Natural Family News

I thought this article was a good article on births attended by midwives. It seemed positive and portrayed midwifery as a normal option.

You may have noticed we have a new advertiser. I highly recommend visiting their site. They have really cute items for sale. My husband’s favorite is a t-shirt that says “I make milk. What’s your superpower?” I like a lot of the homebirth and attachment parenting items. Just click on the link to head over there and find out if there’s something there you like.

Indiana is one of nine states that requires midwives to be licensed to attend homebirths, but then provides no way for them to do so. The state does not recognize Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs), a title awared by the North American Registry of midwives. Every year since 1993, legislation has been introduced into the Indiana senate to try to legalize CPMs, and every year it has been blocked by one senator who doesn’t want to see it happen. Senator Pat Miller (R) has been using her power as chair of the Senate Public Health Committee to kill the legislation in committee before it ever has a chance to go to the floor for a vote. Meanwhile, somwhere in the neighborhood of 50 CPMs continue to practice in Indiana, risking prosectution for practicing medicine without a license.

An article out of Australia says that waterbirth there is on the rise, with one hospital citing a 38% waterbirth rate. I think it’s fabulous that more women are being informed about the benefits of laboring and/or birthing in the water. Most moms who have done so say they’d never go back to birthing “on land”. But even though several hospitals there have waterbirth facilities, the Australian Medical Association won’t support waterbirth, claiming it is too risky. It’s a shame that medical organizations seem to be so quick to accept research that support the use of more interventions, but dismiss research in support of more natural birth methods. You can read the article here.

Gweneth Paltrow, who has been sort of a boon for natural birth and breastfeeding, is planning a waterbirth for her second child who is due in May. Apparently she had considered waterbirth the first time around, but didn’t feel confident enough to try it at the time. She has a birth tub at both her home in London and in New York, so she should be well prepared! You can read about it here.

This isn’t our usual fare exactly, but when I read this article about Big Brother’s plans to air one of the houseguests giving birth, I just had to blog about it. I wonder whether they’re going to allow a doctor or midwife in to attend the birth, or will she be having an unassisted homebirth? Will this kind of publicity be good for homebirths and natural childbirth, in general, or will young women say “no thanks” after viewing the birth?

For those of you who read a lot of birth things, this article may contain some really familiar phrases, but, like the author of the story, I had to ask “what monkey?” I thought this was a great article about the homebirth process. It contained statistics and reasons for homebirthing, but mostly it was just a father’s journey through the process of pregnancy that ends in homebirth. Read it. You’ll be glad you did.

I was checking out Google news for the latest articles on homebirth, and the number one article was a recent news piece on the Homebirth Association of North Dallas, featuring our very own Laura and her family. You can view the article here.

Home superior to hospital birth
Source: British Medical Journal 2005; 330: 1416-22

The largest prospective study of planned home births to date evaluates the safety of such births supported by direct entry midwives.

Among low-risk women, home births assisted by certified midwives achieve similar rates of intrapartum and neonatal mortality as hospital births, with lower rates of medical intervention, reveal Canadian researchers.

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