(Photo by Meg Wintory)
“There is power that comes to women when they give birth. They don’t ask for it, it simply invades them. Accumulates like clouds on the horizon and passes through, carrying the child with it.”
-Sheryl Feldman
The Neonatal ICU Gets a Makeover
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-neonatal-icu-gets-a-makeover-1498443000
Hospitals are taking premature infants out of isolated incubators and into rooms where they can have close contact with their parents.
Hospitals are rethinking the way they care for premature babies.
The traditional neonatal intensive-care unit puts preterm babies—those born before 37 weeks—into incubators in a room with six to eight other infants. But hospitals are starting to realize that premature infants benefit from close physical contact with their parents.
One of the latest NICUs, in Beacon Children’s Hospital of South Bend, Ind., was designed around this idea. There, families can stay together for weeks or months in private rooms that facilitate skin-to-skin contact—also known as kangaroo care—between parent and baby.
(click to read on WSJ.com)
Group B Strep and Placenta Encapsulation Safety
https://placentaassociation.com/group-b-strep-placenta-encapsulation-safety-gbs/
The CDC released a case study on a newborn who had a recurrent GBS infection after the mother had her placenta encapsulated. It has left a lot of people asking…
Can my placenta capsules make my baby sick?
The short answer is: probably not. A well-trained placenta arts specialist will make sure that your placenta is prepared safely for consumption, unfortunately, it seems that this specialist may not have done so. The placenta and the birth should have been assessed to see if it was fit for consumption and then the placenta should have been properly prepared. A maternal or infant infection at or immediately after delivery indicates that an active infection was present. The mother should have been counseled against encapsulation initially. The second major issue, in this case, is that proper food safety protocols may not have been followed. This likely led to the capsules containing GBS bacteria and potentially causing reinfection.
(click to read the entire article on placentaassociation.com)
Evidence on Eating Dates to Start Labor
https://evidencebasedbirth.com/evidence-eating-dates-to-start-labor/
This has been a hot topic in the doula world for a while.
(Click link above to watch the video on EBB website regarding dates and labor!)
In today’s Q & A, part of our Natural Induction Series, we’re going to talk about eating the date fruit or Phoenix dactylifera to induce labor naturally. The date fruit contains a high percentage of carbohydrates and fats and also includes 15 different types of salts and minerals, proteins and vitamins, such as riboflavin, thiamine, biotin, folic acid, and ascorbic acid. Some Islamic scholars interpret verses in the Quran to mean that dates are one of the best foods to eat for childbirth. There have been three smaller randomized control trials on eating dates to induce labor and one observational study that asked women about how often they eat dates to induce labor.
In this video, you will learn:
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About the studies that have been conducted on eating date fruit to find out whether it can improve birth outcomes with:
- Cervical ripening
- The use of labor induction/augmentation with oxytocin
- Postpartum blood loss
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If eating date fruit during pregnancy is safe
The Benefits of a Mindful Pregnancy
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/well/family/the-benefits-of-a-mindful-pregnancy.html
Many expectant mothers worry about the physical pain that accompanies labor and childbirth. New research suggests that including mindfulness skills in childbirth education can help first-time mothers cope with their fear.
(click link to read this great post on NY Times website)
4 HUGE BENEFITS OF AN UNDISTURBED FIRST HOUR AFTER BIRTH
The first hours after a baby is welcomed into the world may have short- and long-term consequences. Evidence has shown that newborns who are placed skin to skin with their mothers immediately after birth have better respiratory, temperature, and glucose stability, and significantly less crying that stipulates less stress.
“Because the first hour after birth is so momentous, we have named it ‘The Sacred Hour’ at our hospital,” explains Raylene Phillips, MD.
(click link at top to read the rest of the article on collective-evolution.com)
Scientists Create Artificial Womb That Could Help Prematurely Born Babies
An illustration of a fetal lamb inside the “artificial womb” device, which mimics the conditions inside a pregnant animal.- The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Scientists have created an “artificial womb” in the hopes of someday using the device to save babies born extremely prematurely.
So far the device has only been tested on fetal lambs. A study published Tuesday involving eight animals found the device appears effective at enabling very premature fetuses to develop normally for about a month.
“We’ve been extremely successful in replacing the conditions in the womb in our lamb model,” says Alan Flake, a fetal surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
“They’ve had normal growth. They’ve had normal lung maturation. They’ve had normal brain maturation. They’ve had normal development in every way that we can measure it,” Flake says.
Flake says the group hopes to test the device on very premature human babies within three to five years.
“What we tried to do is develop a system that mimics the environment of the womb as closely as possible,” Flake says. “It’s basically an artificial womb.”
(click link at top to read on NPR.org)
Show Me Your Cochrane!
http://www.orgasmicbirth.com/cochrane/
(click link to read blog on orgasmicbirth.com)
Turning a page for Maternity Care
I am pleasantly surprised that we may be FINALLY turning a page in the her-story of medicalized maternity care. While most fields of medicine base their practices on the latest and best science, maternity care has been in the dark ages, leaving a huge gap between what science knows and what we practice. This gap puts MotherBabies at risk, creates birth trauma and ultimately has added to the growing FEAR of childbirth that many expectant parents and even some providers feel.
(click link to keep reading…)
