Massage-Doula Newsfeed

Is This Thing On?

2009-01-26T17:31:00.001-08:00

"Researchers found that a major lipid in the brain - the omega-3 fatty acid known as Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) - is not developed sufficiently in babies born before 33 weeks' gestation, leading to possible impaired mental development." There was a study done that gave breastfeeding mothers DHA supplements, and also provided DHA-fortified formula, which showed significant decrease (40-50%) in cognitive problems--for girls but not so much for boys.

I never thought I'd say this, but go GE. They have developed new light therapy for newborn jaundice, including a pad that can be tucked into a baby's blanket while the baby is being held--without the need for eye shades!

Apparently, one of the major breakthroughs in reducing natal deaths was hand-washing.

An article about Canadian midwives (their government health program covers midwifery care.)

Posts in the Rearview Mirror May be Closer than They Appear

2009-01-14T23:48:00.000-08:00

Baby Hammock - a down-under invention, JPMA-approved bouncy baby bed for up to twelve months. You can also get a bouncy chair attachment.

If you have kids, be sure you name a guardian or two in case something terrible happens, (pick your deity or spiritual guide) forbid. I haven't checked out this website, but you're supposed to be able to create free legal documents for designating guardians.

Wash Your Mouth Out

2009-01-14T23:24:00.001-08:00

Another bacteria link for preterm labor: this time in the mouth. Since pregnant women are prone to bleeding gums, it's important for their dental health to be as good as possible to reduce the chance of bacteria entering the bloodstream.

Posts is Posts

2009-01-04T10:18:00.000-08:00

Australia - Private hospitals have a higher intervention rate than public (state-run) hospitals.

Woman sues OB over insanely bad care. Allegedly.

Birth Pool in a Box has inflatable birth pools ($170 for the "mini" one-person, $190 for the two-person. No heater.)

Uncultured Bacteria Found In Amniotic Fluids Of Women Who Experience Preterm Births

Yale has a nurse-midwife program.

My Baby Nest - a wrap sling with nothing to tie!

New Year's Baby's Doula

2009-01-02T22:16:00.000-08:00

AquaDoula! No, not the labor assistant for Aquaman and Aquawoman--but a website where you can rent birthing tubs (everything included except a garden hose) for $249 for three weeks, $75 each additional week...which I thought was a good deal until I just saw that shipping is an extra $190 (you can call for local shipping charges in the Seattle area.) You can also buy birthing tubs starting at $1199 new, $999 used.

If you're looking for some extra, but not entirely great birth stories, someone who collected and published several stories has put her book up as a free PDF. Some of them I read on birthstories.com.

Interracial couple gives birth to "black and white twins"...for the second time. (That's right; one black, one white.)

Reclaim Sex after Birth website.

Volunteer Doulas for Military Families

2009-01-01T00:15:00.000-08:00

Operation Special Delivery coordinates doulas with women whose husbands are away in military service, or who have died in military service. UPDATE: you do not have to be CAPPA-certified to participate, you only need to be able to verify that you've taken a doula course. See comments...

Stages of Labor Signs

2008-12-30T23:02:00.000-08:00

BirthingNaturally.com writes about signs of the different stages of labor. Warning: after reading each stage, you have to go back to the first page to link to the next.

Amniotic Fluid Embolism

2008-12-29T22:40:00.000-08:00

A full article all about AFE.

A (long) abstract: study performed in California regarding the rate of AFE in 1994-1995--with a "sample" size of 98% of births for those years. The usual stated rate has been between 1:8,000 and 1:80,000. The study found:
"Fifty-three singleton gestations had the diagnosis of amniotic fluid embolism, for a population frequency of one per 20,646 deliveries [out of 1,094,248]. Fourteen women with amniotic fluid embolism died, for a maternal mortality rate of 26.4%."

An interesting article about deaths related to the use of misoprostol (Cytotec)--used orally and vaginally for labor induction. Four out of the sixteen cases presented had AFE.

The Wiki entry could use some work.

CDC's report on pregnancy-related mortality 1987-1990 (go straight to the tables here.)

MilkShare

2008-12-22T22:13:00.000-08:00

For milk donors and seeking parents. Has guidelines for how to screen donors and store and ship milk.

You can also donate to an organization, which pays for testing and supplies. 25% of the milk collected is sent to Africa, the rest is used by critically ill babies in the U.S.

A Directory of Directories

2008-12-22T21:10:00.000-08:00

A list of many free and paid doula directories. (I emailed them about Doula Match.)

Labor Clothing

2008-12-21T20:59:00.000-08:00

Skirts and tops for labor, $30-65.

Contraction Master

2008-12-21T19:54:00.000-08:00

Free website to count contractions--all one has to do is hit the spacebar at the beginning and end of each contraction.

Perpetually Pregnant for the last two decades

2008-12-19T22:09:00.000-08:00

The Duggars of Arkansas (apparently they have a show on TLC; I've had a lack of cable for the last year) just had their eighteenth child. Their oldest is twenty.

Blogging Again - Since I can't seem to stop reading about doulas and birth.

2008-12-19T21:00:00.000-08:00

A Danish study regarding reasons for dystocia--delay of labor defined as less than two centimeters in four hours after four centimeters in the first stage, in second stage as no progress for two hours in the descending phase (three hours with a epidural) or one hour in the expulsion phase. The biggest factor was epidural at 71.2 percent. Concludes:
"Our study contributes further evidence of an increased risk of dystocia in nulliparous women who, at admission to hospital, present with a descent of fetal head above the inter-spinal diameter and a cervix dilatation [less than] 4 cm. We found that a tense cervix, a thick lower segment and a poor contact between the fetal head and the cervix are risk indicators for dystocia. Further studies should examine if fetal head-to-cervix contact is a significant predictor of dystocia and if differentiation of the management of dystocia can be based on assessment of fetal head-to-cervix contact. The observed association between epidural analgesia and increased risk of dystocia is of interest and may have a causal explanation."

A doula character on an episode of Guiding Light.

Doula Match a free site where you can search for a doula (using your zip code and due date) or register yourself as a birth and/or post-partum doula, complete with a profile and calendar of availability(!).

A tool for the starting doula, free accounting software from Quickbooks. Make your own invoices! Features are limited.

Lots to Post

2008-09-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-05T17:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-02T13:39:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

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

First (Real) Post

2008-08-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how the layout will go; please bear with me!

Washington State now has a 25% cesarean rate, with a disproportionated increase in the Puget Sound area. The Seattle PI article also mentions the rate has risen by 6% every year for the last decade or so.

BOLD puts on a play called Birth which is the vagina monologues of birth (er). From the website:

"[Karen] Brody wrote Birth after interviewing 118 women across America about their birth stories. The play tells the story of eight of those women, representing the spectrum of experience among low-risk, educated, birthing women in the US today. Each performance is followed by a talk-back, giving audience members a chance to discuss pertinent issues from the play."

Birth will be playing in Seattle on September 5th, 6th, and 7th, and in many other locations on various dates.

This is a very interesting research article from Ohio State University that reveals that mothers play kind of a "gate-keeping" role when it comes to how much the fathers are involved in taking care of their infants. Apparently, the best way to get the dad involved is to have the mom actively support him in it and not do things such as roll her eyes when he puts on the diaper backwards (again. :o)

And from the amazing births file, a Nigerian woman, who thought she was having twins (as her doctors so concluded from the ultrasounds), naturally birthed three babies--two were unfortunately conjoined at the chest and abdomen. One of the doctors expressed she should have had a cesarean because she was so weak afterward. My first thought at that was "So you want to take away one of her victories she gained on a day that was so very hard for her?" Not to mention recovering from cesarean is no breeze in itself.

Birth control affects pheromones receptors--normally, women are attracted to the scent of men who are genetically dissimilar to themselves. On birth control, women shift to the scent of men who have more genetic similarities to them. {Did I mention that this site will also cover pre-conception issues?}

Welcome to the Massage-Doula Newsfeed!

2008-08-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

Almost everyday, I wade through my Google alerts for articles related to massage, birth, doula, and childbirth. A lot of it is frankly crap. However, some articles I think would be very useful, and so I've been kicking around the idea of starting a blog where I'd post the good stuff, so other people wouldn't have to make the wade!

My posts will have a slightly Seattle-area bent--since that's where I live. It's also where I'm taking a Maternity and Infant Massage Specialist course at Cortiva Institute - Seattle. The course covers pregnancy massage, a DONA doula class, post-partum massage, advanced pregnancy massage, and a teaching infant massage class. My main goal is to promote healthy and purposeful touch within families, as it is an undervalued but important basic need for optimal growth, development, and the feeling of well-being.