Check It Out!
WWW.MIDWIFERYTODAY.COM
A Website Update for E-News Readers
BIRTH WISDOM: TRICKS OF THE TRADE III, a Midwifery Today book. New! Learn tricks and tips from practicing midwives, childbirth educators, naturopaths, doulas, and parents.
KEEP PREGNANCY, BIRTH, AND PARENTING INFORMATION COMING to your postal mailbox!
FINDADOULATODAY.COM: a searchable professional services directory courtesy of Midwifery Today!
Midwifery Today's Online Forum
I think baby and I might have thrush, but I've been keeping it in check with a low-sugar, no-fermented-foods diet that includes yogurt. I plan to start using acidophilus and I'm working to reduce my stress level. I'd like to see some resources for treating thrush naturally.
- Anon.
To share your thoughts and experience, go to Midwifery Today's Forums.
Please Support Our Advertisers
Baby Massage Instructional Video
Now also in Spanish – El Massaje Infantil. Certified Infant Massage Instructor/perinatal nurse shows 5 classes.
65 minutes. Excellent music. "Highly recommended" - Video Librarian.
Childbirth Educators discount for 12-pack to use as loaners: $228 with extra instruction cards for clients to keep.
www.babymassage.net or 1-888-222-9868
Question of the Week (repeated)
Q: A mom just delivered after a 43-week
pregnancy. The labor was terribly long but OK for her. The baby looked 40
weeks; the gestational age came in at 38 weeks. There is no way we were
off on dates. She had a circumvallate placenta. The cotyledons were really
mushy where they tore really easily. I've read that a circumvallate
placenta has a higher risk for postpartum hemorrhage, which she had--a
long, trickle bleed. What causes this type of placenta? Did it cause her
baby to stay in so long yet look and test out to be a normal, term baby?
- Heather Zanon, midwife and mom
Send your responses to:
Question of the Week Responses
More about kidney stones [Question of the Week, Issue 3:50]:
Does anyone have ideas about how to avoid kidney stone formation for a
woman who got them in her first pregnancy and would like to avoid them the
next time around?
- Cyndi
====
Our family has had success with dissolving both kidney and gallstones
using fresh-squeezed lemon juice or raw apple cider vinegar. The lemon
juice may be taken first thing in the morning with warm water and honey.
If the acid bothers your stomach, take it as lemonade with a meal. Same
with the vinegar, a teaspoonful with honey and water. The lemon is
superior for the enzymes that offer healing to the liver, but the vinegar
is cheaper and also effective.
- Francie Smith
Please Support Our Advertisers The International School of Traditional Midwifery
The International School of Traditional Midwifery in Ashland Oregon is
accepting enrollment for 2002 classes that start in May.
For information contact us at:
ISTM - mten
3607 Hwy 66
Ashland, OR 97520
or call 541-488-8273
Switchboard
Fused labia {Issue 3:50}:
If the baby is six months old, I doubt it is a congenital problem.
Things like this are checked closely at birth and the first few pediatric
checkups. What has probably happened is labial adhesions. This happens
*after* birth as a baby girl gets older. It has to do with the mucus
membranes of the labia sticking together and then becoming stuck to the
point that it can't be separated without causing pain and/or tearing of the skin. Doctors usually prescribe estrogen cream and the parent is asked
to apply a very small amount to the area with a cotton swab or Q-tip once
or twice daily. The hormone gives the skin more moisture and elasticity
and the labia slowly come apart. The treatment then is stopped and the
parents are asked to check the labia daily.
If the baby does have congenitally fused labia, the scan is a good
idea. There is a chance she doesn't have any internal female genitalia. If
she does have internal genitalia she will have to have her labia
surgically opened, but it will be years before it would be necessary.
- Robin E. Williams, doula and former medic
====
My daughter had a similar condition as a baby. One of my favorite OBs
said, "Don't let anyone cut her!" She told me it was "vaginal or labial
agglutination" and prescribed a conjugated estrogens cream (Premarin) to
apply 3x/day. Within a week the vagina had an opening.
- Kimberley Schmidt, RN CD
====
My daughter had this condition and the GP pulled it apart at age 6
months. I put vitamin E cream on the edges and it healed beautifully. She
grew into a healthy young lady and is now pregnant with her first
child.
- Anon.
====
I wonder about the wisdom of using hormones on infants. The problem can
be corrected surgically at puberty if it does not self-correct before
then.
- Merrilyn
====
The overwhelming tendency for children born not obviously male or
female is for their parents and medical doctors to subject them to surgery
to "correct" their "aberration." Many of these people experience trauma,
pain, and other difficulties in puberty and adulthood as a result of both
their families' lack of acceptance and the surgery. The Intersex Society
of North America is comprised of individuals born with other than XX or XY
chromosomes (they estimate 1 in 500 children are born this way) and they
advocate for greater societal acceptance of people of all types. Contact
them for more information: www.isna.org
- Seanain
====
I would not allow anyone to do anything unless and until the baby has
been evaluated by a specialist in human genetics. There are a multitude of
reasons for abnormalities of the external genitalia. Usually they are very
minor and unimportant and easily repaired. Sometimes they can be extremely
serious with potential physical and psychological long-term consequences.
Be aware that the typical general practitioner and pediatrician have not
been trained to handle more complex situations such as a baby who is
chromosomally a normal boy but who lacks a full complement of male
external genitalia. This can present as fused labia. There are also
genetic conditions that can cause abnormalities of the genitalia in which
these abnormalities are just one aspect of a whole syndrome requiring
treatment and monitoring. Again only a trained geneticist can pick these
up.
In the past (and regrettably in the present in some places) male babies
with abnormal external genitalia have been made over into "females" by
surgically removing any testicular tissue and/or penis material they do
have and by telling the parents if these genetic boys are raised as girls,
they will become girls as adults. This appears to be true for some genetic
conditions and some individuals, but definitely not for others. For some
people, this kind of forced surgical gender reassignment can lead to
extremely difficult psychological adjustments in these "girls" as they
reach adulthood and they find themselves with a normal male sexual
orientation and male gender identification. Plus, the childhood surgery
that removed any testicular or penal tissue they once had also removed any
choice about becoming fathers if they find themselves with a male sexual
orientation as adults, compounding the problems they face.
- Natalie K Bjorklund
====
Midwifery Today Issue 44 includes the excellent full-length article,
Advocating for Intersexed Babies and Their Families.
====
Paths to midwifery:
I will graduate in June with a BSN and plan to go the CNM route. I
worked in a homebirth practice with a senior midwife. My hard-won CPM
certification just went inactive and will remain so for one cycle. Four to
six years ago, I was asking all the same questions about paths to
midwifery. What a quandary it is.
After two years of science prerequisites and almost two years of
nursing school, I am still a fervent advocate of homebirth and
noninterventionist by nature. I have surprisingly gained pride in becoming
a nurse, an underappreciated profession. I have not sold out to the
hospital-based system of Western medicine. I will be a nurse-MIDWIFE, and
serve women and families with pride.
- Jennifer McGeorge, CPM
====
I'm a doula finishing my BSN in May. I began nursing with the sole
purpose of becoming a CNM. I had no interest in working hospitals. I was
afraid of becoming a medwife and I know quite a few. They've become afraid
of birth, they love gadgets and doohickeys. But after doing an externship
in L&D, I realized that we are needed in the hospital to offset the
medwives, doctors and RNs from hell. We can't run away. Running away is
hiding from the real situation, putting blinders on. Women must be
empowered in these sometimes horrific situations, cared for, smiled at,
cheered for, and treated as if they're the first one to ever give birth.
Working in a hospital has done the very opposite of what I thought it
would do. I love women and birth and I won't turn my back on them for the
easy, more pleasurable route. It is hard and I won't say that I'll stay in
the hospital setting forever, but I will do my part for as long as I can.
- Charisse Lawson, CD
Brooklyn, NY
====
In Issue 3:51 many hospital midwives said positive things about their
hospitals and the success rate in terms of natural birth and acceptance of
alternative methods of healing. Is it within the scope of the email
newsletter to name the state, city, and hospital? I am not a midwife or
doula. I am just a strong believer in making the right birthing choices
for myself. I think to share that information would be very helpful to
someone like me who researches birthing options.
- Teresa Gelerter
Sacramento, CA
====
I loved reading about all the fabulous changes in the hospital birth
setting [Issue 3:51]. It is so important that we continue to promote safe,
accessible births everywhere. I feel so connected to my CNM/RN
sisters!
I am an apprentice with a homebirth practice; it is absolutely the
right path for me. Unfortunately my husband just got a dream job in
Virginia where it is illegal to practice as a CPM. Does anyone have
suggestions about how I can continue my training? Although I admire my CNM
sisters, I do not work well in the hospital setting, and it is not a
viable option for me.
- Jeanne Catherine
====
I am a nurse who has worked with birthing families for 30 years. I have worked in education, hospitals, a wonderful free-standing center, with
newborns, with mothers in recovery, with teenage moms, with breastfeeding
couplets in a baby-friendly hospital birth center, etc. Now my lovely
little hospital birth center, which is not perfect but a sweet place to
work because of the wonderful nurses and its philosophy toward birth, may
be closing.
I have just traveled to New York to assist my niece with the birth of
her first child, a beautiful 10-lb. boy born at home, a lovely experience
that reminded me how peaceful and beautiful it is to birth at home. I am
feeling a pull toward midwifery that I have resisted before for many
reasons. But now it seems it may be time to just get trained and licensed
so I can use the body of knowledge I have acquired to help women have more
satisfying and fulfilling births.
Can you tell me the best way to find out where the programs are that I might investigate to make a plan for the future?
- Mary Jo Terrill , RN, BSN, MSW
Santa Barbara, CA
====
PATHS TO
BECOMING A MIDWIFE: GETTING AN EDUCATION, a Midwifery Today book.
The quintessential guide to preparing yourself to become a midwife or
other birth practitioner. Read about realities, politics and philosophies,
direct-entry and certified nurse-midwifery, childbirth education, labor
support and postpartum caregiving, the future of midwifery. Extensive
resources listings.
====
A client who at 32 weeks was told by her OB that her baby is
transverse. She also said that the baby will not turn, so prepare for a
c-section. I have done my best to give her exercises to help turn the
baby. Does anyone have suggestions other than the usual?
- Karen A., doula
Winnipeg, Canada
====
Re cord clamping and twins [Issue 3:50]: Almost all identical twins
have some degree of vein-to-vein, artery-to-artery, or vein-to-artery
transfusion (twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome [TTTS]). Acute TTTS from
the first twin to the second twin usually occurs at birth. Clamping and
cutting the first twin's cord immediately after birth prevents it. Once
the last baby is out, its cord can be left unclamped if desired. It is not
possible for fraternal twins to have TTTS even if their placentas are
fused. Fused placentas of fraternal twins simply implanted next to each
other and the membranes have become joined on the outside. They still have
separate placentas, bags, and circulatory systems.
Check out Anne
Frye's book Holistic Midwifery--it has a great section about twins.
- Debra, midwife
Washington
====
HOLISTIC MIDWIFERY, VOL. I is available from Midwifery Today.
====
Re Breast hypoplasia and milk supply: A very informative study in
"Current Issues in Clinical Lactation" (2000) by Kathleen E. Huggins et
al. is one of many great articles compiled in this book. The illustrations
are a useful and practical addition to the info provided.
- Esti, CBE ,LC
Jerusalem
====
Re breastfeeding during pregnancy: I breastfed during two of my
pregnancies. Although I had a history of preterm labor, my midwives and I
felt that as long as I made sure to eat a bit extra and have a drink every
time I nursed my child, it was no big deal. It is important to note that
in each case, my children were more than a year old so breastfeeding was
not their primary source of food. Is mom concerned about preterm labor? Is
this part of her history?
I don't think all nursing during pregnancy situations are the same. How
old is the nursing child? How does the mom feel about nursing/weaning? How
is her nutrition, activity level, etc? Why is the child still nursing? It
is much different to nurse a 6-month-old baby and be pregnant than it is
to nurse a 3-year-old for comfort and snuggling. Each situation is unique
and it makes sense to think about all the factors involved. The mother
must pay attention to her actions and how her body reacts to them.
- Holly Sippel, student CBE
====
Proven or not, we have to be very careful what we encourage (or fail to
discourage) in pregnant and laboring women. The more emotional side to
this argument are the effects that we who have been there live with every
day. Both my teaching partner and I have children who have learning
disabilities and other problems resulting from horrible drugged births. My
three brothers who had drugged births are all drug/alcohol addicts. The
only one who experienced twilight sleep is the only one who is not
recovering--and he has no intention of stopping now. I am the only one of
my siblings who did not have a drugged birth and the only one with no
addiction problems.
Ask yourselves, is it worth the risk?
- Amy
o=o=o=o=o=o
EDITOR'S NOTE: Only letters sent to the E-News official email address, mtensubmit@midwiferytoday.com,
will be considered for inclusion. Letters sent to ANY OTHER email addresses will not be considered.
Midwifery Today E-News is published electronically every Wednesday. We invite your questions, comments and submissions. We'd love to hear from you!
Write to us at:
Please send submissions in the body of your message and not as attachments.
Click here to subscribe to Midwifery Today E-News
For all other matters contact Midwifery Today: PO Box 2672-940, Eugene, OR 97402
541-344-7438, inquiries@midwiferytoday.com,
www.MidwiferyToday.com
Remember to share this newsletter
Need to subscribe, unsubscribe, or otherwise change your E-News subscription?
Then please visit our easy-to-use subscription management page!
On this page you will be able to:
- Subscribe to any of our email newsletters
- Unsubscribe from any of our email newsletters
- Change the version (text or HTML) that you receive
- Change the email address to which newsletters are delivered
If you have difficulty, please send a complete description of the
problem, including any error messages, to: newsletters@midwiferytoday.com
Learn even more about birth!
Subscribe to our quarterly print publication, MIDWIFERY TODAY. Mention
code 940 U.S.: $50 1 year $95 2 years
Canada/Mexico: $60 1 year $113 2
years
All other countries: $75 1 year $143 2 years
E-mail inquiries@midwiferytoday.com or call 800-743-0974 for information on how to order.
To order Midwifery Today products mentioned in this issue, send a check or money order to:
Midwifery Today, Inc.
PO Box 2672-940
Eugene OR 97402 USA
To pay by Visa or MasterCard, send your information to:
1-800-743-0974 (orders only)
Fax: 541-344-1422 For other
matters, you may call:
541-344-7438 Or email us:
Editorial for E-News:
Editorial for print magazine:
Conference:
Advertising:
For all other matters:
Disclaimer
This publication is presented by Midwifery Today, Inc., for the sole purpose of disseminating general health information for public benefit. The information contained in or provided through this publication is intended for general consumer understanding and education only and is not intended to be, and is not provided as, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Midwifery Today, Inc., does not assume liability for the use of this information in any jurisdiction or for the contents of any external Internet sites referenced, nor does it endorse any commercial product or service mentioned or advertised in this publication. Always seek the advice of your midwife, physician, nurse or other qualified health care provider before you undergo any treatment or for answers to any questions you may have regarding any medical condition.
Copyright Notice
The content of E-News is copyrighted by Midwifery Today, Inc., and, occasionally, other rights holders. You may forward E-News by e-mail an unlimited number of times, provided you do not alter the content in any way and that you include all applicable notices and disclaimers. You may print a single copy of each issue of E-News for your own personal, noncommercial use only, provided you include all applicable notices and disclaimers. Any other use of the content is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of Midwifery Today, Inc., and any other applicable rights holders.
© 2003 Midwifery Today, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Midwifery Today: Each One Teach One! | 
