Midwife Thinking: Birth From the Baby's Perspective

Such a fascinating article! Excerpt below, and definitely head over here to read the article from Midwife Thinking in its entirety, as well as watch the videos.

Here are the bullet points from the article on treating a newborn with respect:

"A humane approach to welcoming a baby to the world

Whilst in some cases it is not possible, I believe that we should aim for all babies to have the opportunity to:

• Make their own way through their mother’s body and into the world (ie. no unnecessary pulling).
• For their first touch to be from the hands of a person who loves them (mother, father, family member, friend).
• To be held immediately by their mother skin-to-skin.
• To be sustained by their placenta until the placenta stops functioning (ie. leaving the cord intact).
• To be left in peace to find their mother’s nipple and latch on.
• To be treated gently and with dignity and respect during any ‘checks’ that their mother chooses to have done."

Placenta: Essential Resuscitation Equipment

When people hear "placenta" these days, they may tend towards thinking about placenta encapsulation. What about the placenta's role and potential as the baby is born? This is fascinating article on the placenta, delayed cord clamping, and newborn resuscitation. It's a little bit birth-nerdy, but if you are interested in cord clamping and your newborn's transition to breathing on her/his own, please have a read!

Read the full article here from Midwife Thinking.

The Big Baby Card

Below is an excerpt from When A Big Baby Isn't So Big

"The new study, called Listening to Mothers III, was based on Childbirth Connection’s nationally representative survey of some 1,960 new mothers. It found that four out of five of the mothers who were warned they might have large babies gave birth to infants who were not large, and weighed less than 8 pounds 13 ounces.

Yet these mothers were almost twice as likely to have medical interventions such as having doctors medically induce their labor or attempting to self-induce labor, presumably out of concern the baby would continue growing otherwise. They were also nearly twice as likely as other mothers to have a planned cesarean, though the increase fell just short of being statistically meaningful."

Monitoring Your Baby's Heart Rate During Labor

A few informative articles on electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) that I encourage all pregnant women to read. 

Evidence Based Fetal Monitoring

The Most Common Childbirth Practice Is Unnecessary and Dangerous

Monitoring Your Baby's Heart Rate During Labor

The Most Common Intervention in Hospital Childbirth is not Evidence Based

"Electronic fetal monitoring—which also includes external monitoring, in which an ultrasound transducer is placed on the mother's stomach—is supposed to prevent deaths by alerting the doctor to complications that would require an emergency Cesarean or vacuum extraction. Which sounds logical enough: The more you monitor the baby, the more likely you are to catch problems instantly. But study after study has proven that EFM is not logical at all, as it provides no benefit to most patients and creates more problems than it catches."

You can read the full article here.