The Birth Survey

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Aha Moment?

I just saw this commercial on TV. Having never dealt with infertility I don’t have personal experience to draw from. My sense is that giving someone struggling with infertility a baby gift wouldn’t be inspiring, it would be upsetting. What do you think?

Things You Shouldn’t Say to a Pregnant Woman

I saw this post today by Melissa, she was talking about things she doesn’t like to hear from women who are planning a natural childbirth. She really hit the nail on the head with her description of college graduation:

“Would you tell someone that you?re going to ?try? to graduate from high school or that you ARE going to graduate in four years? It?s going to take a lot of time and hard work, but you ARE going to graduate in four years, there is no doubt. What if someone actually asked you, ?Oh, are you going to try to graduate?? You?d be furious because it implies that you are likely to fail.”

I really like this analogy.? I often try to convey this to women both in class, clients and just people I meet.? My simple statement of “Have a little faith…” hopefully makes the difference sometimes. So remember, stand up with your fellow sisters and give them support!

Baby Sleep Issues

My daughter just hit six months (I can’t believe it!) but we’re starting to have some real sleep issues. How to get naps in/when/where etc.? I’ve heard great things about Elizabeth Pantley’s books and am excited to read her newest book??The No-Cry Nap Solution: Guaranteed?Gentle Ways?to Solve All Your Naptime Problems.” Click the link to learn more about the book or if you have a review or suggestion (crying it out isn’t compatible with our parenting philosophy) post a comment!

Groove Your Bump

This reminds me of the breastfeeding campaign in the US a few years ago… Your thoughts?

Who’s Catching Your Baby?

A student doctor recently blogged about home birth. The post was full of the common misconceptions about home birth and she asked for clarification from anyone who had ever attended a home birth. She got some thoughtful comments, including a personal invitation from Elizabeth Allemann, M.D. to visit the birth center and some home births and was very gracious and appreciative of all of the feedback.

Several of her commenters mentioned ?evidence-based medicine,? and she replied with the following:

I would have to disagree with your statement that no one has taught about evidence based medicine much less evidence based OB. On the contrary I consider evidence based medicine daily. However I also consider the standards put forth by authorities like the American College of Gynecologists to be important. I realize an appeal to authority is a logical fallacy but as aforementioned by deviating from practice guidelines I put myself at risk for litigation. Right or wrong I am made to follow those guidelines. I obviously wasn’t taught about “physiological birth” because generally that does not involve a doctor. Why would a doctor be taught a process that they are actively excluded from? Think about it.

You cannot expect to condemn medical standards & cut doctors out of the care of a patient then expect them to know what’s going on.

So I did ?think about it.? And I?m a little bit confused. Physiological birth is an expression used to describe birth with no unnecessary intervention. In Pushed, Jennifer Block interviews Vancouver physician Andrew Kotaska, who states, ?An unmedicated birth in an environment where a woman feels comfortable, where she?s adequately supported, where she has a degree of privacy that allows her brain and her uterus to do the dance that we understand very poorly called labor, is physiological birth.?

Doctors should still be learning how a normal birth unfolds in the absence of medication, regardless of whether they are ?actively excluded? from it. What really sat with me, besides seeing the seeds of the ?I must obey or I will be sued? mindset and the repeated mentioning of pelvic inadequacy was that this student doctor attended her tenth birth ever recently. The attending didn?t show up on time and she flew solo with just one nurse at her side. It was her tenth birth ever and she was alone.

Granted, it was an error that she was alone, but if hospitals are being billed as the gold standard of safety and there isn?t even another physician nearby to back her up, something is amiss. My midwife, a home birth midwife, has attended almost 900 births. The midwife at the birth center where I gave birth has attended more than 3,000. Their care is generally regarded as unsafe but anyone walking into a hospital in labor assumes that they are getting the very best.

So who is catching your baby? Do you know?

Take Your VBACtivism to HuffPo

Pamela Paul, the author of the Time Magazine article, posted her own VBAC story at the Huffington Post yesterday. Nielsen Online lists The Huffington Post as the 18th most popular news site.

See you in the Comments section!

Salma Hayek Breastfeeds Another Woman’s Baby

There has recently been much talk about Salma Hayek breastfeeding an African baby whose mother had stopped producing milk.? Here is an article in Time Magazine about the incident (scroll down to see the video).

I have heard that some are critizing her choice to breastfeed this child.? However, from what I have seen, the press has been quite positive about what she did.? On the daytime show The View, this was discussed during their “hot topics” segment.? The women of the View were mostly positive, saying that Salma Hayek did the natural thing.? Whoopi Goldberg surprised me by being the most liberal in her views.? Her attitude is generally not very nurturing when the topic of children comes up. ? First she was appalled that the producers of her show blurred out the portion of the video that showed part of Salma Hayek’s breast as she nursed the baby.? Whoopi said that this was not a sexual picture, it was a picture of breastfeeding and should not be blurred out.? She went on to say that women in our own country should help each other out in this way.? She said whoever has the milk should share it when needed.? Her co-hosts drew the line at cross nursing in our own country, but agreed that what Salma Hayek did was a wonderful thing, and that any of them would have done the same.

I also saw this discussed recently on the Oprah Winfrey show.? On this show she had a panel of four people.? There was Oprah, her friend Gayle King, George Stephanopoulos’ wife Ali Wentworth, and Kelly Ripa’s husband Mark Consuelos.? They were all sitting at a table discussing recent news events.? When this topic came up, the three people on the panel besides Oprah all rushed in to say that what Salma did was a wonderful and natural thing.? Gayle King stated that when one is breastfeeding the breasts get hard and full of milk, and Mark Consuelos added that when a baby cries the milk lets down.? It was implied that it was only natural to feed the baby.? Ali Wentworth stated that there has been wet nurses throughout the ages, and that this was nothing weird or strange or abnormal.? She said that breasts are for nurishing children, not for sexual pleasure.? Mark Consuelos quickly jumped in at this point and said he believed that they were “multi-functional”.? It was a great exchange and all three of them were very supportive of what Salma Hayek did.? Oprah stayed silent on the matter, claiming she wasn’t knowledgeable enough on the topic to speak on it.

I was very happy to see these two very popular daytime shows jumping to Salma Hayek’s defense for breastfeeding this child.? I noticed how many of the people, both on Oprah and on The View spoke of the biological process of breastfeeding and implied that one is compelled to feed a crying and starving child when they have milk readily available.? Though I am aware that not all sentiments about the incident were this positive, I am very happy to have seen a mostly positive response myself in all the media I have consumed since this happened.? Perhaps this will help change the way people view breastfeeding, and the “multi-functional” purpose of the breast.

What have your seen in the media about Salma Hayek breastfeeding this child?? What are your opinions on breastfeeding another mother’s child?? Click on “leave a comment” on the left to voice your opinion.

TIME on VBAC

If you haven’t checked out TIME Magazine’s article on VBAC, you should. Whie there are a lot of emotions that fly around the whole subject of vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC), it’s important that women are allowed to make that decision for themselves.? While some women with a subsequent pregnancy might choose a repeat cesarean, there are also many women who readily will choose to have a VBAC.? The problem is that women are being denied VBACs.? They don’t even have a say in the matter.? That is wrong.? And it’s not even based on scientific evidence.? It’s based on fear. If a woman was denied the choice about pain medication in labor we’d certainly be hearing about it. ? So be sure you tell your practitioners, your hospitals, your community how you feel about women being allowed to make decisions for themselves.
Related:

• What to do if you’re denied a VBAC chance.
• ICAN’s 2009 Survey of VBAC Bans