“Extreme Motherhood” on 20/20 this Friday

At least, it’s supposed to air this Friday (I believe it still airs at 10 Eastern, 9 Central, but check local listings). The last few times it’s been scheduled, it’s been preempted at the last minute, so I’m not holding my breath. But, just in case it does, I’m passing along the info! Here is [...]

Not just money

A recent article by Jennifer Block, author of the book Pushed which takes a close look at C-sections in America, highlights the disparity between what we as a country spend on maternity health care and what we receive, based on outcomes like maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality and the premature birth rate. With a [...]

Madwives, Medwives, and Midwives

Everybody knows what “midwives” are, even if some think that midwifery is a profession that ended with the Dark Ages (yes, I’ve actually seen at least one person express surprise that there are still midwives). But often on certain birth-related email lists, internet groups, blogs, etc., you’ll see the terms “madwife” and “medwife” in reference [...]

“Breastfeeding with Comfort and Joy” — a review

Wonderful! Beautiful photography! Excellent advice! It’s hard to top the words of praise Dr. Christiane Northrup and others — both doctors Laura Keegan has worked with and mothers she has helped — have given: like having a wise and loving grandmother show you exactly how to nurse your baby… Laura has created a manual of [...]

Presto! Change-o!

A recent article in U.S. News and World Report, titled “Rate of Unnecesary C-sections Far Lower than Thought“, discusses an article in January’s Obstetrics and Gynecology which finds that “the real rate of unnecessary C-sections is 4%.” Huh? First, I don’t have the study, so I can only go by this article, which was brought [...]

$10 off “Breastfeeding with Comfort and Joy”

I had previously mentioned M.I.L.C.’s Facebook awareness effort that breastfeeding is not obscene. In honor of the beautiful pictures of women breastfeeding their babies, Laura Keegan, author of Breastfeeding with Comfort and Joy is offering $10 off the price of her book, bringing the cost down from $35 to just $25. (Clicking on the picture of the book’s front [...]

Industrial Childbirth

“My experience of childbirth was not an unusually traumatic one. In medical parlance I had an NVD: a Normal Vaginal Delivery. The midwives were pleasant. I was given an epidural. I was admitted to hospital at 2pm and delivered a healthy baby boy ( 8lb 7oz ) eleven hours later. This is the essential information, [...]

Court Document, Skol v. Pierce

Somebody dug around and found a PDF of the actual court document in that lawsuit I blogged about recently. Seeing as how it’s 31 pages, I haven’t yet read the whole thing, but thought some of you may be interested in the full document alleging the gross violation of trust and maltreatment from this doctor, [...]

Merry Christmas!

Today we celebrate the birth of the most famous person who has ever lived in the world. It was a humble birth; a “home” birth, if you can call being born in a barn “home.” We don’t know much about this birth — not even the day or the time of year (the Christmas tradition [...]

What you can do…

Previously, I blogged about the lawsuit brought by Catherine Skol against the doctor who attended her birth, alleging that he mistreated her in a variety of ways. But while I think this story deserves to be told, and women especially need to understand that this sort of treatment might possibly happen (although I believe and [...]