My Current Thoughts on Midwifery « Cinco de Mommy →

I want women and birth to be as safe as it can be, while allowing freedom of choice in birthing location. I loved my homebirth and felt comfortable with my midwife’s experience and training, but want to know midwifery care is a safe option on a national level.

This:

Right now I stand for more strict standards across the board for CPMs. More education and experience requirements, and apprenticeships with multiple midwives, if possible. A national standard so that the term CPM can actually mean something.

- Navelgazing Midwife Blog - What Influence? →

Love this idea that our children might take on our own beliefs when it comes to birth and parenting, but love also the tolerance, which I hope to have one day as a grandmother.

Turning my head a little, I wonder… is it a bad thing to have wishes for your children when it comes to birth? Is it wrong to want my future daughter-in-law to have a (what I consider to be a pretty) great birth? Is it wrong to hope she nurses her babies? Is it wrong to hope they don’t circumcise? Are there aspects I can wish for that aren’t intrusive on her choices? Can’t I be a resource for my children without seeming to try to brainwash them? Wasn’t watching moms labor at home “brainwashing” enough? Wasn’t seeing happy nursing toddlers a lesson on its own? 

Meghann had a hospital birth-turned-cesarean. She struggled with nursing for a few weeks… a nasty case of thrush and then oversupply that mangled her nipples. And while she took some of what I knew, she needed help from outsiders because I didn’t have all the information she needed. On her own, she has found Babywearing and clean eating and La Leche League… and now, it seems, cloth diapers (something I did briefly and hated). She is following in her mother’s footsteps without my saying a word. Is that bad?  

An actively managed placental birth might be the best option for most women | Midwife Thinking →

As a birth nerd, I’m supremely interested in subjects like how the placenta detaches and leaves the uterus, and what happens after. And as a former sufferer of postpartum hemorrhaging, I love knowledge that can keep it from happening again.

I thought her conclusions were very interesting: In a hospital, you’re unlikely to have a completely hands-off third stage of labor (i.e., the time you birth the placenta); therefore, so-called active management might be best for avoiding PPH, based on studies. However, in a relaxed environment where the birth can be purely physiological, then a physiological birth of the placenta can also be safe and effective. My second birth was like that: low lights, low noise, low stress, skin-to-skin just after birth — and no PPH this time around. I know of women who’ve had serene home births that ended in PPH, however, so I’d love to see more studies on the topic to tease out which method is preferable in terms of maternal safety.

Retreat at The Farm | Where's my midwife? →

Fabulous birth activists retreat in support of midwifery at The Farm in Tennessee this June 22-24 (where Ina May Gaskin attends births). Only $100 + camping/dorm fees.