Green Parenting for Non-toxic, Healthy Homes
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What does supermodel Gisele Bundchen and yours truly have in common? We are both gorgeous chose to give birth to our babies in water. Studies and personal experiences have clearly shown that water births ease labor pain for mothers and offer a gentle transition to newborns.
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Having a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) could help you have an empowering birth experience. No, they won’t make your birth beautiful. But most CPMs believe in the ability of women’s bodies instead of the medicalization of childbirth.
That’s why you should join The Big Push. This consortium of birth activists and midwives is fighting for a voice in the health care debate. From the press release,
All women deserve access to midwives no matter what their economic status, and adding Certified Professional Midwives to the Medicaid Providers list will help expand access to those who otherwise could not afford it.
A key member of Congress has said that 10,000 signatures for their petition would make a big difference. We’re about halfway there. Read on to find out the particulars of the campaign and pass it on! [read the full article...]
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For women of Afghanistan, pregnancy and delivery are dangerous. The war torn country has the “world’s second-highest death rate in women during pregnancy and childbirth”, second only to another war torn country Sierra Leone. The medical journal Lancet reports that 78% of these maternal deaths could be avoided. The New York Times reports:
For every 100,000 births, 1,600 mothers die; in wealthy countries the rates range from 1 to 12. In one remote northeastern province, Badakhshan, 6,507 mothers die for every 100,000 births, according to a 2005 report in the medical journal Lancet. In all, 26,000 Afghan women a year die while pregnant or giving birth. The main causes of these deaths are hemorrhage and obstructed labor, which can be fatal if a woman cannot obtain a Caesarean section. Even if the mother survives, obstructed labor without a Caesarean usually kills the baby.
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An otherwise healthy young woman entered a hospital to give birth. She contracted bacterial meningitis, was transferred to another hospital, and died.
While many people around the blogosphere has been pointing to the death of homebirth advocate Janet Frazer’s baby with a gigantic, “See?…See?!” (followed by a “Na-na-na-na-boo-bo!”), this, too can be an example of how even hospitals can–gasp!–royally screw things up.
Actually, 2 moms were infected in the maternity ward at Ohio’s Mary Rutan Hospital. Now, both the hospital and the CDC are baffled by the cases:
Babies were healthy, moms were healthy.
Well, the moms were healthy when they arrived. Not so much after giving birth.
[social_buttons] [read the full article...]
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The C-section is now the most common procedure performed in the United States. A third of American children are born through the belly instead of vaginally. Every year for the last decade, the States has set a new record for the number of C-sections.
Now that I have your attention, there is an increasing gap between the traditional Western medical community and that of midwife-delivered, woman-based care. A couple of recent articles, in Time and in the LA Times, explore this gap.
Here we are, discussing health care reform, and at the top of that discussion should be the way we bring babies into this world. One Oregonian midwife, Melissa Cheyney, has begun to examine the differences in care.
The U.S. has a limited idea of what it means to have a positive outcome at the end of a delivery. Basically it just means that everyone’s alive.
You’ve heard it, and I know I’ve said it, “You got the prize in the end!” Sure, you have the baby, but did you receive the care that was appropriate to your circumstances? [read the full article...]
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There has been a bit of controversy about unassisted childbirth after Janet Fraser, the birth activist who coined the term “birth rape“, gave birth to a baby girl who died. Afterward, the was a lot of finger-pointing, some support and sorrow.
In my traversing this natural parenting bloggy world, I’ve been lucky enough to encounter a handful of amazing, brave women who have had incredible unassisted birth experiences.
I thought I’d share one with you. Introducing Sheryl, who writes at A Much Better Way, the bloggy site for her store. After enduring a bad, bad experience with a “medwife“, she chose an unassisted birth for her second daughter. She was kind enough to enlighten me (and you, too, I hope!).
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/iZy_wcZBkgw&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]
This great video has been circulating around the birth-activist regions of the blogosphere recently, since it first aired a few days ago. It’s a television commercial for a bed, and the characters in the commercial are no actors. It’s actual scenes from an actual family, giving birth at home while a peaceful soundtrack plays, and voiceovers talk about the miracle, the specialness, the joy of birth, and the tradition of birthing at home.
There is no fretting about whether or not home birth is safe. There is no screaming and panicking. There is a secure and confident woman with her family by her side, bringing her baby into the world in front of our very eyes.
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Those crazy Europeans. They think that–gaffaw–home birthing is safe! Haven’t they heard about home birth activist Janet Fraser and her very personal tragedy? You know the story: an unassisted childbirth ended with her baby’s death, for reasons that have not yet been determined. And now some are calling for her head, while others are criticizing at home births in general (though not the same as freebirthing).
A large-scale study in the Netherlands has found no difference in death rates of either mothers or babies in 530,000 births. Whether you give birth in the hospital or in the comforts of your own home, the stats are the same.
Remind me again how home birthing is a crime?
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