Fascinating!
Women struggling in labour should be given bicarbonate of soda to boost their chances of a safe and natural birth, a study suggests.
British researchers say the commonly available chemical, given in drink form, rectifies acidity around the womb and could significantly reduce the number of women forced to undergo emergency caesarean sections.
(click link to read about this new study)
https://www.motherrisingbirth.com/2017/11/prodromal-labor-101.html
Despite prodromal labor not being mentioned in the most common pregnancy books, you’ll still hear it frequently being discussed among friends, with care providers and in online communities. Because of this discrepancy, it makes sense that there is confusion and frustration surrounding the topic. In this post I hope to define prodromal labor, but more importantly offer onlutions and encouragement if you find yourself experiencing this frustrating phenomenon.
The reason why prodromal labor is not mentioned in pregnancy books is because it is more commonly known as pre-labor or even misnamed as false labor. It seems as if our birthing culture uses these three terms interchangeably – prodromal labor, pre-labor and false labor. This is so confusing! If this has confused me, I bet I’m not the only one wondering what’s going on.
(click link above to read on MotherRisingBirth.com, an amazing resource…)
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fearing-childbirth-may-prolong-labor/
Dr. Stuart Fischbein chuckled when he read the title of the press release: “Women with a fear of childbirth endure a longer labor.”
The release was promoting a study published this week in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Researchers at Akershus University Hospital in Norway found women who feared giving birth were in labor for 1 hour and 32 minutes longer, on average, than those who had no fear.
“I’m glad there’s now evidence to say that,” Fischbein said, “but it’s obvious.”
For those of us who aren’t OB/GYNs, it may seem more like a cruel joke. Women who are afraid of the pain and the possible medical complications associated with giving birth have to suffer through it longer?
(click link at top to read article on cnn.com)
(click link above to read the entire post on huffingtonpost.com)
Giving birth has nothing to do with pushing. It has nothing to do with contractions. It has nothing to do with pain.
Giving birth has everything to do with giving.
In this final sacrosanct act of pregnancy, all is set aside as the mother does whatever it takes to give her baby life. In every birth it requires different sacrifices. But the beauty of it, every time, is that the mother was willing to do it.
Pushing does not make a mother.
(click link above to see some amazing photos of ALL types of labors and births…)
Oh, my heart…
No matter how a baby’s birth unfolds ― whether it’s a first-time mom having a C-section, or a third-time mother fighting through a labor that lasts two full days ― childbirth is hard and it is messy.
But in between all the, well, laboring are moments of love. Love between partners, love between families and doctors, doulas and midwives, an)d that very special love when parents and babies lock eyes for the very first time.
Here, talented birth photographers share photos they’ve captured that celebrate those moments of pure joy and connection in childbirth.
Photo by Capturing Joy Birth Services:
If you look at scientific literature, you find over and over again that many interventions increase risk to mother and child instead of decreasing it.
When I ask my medical students to describe their image of a woman who elects to birth with a midwife rather than with an obstetrician, they generally describe a woman who wears long cotton skirts, braids her hair, eats only organic vegan food, does yoga, and maybe drives a VW microbus. What they don’t envision is the omnivorous, pants-wearing science geek standing before them.
Indeed, they become downright confused when I go on to explain that there was really only one reason why my mate — an academic internist — and I decided to ditch our obstetrician and move to a midwife: Our midwife could be trusted to be scientific, whereas our obstetrician could not.
(click link at the top to read the rest of the article on TheAtlantic.com)
http://www.consumerreports.org/doctors-hospitals/childbirth-what-to-reject-when-youre-expecting/
Despite a healthcare system that outspends those in the rest of the world, infants and mothers fare worse in the U.S. than in many other industrialized nations. Infants in this country are more than twice as likely to die before their first birthday as those in Japan and Finland. And America now ranks behind 59 other countries in preventing mothers from dying during childbirth and is one of only eight countries in the world, along with Afghanistan and El Salvador, whose maternal mortality rate is rising.
Why? Partly because mothers in the U.S. tend to be less healthy than in the past, “which contributes to a higher-risk pregnancy,” says Diane Ashton, M.D., deputy medical director of the March of Dimes.
But another key reason may be that medical expediency appears to be taking a priority over the best outcomes. The U.S. healthcare system has developed into a labor-and-delivery machine, often operating according to its own timetable rather than the less predictable schedule of mothers and babies. Keeping things chugging along are technological interventions that can be lifesaving in some situations but also interfere with healthy, natural processes and increase risk when used inappropriately.
(click link at the top to read on Consumerreports.org)
