TGIF-Weekend Reading….

Weekend Reading:

Weekend Sunrise

Weekend Sunrise

After a gloomy “warmish” in the 30’s week here in Chicago, I am ready for the weekend, along with a Friday night dinner with friends and a wishful but unlikely “rest filled” Saturday and Sunday and perhaps a sunrise like this one!

This essay from the back page of the Sunday Times Magazine is a nice read. I don’t know about you all, but I grew up in a large city that I hated, Yonkers, NY. Long ago, it was known as the “City of Gracious Living,” but to me, that never mattered. Thank goodness, it was right next to New York City, which was in my mind Yonkers’ only redeeming quality.

 

As we drove off, I was grateful for what Tujunga was for me: a hometown I wanted so desperately to leave, but that taught me to work for the ticket that would take me away.

“Free Range” parents, who allow their children freedom to walk to school at a young age are coming under fire not only on social media but also from local law enforcement and children’s protective services in some areas of the country.  Are you a “free range” or a “helicopter” parent?

 

Kids go to the park every day. But it’s not everyday the cops come calling because kids are spotted there, but that’s exactly what happened to the Meitiv family recently.

 

“We’re amazed this has become a national conversation because we’re just doing what our parents did or [what] was considered perfectly normal just one generation ago,” said Danielle Meitiv, who was investigated on two occasions by Child Protective Services (CPS) in Maryland after allowing her children, aged 6 and 10, to walk to and from school and the local playground alone.

 

As a nursing professional, who worked in labor and delivery, I am not a fan of home births. While I understand why moms would opt for this opportunity, I would not for just the reasons that appear in this mom’s story and post from Yummy Mummy Club.

 

Martin’s feelings are absolutely valid and an upsetting birth experience can have lasting effects on a mother and her family. But it’s wrong to scare women from wanting to go this route, because that decision is one which should come from research and discussion, not fear – one way or another. A certified, licensed midwife is a health care professional and they understand birthing risk. We can plan and hope for the best, but also be keenly aware (as I was throughout the labour) that it could easily go the other way, through no fault of our own. –

You probably notice that two topics above are from Yummy Mummy Club, which is one of my personal favorite sites. I follow YMC on Facebook and enjoy many of their posts. Go ahead and check them out!

Have a great weekend everyone! 🙂

Parenting in the Loop…Week in Review

Here are my pick reads for the week…

Have a nice weekend…

 

 

You could argue that women have never been able to easily access the “birthing experience” they desired. The old days of childbirth, fraught with risk to mother and baby, were followed by a variety of innovations, some more welcome than others. In her story on Ina May Gaskin and the home birth movement, “Mommy Wars: The Prequel,” in  this coming weekend’s New York Times Magazine, Samantha M. Shapiro writes that women once fought to move birth “out of the domain of midwives and the home and into the hospital:”

What do you do when you discover that diabetes is also a disease that strikes children even babies?

Do you feel like helping this little one when you watch this video? I did! #guilty

Home Birth….yeh or nay?

Noteworthy Wednesday!

I follow many parenting blogs and commentaries. Over the past few weeks there has been much chatter about “home births”

“No surprises here. ACOG looked over the scientific evidence once again and found that it still shows that homebirth increases the risk of neonatal death.

The ACOG practice bulletin, Committee Opinion No. 476: Planned Home Birth appears in the February issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The Committee notes that many of the existing scientific papers are of poor quality, and almost all are observational:”

via The Skeptical OB: New ACOG opinion on planned homebirth.

As a masters prepared mother baby nurse and a licensed clinical social worker, I have shared in many of these discussions over the years and I have definite opinions.

It was my fortune to work with very competent obstetricians during my work in Labor and Delivery. They were willing to teach me what they knew and helped to make me a skilled practitioner. I relied on them for their expertise and they relied on me for mine. Of course many times our experience overlapped and that was expected and respected. I was not a physician and they were not nurses.

My early practice was mainly in New York City in the 70’s and La Maze was a popular childbirth preparation…it was even taught by Elizabeth Bing herself. She was the guru of “natural childbirth” in those days. Elizabeth was a physical therapist by practice and she was extremely enthusiastic about her practice and adamant that women should be able to be in control of their labor and delivery. I took classes with her become a La Maze instructor. There were no prerequisites to becoming an instructor except desire. What I noticed was most of the women in the class had delivered successfully with the La Maze method. It was a very skewed population who were learning to be instructors…these were women whose only experience with childbirth was their own. For me, this was not a good thing. Every childbirth that I have attended has been different and I have attended many. My feeling was that when I stopped seeing each birth as an individual unique event that was the time for me to retire from what I was doing.

At the time home births were somewhat popular in NYC but there was a birthing center available…”Maternity Center Association” where women could deliver in a more homey atmosphere. Maternity Center had a hospital connection and guidelines for the patients that delivered there. No high risk were accepted. I had no relationship with this birthing center and do not pretend to know any statistics of their outcomes.

Maternity Center Association

1975

Established The Childbearing Center, a project in New York City to demonstrate out-of-hospital, family-centered maternity care, which was approved by the New York State Department of Health and operated from September 1975 through June 1996.

“1979

Developed innovative classes to prepare children for the birth of a sibling.

1983

Established the National Association of Childbearing Centers, a professional association for out-of-hospital birth centers.

1985

Established the Commission for the Accreditation of Freestanding Birth Centers to ensure high standards of operation for out-of-hospital birth centers across the United States.

1988

Opened the Childbearing Center of Morris Heights, a neighborhood-based birth center in the South Bronx serving low-income families.

1989

Results of the 84-site National Birth Center Study of outcomes of care in out-of-hospital birth centers were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, with funding secured by Maternity Center Association; the study concluded that care in birth centers was safe, satisfying, and cost effective.”

Childbirth remains a “natural” occurrence but when complications set in they can occur very rapidly. These complications can have disasterous results. I am only one practitioner and have seen a maternal death and other extremely serious complications for mother and baby. I can surely say without reservation if these particular patients were not in a hospital they would not have survived. They needed expert care, and immediate intervention not available in the home.

Nurses and physicians are educated and trained extensively. Their goal is a healthy outcome for mother and baby. We are not in opposition to each other we are each others colleagues. If home birth is to continue and be as safe as it can be there must continue to be extensive training for the nurse-midwives and there must be a collegial partnership with the medical community.

Any one who is considering a home birth should discuss their wishes with a Board Certified Obstetrician and weigh the pros and cons of carefully. This is a decision that could seriously impact you and your family for the rest of your life. Your obstetrician should not be considered your enemy he/she is your advocate…if you do not feel this way find one that is.

http://blogs.babble.com/being-pregnant/2010/12/21/pregnancy-related-deaths-rising/?utm_source=Babble&utm_cam

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/debating-home-birth/?scp=10&sq=motherlode&st=cse

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/guest-blogger-a-birthing-story/