Childbirth In the News

An Article by Ina May Gaskin brings to the forefront the issue that many of us take with the media's spin (and medical claims) regarding the reasons for some decisions in healthcare.

Hospital's Bullying of Pregnant Women Outrageous talks about the audacity of a St. John's hospital midwifery program cut being in the name of 'safety'.

Says Gaskin,

"There is no evidence that newborns or mothers at St. John’s were put at any increased risk because of midwifery care. Hospital CEO T. Michael Murray knew this, I suspect, or he would have presented some with his cowardly statement that rescinded the midwives’ privileges"

Natural Birth? Nope C-Section Rates on Rise talks about the 1 in 3 odds of a woman ending in the OR during her labor in Oregon.

“All women, when they get to the end of their pregnancies, want to be done,” Echeverio says. “Naturally, when a doctor says to them, ‘Let’s get this baby moving,’ they trust their doctor to know what’s good for their babies and what’s good for them. What they don’t know is it’s not good for them, and it’s not good for their baby.”

This particular article has me nodding on many levels - it is nothing that we didn't know already, but it glaringly and forthrightly talks about the disconjointed implications of a doctor and patient both looking to the end of a pregnancy and the outcome that that impatience brings.

This wonderful Chicago-based article gives great coverage to VBACs and the safety of them.

"Michelle Williams is three months pregnant and determined to experience childbirth the way nature intended. But because her previous baby was delivered through an incision in her abdomen and uterus — a cesarean section — she has to travel more than an hour from her home in Channahon, Ill., to find an obstetrician willing to let her try for a vaginal birth.

One out of every three pregnant women now has a C-section, the most common surgical procedure in the U.S. The skyrocketing C-section rate has been hotly debated in birthing and medical communities, yet little attention has been paid to one of the consequences: Once a woman has a C-section, she often has to fight to deliver subsequent babies the old-fashioned way, if a hospital or obstetrician allows her to try it at all.

Successful VBACs result in better health outcomes for the mother and the baby and cost several thousand dollars less than cesarean deliveries, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or ACOG. The organization recommends that VBACs be offered in low-risk cases."

As a prior Chicago-based doula, I would love to see this article have a positive impact on the community as, in my limited experience while there, more women had a 'once cesarean, always a cesarean' mentality than other women in other places that I have lived and served.

There were actually a TON of news stories this week in the Childbirth field, including the ongoing fight to let imprisoned women birth unshackled, guidelines for diagnosing gestational diabetes getting more stringent (more women will be diagnosed with GD because of this study), and illegal's being refused L&D coverage/admission in hospitals.

But, I will leave that all for my blogging peers to cover, or have fun surfing yourself.