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Leah Christensen natural pregnancy, birth and newborn mentor
birth facts
There is such a thing as truth, but we often have a vested interest in ignoring it or outright denying it. Also, it's not just thinking something that makes it true. Truth is not relative. It's not subjective. It may be elusive or hidden. People may wish to disregard it. But there is such a thing as truth and the pursuit of truth: trying to figure out what has really happened, trying to figure out how things really are. ~ Errol Morris
Some interesting information about birth to help you make educated decisions.
* In 1st world countries with the best birth outcomes such as Sweden, Holland, and Japan, all pregnant women will give birth with a midwife unless there is a complication that must be handled by a doctor. * A hand-held doppler is also ultrasound. Anne Frye, Certified Professional Midwife and author of Holistic Midwifery, argues that the doppler, a continuous ultrasound wave, is 35x more powerful than a 2D pulsating ultrasound. In Denmark, midwives use wooden Pinard horns to hear a baby's heartbeat. Only if there is a problem finding the heartbeat (rare), do they use a doppler. * Women moved from home to hospitals to give birth so that student doctors would have experience delivering real babies. By the 1920's, Childbed fever or puerperal sepsis accounted for as much as 40% of maternal fatalities in American and European hospitals. The disease was spread by doctors not washing their hands before examinations. The New York Academy of Medicine's landmark 1933 study stated that poor hospital care led to the majority of mother and baby deaths. A White House report released shortly thereafter found that infant deaths from birth injuries had jumped nearly 50% between 1915 and 1929 when more women were choosing to birth in hospitals and with doctors. * Amniocentecis has a miscarriage rate from 1 in 200 to 1 in a 100. The cause of the miscarriage may be an infection developing in the uterus, or the waters breaking and starting the uterus to contract, or excessive bleeding. Sometimes the cause is unknown. If a miscarriage does happen, it may do so within days or a week or so after the procedure, but it may not happen for several weeks. * Statistics show that half of all healthy first-time mothers have pregnancies that last longer than 41 weeks. Harold Fox, MD and Emeritus Professor of Reproductive Pathology at the University of Manchester, published an article in the British Medical Journal stating that a review of the available evidence indicates that the placenta does not undergo a true aging change during pregnancy. In Sweden, the normal gestational range is to 43 weeks. Induction only works 50% of the time. Women will go into labor naturally when they are ready. * The bacteria in one's home is very familiar to a mother and baby. The CDC estimates that in America one in 20 patients -- or approximately two million every year -- develop various kinds of infections while being treated in the hospital. Of those, approximately 90,000 patients die every year. * By asking your provider questions during your labor, you can dramatically change your birth outcome. Remember the acronym BRAIN. What are the Benefits, Risks, Alternatives, use your Intuition and what happens if we do Nothing when posed with an interventive solution. * Standard practice in Labor and Delivery is to have an IV and continuous External Fetal Monitoring (ultrasound) throughout the entire labor. Yale Medical Center did a study in 2006 stating that ultrasound causes brain damage in rats and recommended minimal use during pregnancy. Ultrasound was first used medically to destroy brain tumor tissue. An IV punctures the skin increasing the risk of hospital infection, causes electrolyte imbalance, cardiac arrhythmia, and fluid in the lungs from too much fluid in the mother's body. Studies have also found that the glucose in the IV reduces the mother's threshold for pain and potentially causes severe infant hypoglycemia due to the elevated blood sugar levels. * Dr. Emanuel Friedman published his "cervimetric curve" in 1954 that tracked the average length of time of the three stages of labor. Dr. Friedman stated he was distressed and disappointed by how the curve is misused to diagnose a woman's failure to progress, the most common reason American doctors list on charts for justifying a cesarean birth. Many women fall on either side of his asymmetrical bell curve. * An epidural is an analgesia (blocks pain) and a anaesthetic (numbs the senses.) Commonly used as anaesthetic is Bupivacaine (a dirivitive of cocaine) and as the analgesia is the opioid Fentinyl, 80x more potent than morphine. Epidurals lower the mother's blood pressure and, along with lying on her back, restrict oxygen-filled blood to the baby causing in many cases fetal distress. Denmark has an 18% epidural rate, the UK has a 25% rate and America has a 66% rate. Denmark has a 55% natural birth rate and America has around a 10% natural birth rate. * The first major study on episiotomies was published in 1983 and found that incisions can make the area between the vagina and the anus even more likely to tear as the head emerges. Cutting actually weakens the perineum sometimes causing it to sag. The American episitomy rate dropped from 90% in the 70's to 20% in 2000.
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