’t until recently that I realized how lucky we are to live here in the Inland Northwest. Did you know that Washington and Idaho are helping pave the way toward national regulation and licensure of midwives by legally authorizing Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) to practice in our states? Idaho passed this legislation just a few months ago in April of 2009. Visit the Idahoans for Midwives website to read about the journey to victory in that state. There are still 24 states in America where CPMs are not legally authorized to practice, including much of the Midwest and the South. Many of those states are currently working to change their laws, mostly through the efforts of grassroots advocacy groups. [...]
