Anesthesia and future learning disabilities…

Ok, I just read about this study, and haven’t really “ruminated” on it, which I normally do, so I’m just shooting from the hip with this. Basically, researchers went back and reviewed birth records of children born in one locality in Minnesota from 1976-1982, to see if they were born vaginally or by C-section, and [...]

Fetal Memory

This was quite intriguing — an article written about a study into fetal memory. Basically, they looked at babies under ultrasound and played some sound outside the womb (a buzzer, like they typically use during biophysical profiles to startle the baby to see how his or her heartrate changes), and kept on buzzing until the [...]

404 — Unnecesarean Link Update

For more information, read Jill’s latest post, but the Unnecesarean.com (and blog) is now TheUnnecesarean.com (and blog) Make sure you update your subscription to Google Reader or however you keep up with the blogs you read. By the way… how do you keep up with your blogs? [see embedded poll] I must admit that I [...]

Stress affects fertility

We know that stress can cause lots of bad things in the body — it’s been demonstrated as a factor in heart attacks, strokes, ulcers, indigestion — and many people have pointed to it as an element in fertility. This article says that last bit seems to be true. Let me say that this is [...]

You might be a birth junkie if…

With a tip of the hat to Jeff Foxworthy of “You Might Be a Redneck…” fame, I thought of a series of things that may be tip-offs that you just might be a birth junkie (in no particular order). (By my definition, which is, I suppose, an infatuation bordering on addiction [if not actually there] [...]

Why I chose midwifery

Rebirth Nurse is going to be doing a “blog carnival”: When I first started blogging, I really enjoyed reading blog carnivals covering different nursing topics. But with school, and now a “real” job, I’ve gotten away from really reading or contributing to them. So, I was thinking that I would start up one! My unofficial [...]

Maternal Nutrition Study in Canada

This sounds cool. It’s something a lot of us in the birthing world have wanted to see for quite some time. Rather ambitious and expensive (to the tune of $5,000,000!), and it will take 5 years to complete, but it might provide some answers to questions. A lot of questions. If you are pregnant (26 [...]

Thoughts from the sick-bed

My whole family, including myself, had some sort of stomach bug while we were on vacation — not sure where it came from, but we each got it in succession, and it was a pretty miserable time. Fortunately, three of us were always well, even while one was sick. I’ll spare you the details. But [...]

Better Birth videos and PDFs

Multiple sources have pointed me to this website for videos and brochures that support and promote natural birth. [Disclaimer, I've not actually watched them. Yet.] There has been a lot of good feedback from this — one woman in particular said that she liked how that the videos showed the women laboring in a hospital [...]

Not that we didn’t know this already…

…but reducing the rate of Pitocin reduced the rate of emergency C-sections and vacuum or forceps deliveries. Click here to read the whole article. One thing that was (negatively) intriguing to me, is that the hospital’s Pitocin rate prior to the change was 93.3% — almost every woman planning a vaginal birth (at least, I [...]