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Childbirth is a normal physiological event. However, since the advent of universal hospitalisation, for the majority of women childbirth has been transformed into a medical event where labour is processed, monitored and controlled by the medical profession from beginning to end. Read more…. Drugs in Labour: What Effects Do They Have 20 Years Hence?
When my contractions began Tuesday night, they were regular, but were still of the “practice” type intensity. Read more…. Elaine’s Birth
…figures from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed what too many parents and educators already knew: The incidence of autism is high, making it an "urgent public health issue," according to [the] director of the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. Read more…. Ultrasound: More Harm than Good?
For the Inuit, a paternalistic government assumed they would prefer to be flown out to “safer” surroundings of big city hospitals far from home…. It took strong, determined native midwives to restore the continuity of birth and family care back to their community. Read more…. Home: Our Birth Right
Birth is easy. Obfuscating medical factoids make it hard. Modern obstetrical knowledge is based on false hospital outcomes; more is known about how bedridden patients give birth than how real, panting, sensual women give birth. Read more…. A Declaration of the Rights of Childbearing Women
Un nouveau regard sur la naissance. Read more…. Un nouveau regard sur la naissance
The experimental use of misoprostol (Cytotec) to induce labor is putting an increasing number of pregnant women at risk without their knowledge or consent. Cytotec, a cheap prescription drug for ulcers, is not FDA approved for labor induction and has been linked to uterine rupture and fetal tachycardia. Read more…. Misoprostol (Cytotec) for Labor Induction: A Cautionary Tale
If you have chosen to parent without holding back, giving limitless love and attention to your baby, you will need to be brave. It is a decision you will necessarily make every day, many times a day. Read more…. Straight From the Heart of Mothering
Abstracts of three papers from professional journals of interest to midwives. Topics: Prevention of premature birth; Moxibustion for Correction of Breech Presentation; Hormone changes make moms smarter. Read more…. Journal Abstracts – Compiled by Marion Toepke McLean
Midwives are great bridge builders. There are so many gaps to bridge! Some are just shallow potholes, little bumps in pregnancy’s road—nausea, backache, heartburn, insomnia. We offer solace and suggest remedies, kindly ministrations to fill in and smooth out ruts in the prenatal path. Read more…. Bridging the Gap: Cracks & Chasms
For the past few years I have listened with dismay to direct-entry midwives criticizing nurse-midwives as “medwives”… and to nurse-midwives talking about professional direct-entry midwives as if they don’t know very much, and working in some states to pass exclusionary laws. Read more…. Some Thoughts on Bridging the Gap Between Nurse- and Direct Entry Midwives
Direct entry to what? A path to where? What is it that we are entering, and where is it we are going? A midwife is, like everything else in this world, very much in the eye of the beholder. Read more…. Daughters of Time
