Wait! Don’t Wash That Newborn!

Posted by Jennifer Azzariti

Do you ever watch a television show where a baby is born and laugh as they hand the new mom a clean, approximately 8-week old baby? Most people are well-aware that babies are born with a slimy mucus-like covering on them. For years, I just assumed it was from being inside the mom’s uterus—leftover amniotic fluid or something that surrounded the baby while in the uterus. Well, it has a name—vernix. And by definition, it’s “a white cheeselike protective material that covers the skin of a fetus.” But, what is it, and why do babies have it?

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5 Ways to Get Through a Long Labor

By Robin Elise Weiss, LCCE, About.com Guide

While the average length of a first labor is typically 12-18 hours, not including inductions, there are labors that last longer. Some labors last longer because of physical issues, the baby moving into a better position, mom’s body opening. Other labors are longer because of emotional issues like fear of your surroundings or of becoming a parent, or that your husband won’t make it on time. These can be very real things. For the women who have to deal with lengthy labors, it sounds like it’s a lot of pain. Though having had six labors of my own, I’ve had a wide variety of times: (in order) 36 hours, 45 hours, 8 hours, 11 hours, 4 hours, 2-3 hours, and 45 hours. The easiest labor was actually my 45 hour labor. The reason? Because I managed my labor well. And I’ve also seen it happen many other times in my time as a doula. So here are tips on making the most of a longer labor.

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Is a Painful Childbirth all in Your Head?

This is a question that is massively poignant to me, and isn't one that I ask lightly. Seasoned medical professionals and women who have experienced painful births are no doubt baring their teeth. Whilst I don't wish to trample on their experience, I am due to give birth in six weeks and I'm hoping that the title to this piece may be truer than we are currently able to anticipate.

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A Home for Births

By opening a freestanding birth center, perinatologist Steve Calvin is determined to make maternity care more satisfying for women and cost effective.
By Kim Kiser

Standing on a sidewalk on Chicago Avenue in south Minneapolis, Steve Calvin, M.D., is at the intersection of high-tech and high-touch health care. Behind him is the 100-year-old Victorian home he bought two years ago and turned into a freestanding birth center—a place where women can deliver their babies in much the same tradition as their great grandmothers. Across the street, a crane is busy at work on construction of the Mother-Baby Center on the campus of Children’s and Abbott Northwestern hospitals—a place where women will have access to some of the most sophisticated maternal and neonatal services in the Twin Cities.

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As January Jones admits to eating her own placenta, experts reveal the health benefits (and the cooking instructions)

By Victoria Wellman
January Jones has certainly been mysterious about the paternity of her son, but one thing she hasn't been shy to admit is how she ate her own placenta following his birth.

Eating the placenta however, is not an uncommon practice these days, and has become something of a trend among new mothers interested in the much talked about health benefits.

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"Pregnant and I Know It" MUSIC VIDEO (Parody of "Sexy and I Know It")

It's a Baby, Not a Gallon Of Milk

If your baby’s date has come and gone fear not! Your baby is just not ready yet. If you find your self in this place, now is a good time to:

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The Most Scientific Birth Is Often the Least Technological Birth

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.

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Apologies To The Parents I Judged Four Years Ago

By Kara Gebhart Uhl from The Huffington Post

To the Parents I Knew Four Years Ago: I'm Sorry

I have come to realize many things since having three children. For example, I now know that I can read "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" seven times in a row without going insane. No matter what people say, throw-up is throw-up and I don't care if it is my daughter who is throwing up but her throw-up makes me want to throw up. I am a really fast diaper changer. And it's true: love does not split, but grows with additional children.

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Set Up a Birth Altar For Focus and Guidance During Labor

When prepping for birth, there are so many medical and physical factors to consider – but your emotional state is also something that is incredibly important. Along with learning deep breathing, and methods such as Hypnobithing to help you through labor, there are things you can put together to help give you focus as well. One of those things is a ‘birth altar.’

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Warning Signs to Look for in Your Care Provider

Written by Muscat Midwife

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift” - Albert Einstein

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Emergency C-Sections, Incubators, & Hospital Protocol: Men Experience Birth Trauma, Too

by Birth Without Fear on August 28, 2011

Birth trauma is very real and probably much more frequent than women in our society realize. But birth trauma is not exclusive to the moms and babies. We dads experience birth trauma, too, but in a very different, very mentally draining way.

Postpartum Depression for Men?

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Retreat at The Farm

Are you tired of witnessing women being violated during birth and feeling powerless to stop the train wreck happening before your eyes? Do you wonder how there can possibly be such a giant gap between what medical research recommends and the standard procedures in hospitals? Do you wonder how the United States can spend more money than other countries on maternity care and have worse outcomes? Or how it is possible, in a time of technical advances and improvements in our health, that maternal mortality in the U.S. can be on the rise? Are you ready to stop being a bystander and work for change?

Let’s stop talking about how bad things are and do something. Let’s come together, gather our allies, learn from the people who have improved maternity care in their communities and lay the groundwork for a full-scale birth revolution! Join the national grassroots movement to change maternity care.

Where’s My Midwife? invites you to spend a weekend at the Farm in Tennessee, plotting and scheming, coming up with activities that can be carried out in any community at any time for little to no money. These activities will raise public awareness about our broken maternity care system, and draw attention to the methods that are producing better results for mothers and babies. We need to put public pressure on the people, organizations and businesses in positions of power and hold them accountable for improving outcomes.

If you are ready to take the next step, join us June 22nd through the 24th at our first annual Birth Activists Retreat. For more information, e-mail us at info@wheresmymidwife.org.

And remember, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Childbirth: A Different Way to Remove the Placenta May Save Mothers’ Lives, a Study Finds

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: March 12, 2012

Delivery without pulling on the umbilical cord may be a simpler way to keep some women from bleeding to death in childbirth, a new study has found.

In Africa and Asia, postpartum hemorrhage kills a third of the women who die in childbirth, and health agencies constantly struggle to refine midwife training to prevent those deaths. (Above, a maternity ward in Sudan.)

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The mean-girl advice of What To Expect When You’re Expecting.

I loved this article! I hope you enjoy it too!

By Allison Benedikt|Posted Saturday, March 3, 2012

If you ask a pregnant woman about pregnancy books, she will generally respond with some hand-waving variation of: "Oh, I don't read the books. They just make you crazy!" But contrary to our carefully cultivated pregnancy personas, expectant moms devour pregnancy advice. Late into the night. Down into the wormhole. And, with more than 17 million copies in print worldwide, plus untold millions being passed between sisters and friends, What To Expect When You're Expecting is still the mother of them all.

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How to Trust Your Body in Birth.

By Helene Rose from www.elephantjournal.com
Do you trust your body to birth your baby?

Knowing our bodies is key to trusting our bodies. When we fully know and trust ourselves, we are free to tap into our power center and can birth as nature intended—free from artificial stimulation and augmentation, free from narcotics and analgesics. Our inner strength guides us as we birth and we know how!

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Husbands and Home Birth: A Call for Women to Educate Men

by Kathleen Quiring on February 29, 2012

I recently read a thoughtful, thorough article comparing the different options of birth settings available to mothers: home, birthing center, and hospital.

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Can Fetus Sense Mother's Psychological State? Study Suggests Yes

ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2011) — As a fetus grows, it's constantly getting messages from its mother. It's not just hearing her heartbeat and whatever music she might play to her belly; it also gets chemical signals through the placenta. A new study, which will be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this includes signals about the mother's mental state. If the mother is depressed, that affects how the baby develops after it's born.

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Fetal Lungs Protein Release Triggers Labor to Begin

We've long known that a mammal's lungs are the last organ to develop inutero before it is baby's time to exit. Disrupting this normal process (and initiating/inducing labor to start before a baby triggers labor on his/her own) frequently causes a cascade of complications - from difficulty in latch, poor breathing, increased infection, decreased immunity, under development, failure to thrive, and an increase in SIDS.

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Worth The Wait: Curbing The Practice Of Deliveries Before 39 Weeks

Waiting. In our daily lives, we greet it with frustration, and even irritation. But when it comes to childbirth, the time we spend waiting can affect whether a child is born healthy, or not, and sets a baby on a path toward lifelong health.

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