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Tenor Juan Diego Flórez Delivers His Own Baby
One thing about childbirth, you can’t plan when the big event will take place (unless you plan a C-section that is). But if one is opting to just let ‘nature take it’s course,’ there is no planning on when the baby will want to make it’s grand appearance. And sometimes, the baby really doesn’t pick the most convenient times. That’s just what happened to the world renowned tenor Juan Diego Flórez.
Over the weekend the 38-year-old Peruvian was scheduled to perform as the lead in Rossini’s comic opera Le Comte Ory at the Metropolitan Opera House. Just a half an hour before he had to take the stage, he assisted in the birth of his first child.
Along with two mid-wives, Flórez assisted his wife Julia in delivering their son Leonardo. He got to hold his son for just a minute before he had to rush to the Met, where – in an added element of pressure – the performance would be shown live around the world. Continue reading »
The home birth safety debate
Earlier this year, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists told us that babies born at home are two to three times as likely to die in the first month of life than hospital-born babies.
The backup for that claim (one that has been hotly debated): a meta-analysis (an accumulated review of multiple studies) last year in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. That review — headed by a specialist in maternal fetal medicine at the Maine Medical Center in Portland — looked at 12 studies on home birth and found that babies born at home without birth defects were more likely to die within 28 days.
This month, the journal Nature breaks down some of the claims and criticism to the original research. Here’s the latest in the home-birth safety debate: Continue reading »
Is Home Birth Safe?
The medical community considers home birth dangerous, the equivalent of playing with fire. Until now, research didn’t support that position: outcomes for healthy moms with uncomplicated pregnancies were consistently on par whether babes were born at home or in the hospital.
Meet the Wax Paper. A metaanalysis of data on home births published last month the Journal of American Obstetrics and Gynecology, this paper claims that infants born at home are 3 times more likely to die than those born in hospitals.
Oh really?
No, say home birth activists and many academics. They say the paper’s methodology was flawed and the results are based on bad data.
What to do when the living room turns into a birthing center and the kids are home? Let them watch!
Our very own Madeline Holler did – and she recounts her home birth in a piece on Salon that induced me (ahem) to laugh out loud more than once.
Madeline’s daughters – Beatrice, 7, and 3-year-old Frances – both vehemently agreed that they did NOT want to watch their little brother being born. But Madeline, like a lot of busy moms with two kids, sort of kind of didn’t really have time to make plans for her girls to be elsewhere during the birth. And besides, Madeline admits, she secretly wanted the girls to attend the birth, as “sort of a health class video meant to supplement the textbook and lectures.” A real-live medical demo that had her daughters running into their rooms and crying out of fear. Giving birth is a miracle, right? Continue reading »
An analysis of 500,000 births in North America and Europe has found that births which are planned to take place at home have a greater risk of infant death than births at hospitals. These findings differ from previous studies which have shown that homebirths are not only safe — but safer — than hospital births.
Researchers looked at the numbers in a new way and they found that babies were two to three times as likely to die after being birthed at home than at the hospital,
The overwhelming reason for the deaths? Continue reading »
Obstetricians don’t like competition. This week in New York, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists came out swinging against a bill that would have made it easier for women to choose home birth.
Having a home birth isn’t illegal in New York, but the legal hoops the state requires midwives to jump through make it all but unavailable to many Big Apple mamas.
Rather than regulate midwifery directly, the state requires midwives to have written “practice agreements” with obstetricians at nearby hospitals. The obstetrician has to agree to take over care of the midwives patients should an emergency occur.
The state legislature moved to do away with the “written agreement” rule this week, and was met with strong opposition from OBs.
New York City has only 13 home birth midwives, and 7 of them are in danger of losing their licenses.
State law requires all home birth midwives to have agreements with obstetricians at nearby hospitals who will back them up and handle medical emergencies with their patients. St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan was the official back-up hospital for more than half of New York City’s midwives until it closed this week.
Now the midwives are having trouble finding a new hospital that will take them in. Obstetricians, it seems, are not eager to sign on for back-up duty.
Lori Garcia 
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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