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Last month’s reports of Gisele Bundchen giving birth to baby Benjamin at a Boston area hospital turn out to have been greatly exaggerated. She indeed gave birth … to baby Benjamin … but she did it at home in her tub.
The supermodel revealed this particular detail in an interview on “Fantastico,” her country’s version of “60 Minutes.”
She told the interviewer that she had opted for homebirth with a midwife after watching Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein’s “The Business of Being Born,” a documentary about homebirth, hospital birth, midwives and the choices women sometimes have — and sometimes have to face — when bringing a baby into the world. Continue reading »
Seriously, it’s just a baby. No need to go ruining the nation’s greatest holiday over a little thing like unexpected labor and childbirth!
Boston grandmother Patricia McCalop had already loaded a stuffed turkey in the oven when her daughter, 38 weeks pregnant, went into labor. McCalop called 911 once they realized what was going on. The dispatcher talked the mother-daughter pair through the quick and problem-free delivery.
Between contractions, and while waiting for paramedics to arrive, McCalop tended to the bird, basting it in its own juices to ensure moist tenderness in every bite.
One of the world’s best-known experts on obstetrics has announced he thinks Dads need to get out of the delivery room and leave the women to it.
Dr. Michel Odent is a French obstetrician who’s heavily involved in the orgasmic birth and home-birthing movements. Last year, he wrote a piece in the Daily Mail espousing his theories about why dad needs to stay “nearby” for the birth, but stay out of the delivery room.
Now he’s back, with plans to address the Royal College of Midwives in England next month, and he’ll be sharing the same story that got modern women riled last year: bid Daddy goodbye. Continue reading »
OK. So I’m all for letting people have their babies how they want to.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion about it. Continue reading »
Just when you think we’ve gone beyond safety issues with regard to homebirth — what with the findings in this study and, more recently, this one, among others — the Today show goes and airs “The Perils of Home Birth,” a seven-minute segment so poorly reported, so one-sided and salacious, that instead of feeling defensive and outraged — I laughed. Out loud. Alone!
Here’s what I learned: women choose home birth because it’s “hedonistic,” and the equivalent of a spa treatment. Furthermore, reporter Peter Alexander suggests that women choose home birth because famous people like Meryl Streep and Demi Moore had some babies at home. Home birth, Alexander says, is “fashionable, trendy and the latest cause celebre.”
Spa treatments? Cause celebre? (Demi Moore?!) Continue reading »
Natasha Ramirez of Sydney Australia says that she was turned away from a hospital because they didn’t have “enough room.” And besides, the nurse told her, you won’t be in labor “for another 24 to 48 hours.” So she went home. “Five hours later baby Anjelita was born” on her bedroom floor, according to Australia’s Daliy Telegraph.
The 27-year-old new mom claims that she was bleeding and “in labour” (they spell things funny in Australia) when she arrived at Liverpool Hospital. Apparently Ramirez was 4 days past her due date, “needed anti-D injections because of her O-negative blood type” and due to complications with a previous birth, and oh yeah — she was having contractions. But a nurse “assessed” her and told Ramirez to go home. She says that she was not seen by a doctor. Continue reading »
You know I love a nice, juicy, out-of-hospital birth. But I’m not sure where I stand on live, in-concert labor and deliveries. Not that giving birth among a half a million people at a large, outdoor, three-day-long hippie concert is all that common.
In fact, births at Woodstock — long one of the many free-love stories told of the event — may never have happened.
The supposed Woodstock baby (or babies — estimates range from zero to four births at the famed 1969 concert on a farm in Sullivan County, New York) turns 40 in August and people are starting to ask again. No one has ever credibly stepped forward and said, “I’m a Woodstock Baby.”
But there is some evidence there were births. From the AP: Continue reading »
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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