Lots to Post

CDC Press Release on how most American children are currently on schedule for vaccinations.

Journal of Perinatal Health [!] "Do Not Disturb: The Importance of Privacy in Labor"The Vancouver Sun article on using self-relaxation exercises for birth.

Iran's health officials are training their countries obstetricians in natural birth due to the 40% cesarean rate there, as they're thought of as "painless births" and more natural births are considered something the low-class does.

Science Daily's article on the recreation of a Neanderthal birth (anatomically.)

Since breastfeeding women are reluctant about taking antidepressants, this study was done to show the effects of therapy for postpartum depression.

There is a study being done on using garlic to treat GBS. Scroll down to get the protocol here and the study questions are at the end of it (the answers are sent via email.)

Another reason to do your kegels: the NIH says that 24% of women have pelvic floor disorders.

Wiki has an entry on Lotus Birth, which means you don't cut the cord, you just wait until it dries off (with or without the placenta.)

Science Starts Catching Up to Births

The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry - This is the abstract of a (small) preliminary study on how the areas of a mother's brain that respond to her baby's cry are more active (shown by MRI) when she's had a vaginal birth than when she's had a cesarean. "First this suggests that VD mothers are more sensitive to own baby-cry than CSD mothers in the early postpartum in sensory processing, empathy, arousal, motivation, reward and habit-regulation circuits. Second, independent of mode of delivery, parental worries and mood are related to specific brain activations in response to own baby-cry."

The University of Melbourne is developing a computer program predicting premature labor based on the mother's hormones. The knowledge can lead to interventions that may prolong gestation.

A woman in New Zealand who had to have a planned cesarean talked her doctors and hospital into letting her pull the baby out of the incision and have the baby skin-to-skin on her chest immediately after birth. (She had her doctors talk to a doctor in the UK who had done several such procedures.)

Baltimore Home-Births

From an almost-hometown newspaper, the Baltimore City Paper. It was nice to see that in the comments there were several people arguing--with cited statistics--about how the United States doesn't have the best death rates around birth.

Get Out the Kleenex

A great story about a natural stillbirth called "Day's Sunrise" from IndieBirth.com.