The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has published a new consumer brochure on labor induction that is neither well written nor clearly informs women of the risks of medical induction.

Check out this thorough critique of the new publication by Debby Amis of The Family Way Publications.

Check out this great, midwife-friendly homebirth article on WBUR.org–it’s a quick read, and very nicely done. Apparently it’s the companion piece to today’s Radio Boston piece on midwifery in MA.

–Christina

Check out Radio Boston tomorow for their segment on the state of midwifery in Massachusetts!

From their website:

Really, why aren’t there more babywearing videos? I don’t mean instructional videos about how to do a Secured High Back Carry with a woven wrap, or how to nurse in a mei tai, or things like that; no, I mean this–the new-this-week, in-an-Interweb-near-you, babywearing video sensation. Put a sling on ‘em, mamas!

–Christina

PS–watch this with your babies! Mine, at least, loved it. Plus it’s a vast improvement on the original song.

In case any of you have not seen it, check out this news segment with Katherine Abelson, midwife, Elan McAllister, doula and president/ founder of Choices in Childbirth, & Debra Pascali-Bonaro, filmmaker of Orgasmic Birth talking with Laura Flanders.
The group discuss childbirth choices and why the US  has such poor infant and maternal mortality rates despite the billions of dollars we spend on healthcare.

So, I was just looking back at pictures from last year, marvelling at how much my baby has grown. I came across this picture, with my then-three-month-old son and my Aunt Mary, and I was struck by the fact that Marcus and my aunt are home birth buddies: Aunt Mary, my mother’s older sister and the second child of my Sicilian-immigrant grandparents, was the last person in my family born at home until I had my homebirth last year. 

Of course, when Aunt Mary was born, in 1925 in the family’s railroad flat in Manhattan, there was almost certainly not a lot of angst over the decision to give birth at home. I heard the story from her older sister, a then-three-year-old girl to whom (clearly) nothing was explained. Aunt Grace recalled neighboring women rushing into the apartment, running in and then out with blood-stained sheets, and not stopping to talk to her. She remembered her father holding her tightly in the hallway of the apartment building, not letting her go back into the apartment, while she heard her mother moaning and vocalizing inside and just wanted to run to her mother.

By the time the next child was born, it was 1930, and the family had enough money that there was indeed a choice about where to give birth–home or hospital. My grandparents chose the hospital, in the new modern way, and my Uncle Sal was born. My grandmother was given Twilight Sleep for that birth, which must have been a drastically different experience than the community-centered, midwife-attended births of her two older daughters. In fact, my grandmother insisted until she died that she gave birth to twins that day in the hospital, but that the second child was born dead and the doctors took it away without showing her or telling her and her husband. She insisted that although she was drugged, she saw it hazily, and according to my mother and her sisters, she was absolutely convinced of this. Who knows, really, what happened? She could have been hallucinating because of the drugs, but it’s also not beyond the realm of probability that a paternalistic doctor might have decided it was better for this immigrant woman not to know.

It’s funny thinking about the birth stories of the generation above ours–I like thinking about how I came full-circle in 83 years, giving birth on my bed with a midwife, and an old black-and-white photo of my grandmother hanging on the bedroom wall.

–Christina

I realize that I’m pregnant and that I get emotionally overwhelmed by lots of very silly things these days, but I have a feeling this story about a community who stepped in to take turns nursing a newborn who lost his mothers mere hours after his birth would have choked me up anyway.

And so it begins!

On Thanksgiving evening—after dinner, but before the supper of leftovers—my fifteen-month-old baby took time out from his busy day of knocking over block towers built by my cousins to toddle over to me, where I sat at a desk in the living room, and indicate that he wanted to nurse. I lifted him up into my lap and latched him on, and he nursed seriously for about five minutes before pulling off with a drip of milk and a huge grin on his face. I readjusted my shirt, and he toddled off to go back to the towers.

“How long are you planning to—you know—for?” my older cousin (herself a mother and an RN) asked.

I looked blankly at her as though I didn’t understand.

“How long are you planning to nurse him for?” she asked again.

I shrugged. “As long as he wants,” I said.

There was a short pause. Then my cousin asked if I’d heard of the new Adam Sandler and Kevin James movie (“Adam Sandler and who?” I asked. “You know, Kevin James, from Mall Cop?” “Uh, no. . . .”). She said she’d just seen a preview for it. I was surprised at this change of subject, but tried to roll with it.

“Did it look good?” I asked.

“Eh, so-so, it looked okay, but there was this one scene with this guy and his trophy wife, you know, and their son walks up to her and asks to nurse, and she does, and everyone’s staring, and someone asks, ‘How old is your son?’ and they say, ‘Forty-eight months,’ and they’re like, ‘That’s four years!’” My cousin stopped. Apparently the moral was too evident to state, and apparently there wasn’t, really, any change of subject at all. 

When my cousin had gone home I looked up this dreadful-sounding movie and discovered that while the Internet consensus seems to be that it won’t be very good, the word is that it does manage to feature “hippie cougars and inappropriate breastfeeding.” Really? Inappropriate? I’m finding that phrase tough to digest. I can only imagine how much I’d love the actual movie.

Currently, I don’t plan on nursing my little one until he’s four, but then again, I don’t plan on cutting him off arbitrarily one day because he’s hit any certain age. I love the closeness that nursing brings us: I know that this is a fleeting phase, though, and I know that there will be closeness and cuddles and affection even when he’s done, and I certainly am not forcing my baby to nurse beyond when he wants to. But he does want to—he seeks it out, and it comforts him and nourishes him even on days when he only eats five cheerios, half an orange segment, a lick of applesauce, and a couple bites of meat.

And, for the record, while I don’t plan on stopping nursing because of either pointed comments from family and friends or a bad movie, I also don’t plan on seeing the movie.

–Christina

While watching Monk (the show about the obsessive-compulsive detective) last night, on what happened to be part one of the series finale, I got super excited about a plot involving midwives!

A murder occurred at a birth center (fictionally set in San Francisco), and Monk was investigating. He asked if “any of the other nurses had heard anything,” and was snippily told that they weren’t nurses–they were midwives. “A midwife is a highly trained medical professional skilled in assisting with natural birth,” Monk was told (though I paraphrase slightly–I was watching at my parents’ house, and they do not believe in DVRs so I couldn’t instant-replay it).

Pretty cool! Maybe there will be more midwives next week on part two!

–Christina

These may be a little pricier than most women are planning on spending on their midwives, but still, I’m sure there’s someone out there who knows a midwife, lactation consultant, or anyone interested in women’s health who would love one of these as a holiday gift.

A charitably-minded friend introduced me to Mercy Corps, a great foundation that helps people around the globe. Of interest here are their “Breastfeeding Mercy Kit” and their “Women’s Health Mercy Kit,” charitable gifts which respectively train lactation consultants and midwives in poor areas. What a great idea at the holidays!

–Christina