Healthy Babies! Healthy Moms!
(8 ways to help you be healthy and low risk during pregnancy, labor, and birth) By Amy V. Haas, BA, BCCE Pregnancy can be a wonderful and exciting time of life for most women. However, women in the United States receive very little information about how to stay healthy during pregnancy unless they do a lot of individual research. In fact most women don’t realize there is anything they can do to positively impact their health during pregnancy or prevent a high-risk status, with the exception of prenatal care. While proper prenatal care is important, it is not magic. Obstetricians have...
Read MoreVaginal Breech Birth
BREECH BIRTH A Breech birth is one in which the baby’s buttocks, foot, or feet come out of the mother’s body first, rather that the head. Most babies are born head first, or vertex, as it’s known. It is most common in the United States today for a doctor to perform a cesarean section, rather that allow a woman with a breech baby to birth vaginally. This occurs for various reasons, including the medical establishment’s belief that there are more risks to vaginal breech births, and for legal liability reasons on the part of the doctors. The problem is that this leads them to ignore the...
Read MorePain to Pleasure – The Bradley connection
Pain to pleasure in birth After listening to Debra Pascali-Bonaro’s presentation Pain to Pleasure During Birth [https://www.goldmidwifery.com/] , I was struck by how similar the recommendations were to what Dr. Robert Bradley was teaching over 60 years ago. I was pleased to see how much of this is already being taught in Bradley classes, and always has been. While he may not have ever talked about orgasm as a part of birth (I bet he would now :>), he did talk about privacy, darkness, solitude, quiet, relaxation, and intimate partner support. When Dr. Bradley first started supporting...
Read MoreINDUCTION AND AUGMENTATION OF LABOR
By Amy V. Haas, BCCE Induction of labor is the artificial starting of labor with the use of pitocin, castor oil, or herbal preparations such as blue cohosh. Other methods used to start labor include breaking the amniotic sack (an amniotomy), stripping of the membranes (separating the membranes of the amniotic sack from the uterine wall), and inserting prostaglandin gel, or pieces of Misoprostol tablets into the vagina to soften the cervix. The idea is to get labor going artificially, by starting contractions of the uterus. The most commonly used agent is pitocin, an imitation of the natural...
Read MoreMicrobirth film showing and expert panel
The Institute for Family-Centered Childbirth would like to invite you to a showing of the ground-breaking film Microbirth on Saturday, November 12th, 2016, from 2 – 4 pm at Shults Auditorium, Nazareth College. Please join us after the film for an expert panel discussion. Three of the foremost researchers in the field will be discussing the film, their work, and the implications for the future of community health.Included on our panel with be: – Dr. Mary Caserta, University of Rochester Professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases – Dr. Rodney Dietert, Cornell...
Read MoreIf birth is so natural, then why do I have to take classes?
Human beings are cerebral creatures who think way too much. And we come with baggage. Add to that the fact that we have been socialized by the media into believing that birth is a horrible, painful thing that needs lots of medical intervention, and you have a major challenge. Birth in the US is not evidenced based. The ways in which laboring and birthing women are treated and cared for are not the ways that will produce the healthiest outcomes. Most women desire to have a loved one/husband/partner/friend trained as their primary labor assistant, or at least thoroughly educated so they know...
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