robin@birthactivist.com's blog

All a twitter...

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:50:44 -0500

Now you can follow Birth Activist on Twitter. Come on, you know you want to...

March of Dimes Interview for Prematurity Awareness Month

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:45:28 -0500

Dr. Laura Riley answers some important questions on prematurity and birth interventions for the March of Dimes and Birth Activist.

International Baby Wearing Week (Activist Alert)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:42:32 -0500

As the mother of many, I've found baby wearing. Unfortunately it wasn't until baby number two. But once I found it I never went back. It was so much easier to carry my children, not to mention it was nice to be close to the and have my hands free. I talk to a lot of moms about how to carry their babies so that they can enjoy the benefits of baby wearing.

I was thrilled to see that November 12-18 is the inaugural Baby Wearing Week. It will hopefully help spread the word about baby wearing and the benefits to moms and babies. I actually have some pretty hilarious photos of me wearing the twins in two slings!

So whether you're a fan of a sling, a mei tai, moby wrap or baby bjorn, join together and send a note to Motrin. For this week, they've decided to post an ad that is very anti-baby wearing. You can check out the ad for yourself. You can also contact them to offer your opinion.

Looking for a Few Good Birth Activists

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:14:45 -0400

Birth Activist is looking for a few good bloggers who would like to join us in volunteering to help change birth for women and their families through activism. The requirements:

That you're passionate about this topic.
That you provide 2-4 posts a month, topics your choice.

To apply, please send a sample blog post about birth or parenting and a bit about why you'd like to be a Birth Activist Blogger to: robin at birthactivist spot com

Consumer Reports on Childbirth

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 10:11:11 -0400

Consumer Reports felt the need to weigh in on the debate of high tech birth. Their conclusion? Too much technology is a bad thing. While this is all well and good, the problem is getting women and their families to accept it.
We all know that much about pregnancy is purely emotional. Hormonal even. And often when I am pregnant, my thoughts and decisions feel very irrational, even if they are the appropriate thing to do. This is hard to overcome.

The bottom line is that women fear childbirth. They view pregnancy as a dangerous time. And the answer to that fear, that danger, is technology. So until we change the fear, I worry that reports like this will fall on deaf ears...

Lamaze Offers Birth Network Grants

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:09:42 -0400

Application Deadline: 5:00 p.m. (EST), Friday, October 17, 2008

The Lamaze Institute for Normal Birth was launched to support
initiatives that provide credible, relevant and useful information about normal birth to birth professionals and the public. A key initiative of the Lamaze Institute for Normal Birth is to support the development of grassroots, community-based Birth Networks. Since 2003,
the Lamaze Institute for Normal Birth has given numerous mini-grants to birth networks throughout the United States.

The Goals of the Birth Network Mini-Grant Initiative
The Birth Network Mini-Grant Initiative is designed to support the development or expansion of community-based networks that bring the public and birth professionals together to:

promote the Six Care Practices that Support Normal Birth and the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative (MFCI)
improve the quality of maternity care locally
provide information and resources to expectant women and their families so that they can make informed choices about maternity care.

The Lamaze Institute for Normal Birth offers up to ten $500 to $1,000 grants annually to support established or emerging community-based Birth Networks in North America

http://www.lamaze.org/Default.aspx?tabid=529

End of Pregnancy Zen

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:24:12 -0400

I'm sitting here, nearly 41 weeks pregnant with my 8th baby. I'm getting asked a lot about how I feel, what my practitioners are thinking about when the baby will decide to be born, what I'm doing to encourage things along, etc. I know that this type of discussion typically further frustrates most women who are overdue, but I try to take it in stride.

First of all, I realize that I have a pattern. I don't have babies before my due date, not even my twins. My longest pregnancy was born at 42 weeks exactly. If you throw out the twins and the two pregnancies where I feel like we had interventions that may have brought the babies early, I have a 9 day, 12 day and 14 day pregnancy. (Hey there has to be some statistical benefit to having all these kids when it comes to defining my personal due date.) So feel like this weekend is the most likely the time my baby will decide to be born.

But my goal is to be calm. Zen. Not in a rush. Why no rush, I'm asked? I mean seriously, right now people care about me and how I feel, after the baby, not so much so. Once the baby is here, I'll still be up at night, but the difference is that I won't be able to go back to sleep when I return from the bathroom. While I know that the end of pregnancy is rough, but early postpartum is rougher.

So I'll sit here, patiently waiting. Enjoying my last few days of pregnancy. I'll nap and snack. I'll take baths in middle of the day. And I'll continue to dream about the day my baby decides it's birth day...

If you want to hear the good news, you can sign up for the Twitter Feed announcing Baby Ocho's birth.

Semantics?

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:37:18 -0400

Okay, so when my oldest was a baby, she was sick one day. She didn't want to wake up for long and preferred to sleep. Being unable to talk to me, I had no clue what was wrong and she had a slight fever. So I called the pediatrician.

They asked me what was wrong and I said that she had a fever and was "lethargic." "Bring her right in!" they told me. And I did, but only to get chewed out by the pediatrician that this was NOT an emergency. I was a bit stunned. I didn't think it was an emergency, I didn't act like it was an emergency, his staff did. Apparently, my use of the word lethargic was not up to their standards. It was a bad case of a lay person (me), misusing medical terminology. I've never forgotten that day.

Flash forward to today. One of my pet peeves is the misuse of the words "emergency cesarean." It sounds scary and frightening - as it should. But it's often way over used.

In my mind the definition of an emergency cesarean is a scenario that gets the baby out in relatively few minutes (as in under 30, if not fewer), potentially using general anesthesia, maybe even a classical incision.

However, most people seem to use the term emergency cesarean interchangeably with "unscheduled cesarean." This means that during the course of labor or perhaps even at a prenatal visit, it was determined that the baby was better out than in or wasn't coming out via the vagina and surgery was a must.

Sometimes this takes place within an hour or two, depending on schedules, but more often than not it can be multiple hours. So during labor, let's say that you have a failed vacuum extraction attempt. Now the next step would be a c-section. This doesn't make it an emergency, just unscheduled and run out of options. You might wait if the OR is full or wait for anesthesia or even a second surgeon.

I don't think people are trying to dramatize their births, but it certainly is less scary to say that someone had an unscheduled cesarean in labor than an emergency cesarean.

Is Natural Childbirth Dead?

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:45:19 -0400

I'll admit that this is a quesion, I've been asking for years. I mean, if natural childbirth isn't dead then where did it go? I hear from women in my classes and practice all the time, that despite having the medical science behind them, they find that they have to fight hard, too hard, to have a birth that is even semi-intervention free.
I heard a nurse the other day ask on another forum, why did women come to the hospital if they didn't want the interventions offered, like the monitors, epidurals and cesareans. But let's really look at this... If a mom says she doesn't want this and the hospital tells her to stay home to have her baby - can she actually get adequate care by a trained attendant? The answer is no, not even if she wanted, which all women do not want.
Why can't a woman want to go to the hospital to have her baby, a place where she may feel the safest and yet not be given the chance to pick and choose which interventions she wants or doesn't want? I mean, isn't that the basis of consumerism, in absence of medical problems?
So in keeping with this line of thought, I really enjoyed Jennifer Jordan's blog post on women fighting to get back to a natural birth. Think of everything you've read about here at Birth Activist - the people attacking home births, those who want to force you to have procedures you don't want, women who aren't "allowed" to choose a vaginal birth... if a woman has a right to select a medical intervention without medical need, why can't a woman who doesn't have that medical need be free to make the opposite choice? Read and respond to comments at Jennifer's post to see the views of many women.

Breastfeeding Advocate in Trouble

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:08:19 -0400

Apparently the got milk campaign people are after a mom who made ten hand lettered onesies with the words "got breastmilk?" In their statement they said that people milk confuse the two milk products... REALLY? Anyway, the call has been put out by the Lactivist for people to contact them:

Go ahead and get in touch with the California Milk Processor Board.

Jeff Manning is the Executive Director. The board's phone number is (949)481-6620. Their fax number is (949)481-6680.

Manning's email address is manning@gotmilk.com.

As with the last time, here's my request. Spread the word. Pass it on. Let's let the California Milk Processor Board know that we're all fully aware of the difference between jugs containing breast milk and jugs containing cow's milk.

Responsibility & Empowerment

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:06:40 -0400

I've had several conversations over the last few days about the notion of responsibility for birth. The conclusion I've come to is that until women are willing to take responsibility for their actions regarding birth choices - they won't get the empowerment.

So let's say you have a particularly awesome birth. You had nearly every one of the desires met from your birth plan and you were in charge of the decisions. (Notice this does not say how or with whom you gave birth - but it was your choice.) You feel the empowerment because you took the responsibility.

But so many times women abdicate this responsibility by handing over the decision making ability to their care provider or make decisions that lead to a place they don't want to be and rather than accept the responsibility for that decision - they blame someone else. That person can be their practitioner, their husband/partner, their doula, the labor nurse... the list goes on.

For example, a woman says "The doctor saved my baby!" Great! I mean that's why we pay doctors and midwives - to be the life guards of birth. But a question that is often asked is - Why do we hear this statement so much? Are babies really needing to be "saved" that often?

The problem is two fold.

1) Women aren't as often standing up and making choices for themselves as well as making choices and then not accepting the responsibility for the outcome.

2) We have care provider who set up situations where they go from life guard to life saver. (Think of the arsonist who starts a fire only to rush in and save everyone and become the hero...)

The system is broken in many ways. This is but one angle. But it really points out the need for careful selection of your practitioner as well as the mental and emotional energy to delve into the decisions that you need to make as a parent wholeheartedly.

Will Tori Spelling Have a VBAC?

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:56:08 -0400

Tori Spelling of Beverly Hills 90210 fame is expecting her second baby. Her first child was born after her water broke and an induction that failed by cesarean section. Tori had been outspoken about taking Lamaze classes and wanting a vaginal birth.

After Liam was born she was initially very happy and said nothing negative about her birth. But as the weeks and months followed she admitted to being disappointed that she wasn't able to have a vaginal birth. She never said she was upset about the cesarean or felt like it was a bad thing, but merely that she was sorry to have not had a vaginal birth - two very different thoughts.

When she got pregnant this time, with a daughter due any day, I really thought that she was someone who had a great chance of having a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC). Now the rumors are flying that she's in surgery, probably as I'm typing this, to give birth to her daughter. If that's true I wonder why. She's been healthy, looked great and been active. She had a non-repeating factor for her cesarean. So my guess is that if she's having a repeat cesarean, it's her doctor. One quote she made about him immediately after Liam's birth stuck in my head:

"I asked Dr. Rothbart if he'd do a good job, and he said, 'Well, Angelina didn't complain.' So I was like if Angelina let him do a C-section in Africa, I am ok. I felt comforted by that."

Yikes. She talked about the pain of recovery and how hard it made life. Tori discussed her difficulties with breastfeeding, which, while she never connected it to the c-section, studies show us it was the most likely culprit. I wonder if she's thought about how hard that will be with two babies? But she was seen getting a pedicure yesterday and her hair done last week. I just pray she's only nesting and not pre-surgical nesting.

Building Confidence in Pregnancy

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:25:19 -0400

Confidence is a real issue in pregnancy. We do so much to destroy the confidence of other women, mostly unknowingly. This doesn't negate the damage done. However there are some glimmers of hope!

Lamaze International has just launched it's new Building Confidence Week by Week free email newsletters. They actually span from week 6 to week 42 of pregnancy, just like my pregnancy calendar does, so you know I'm partial to it! This is one piece of pregnancy mail I bet you'll look forward to every week and it's something that doulas, childbirth educators (of all walks), midwives and doctors can all feel confident about sending their client to read.

Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS) has a new look!

Mon, 26 May 2008 07:40:44 -0400

Okay you guys know that I moonlight as a geek most days of the week, a birth geek, but a geek nonetheless. So when I found out that CIMS was about to reveal their newest website, I was thrilled. They have such an important message about helping mothers and babies have the safest birth possible - something we all want - that it was thrilling to hear that soon it would be very easily accessible for most people. So without further delay, check it out:

Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS)
http://motherfriendly.org

What good maternity care looks like...

Tue, 13 May 2008 18:22:46 -0400

I think most people would agree that we've got some problems with our maternity care in the United States. The cesarean and other intervention rates are skyrocketing and yet women are reporting that they aren't happy with their care. All the while some babies are suffering from our maternity care system when they shouldn't have to do so...

So thanks to Citizens for Midwifery (CfM) for putting together a really cool handout called Three Models of Care it includes the Midwives Model of Care, The CIMS Ten Steps and the Lamaze Normal Birth Care Practices. Wow, it's just cool. This is a great tool for childbirth educators, doulas, doctors, midwives, everyone who has a chance to interact with pregnant women and their families! Download your free copy today!