Tag: childbirth
Separating Fact from Fiction in Maternal-Fetal Medicine: Anti-D Immunoglobulin for the Prevention of Hemolytic Disease of the Fetus and Newborn
The Healthy Home Economist, a pseudoexpert in health and wellness with no actual education or training in medicine, is telling mothers to avoid a safe and effective approach to preventing a deadly pregnancy complication that used to result in the death of thousands of babies every year.
Homeopathy Awareness Week shows that homeopathy is still a problem
Homeopathy Awareness Week might be almost over, but The One Quackery To Rule Them All wastes resources and endangers patients year round, and a recent French criticism of homeopathy has provoked another case of legal thuggery by homeopaths.
Vaginal Seeding: To Swab or Not to Swab Your Newborn Baby
More mothers are requesting vaginal seeding, but does the evidence support this potentially risky intervention?
Vaginal Birth After C-Section: How Safe Is It?
Doctors used to insist “once a C-section, always a C-section.” Today it is standard practice to allow vaginal births after C-section (VBAC) for appropriately selected patients. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has issued a Practice Bulletin to guide obstetricians in determining which patients are appropriate candidates for VBAC. We frequently hear criticisms of practice guidelines like these. The doctors...
Home birth tragedies lead to changes in Oregon
Oregon Health Plan (OHP), the state’s Medicaid insurer, will no longer cover planned home and birth center births for women whose pregnancies aren’t classified as low risk, based on newly-established criteria. The Health Evidence Review Commission (HERC), a group of experts designated by the state, came up with criteria that will exclude women with a substantial list of conditions, such as high...
Water Birth (Again)
Note: I had just finished writing this article when I discovered Dr. Jones had beat me to the punch with his March 28th article on the same subject. He did an excellent job, and of course reached the same conclusions I did (it’s not that great minds think alike, but that we base our conclusions on the same body of evidence). Rather...
Childbirth Without Pain: Are Epidurals the Answer?
Is unmedicated natural childbirth a good idea? The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) points out that There is no other circumstance in which it is considered acceptable for a person to experience untreated severe pain, amenable to safe intervention, while under a physician’s care. It is curious when an effective science-based treatment is rejected. Vaccine rejecters have been extensively discussed...
Home Birth Safety
More and more American women (1 in 200) are opting for home birth, and midwife-assisted home birth is common in other developed countries. How safe is it compared to birth in a hospital? A new study sheds some light on the subject. It was recently published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology: Maternal and newborn outcomes in planned home birth...
What’s in the water at waterbirth?
Water birth is dangerous, unnatural, has no benefits, and unlikely, but serious risks. So of course someone is selling it.
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November 19, 2009
Birth Day
So many of the posts on this blog are critical and deal with examples of poor science or other problems. I’d like to offer a breath of fresh air in the form of a book by Mark Sloan, MD: Birth Day: A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History, and the Wonder of Childbirth. It is a very positive book. Sloan has attended...