Evidence Based Care

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How to Advocate for Yourself in the Delivery Room

https://parenting.nytimes.com/pregnancy/birth-advocate

Giving birth draws you deep into your body, yet you’ll depend on others to get through it. Whether you have a brief labor eased by an epidural, deliver on all fours in your own living room or have an unplanned C-section, what matters most is how you are cared for and if you are listened to by your providers. The best way to advocate for yourself in the delivery room is to begin the process well before your swollen feet ever step into the space itself.

It is possible to get compassionate, respectful care from many kinds of providers — midwives, obstetricians, family physicians and nurses — and in settings including hospitals, birth centers and your home. But, according to a recent international survey, up to one third of women experience some trauma during birth, which means that at some point during labor, they felt that their emotional well-being or even their — or their babies’ — lives were under threat. And according to the latest Listening to Mothers report, one in four American women who underwent either labor induction or a C-section reported experiencing pressure from a health professional to do so.

(Click to read this great piece by Angela Garbes on nytimes.com)

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Why doctors are so bad at predicting pregnancy due dates

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/9/17435322/pregnancy-due-date-test-premature-birth

Only 4 percent of women give birth on their estimated delivery date. That’s because of the natural variation in how long it takes a baby to grow and because of our limited ability to predict due dates.

Medicine, it turns out, is surprisingly bad at measuring the precise age of a fetus or how far along a woman is into her pregnancy.

Having concrete information about a baby’s “gestational age” wouldn’t just help moms plan their pregnancies. It would also help doctors better determine whether a fetus is developing as it should, and what extra care may be needed for safer births. Doctors also have no way of accurately predicting whether a baby might arrive too early — a leading cause of infant death globally.

(Click link at top to read on vox.com)

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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:

  • 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

  • If eating date fruit during pregnancy is safe

 

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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…)