The ticker on the sidebar of Dr. Nancy’s Your Birth Coach website announces that there are just three days left until her expected due date of October 7. Nancy Salgueiro, a wellness chiropractor, birth coach, and childbirth educator plans to birth naturally at home and is inviting everyone to watch it live online.

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If this is how you gave birth, be prepared to confess it to one school district in Calif.

When you enroll your child for school, you probably won’t be surprised if officials want to know if your child has been vaccinated or is on any medication — those are pretty standard questions.

However, when enrolling your child for school in the Dry Creek School District in Roseville, Calif., you’ll probably be surprised when officials ask if your child was delivered naturally or by c-section.

If your answer is c-section, the application then asks, “Why?”

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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 »

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Want to have a doula or labor coach to assist at your birth? Interested in drafting a birth plan with your partner? Don’t have your baby at the Aspen Women’s Center in Provo, UT.

The center has posted a sign in their entryway that reads:

Because the Physicians at Aspen Women’s Center care about the quality of their patient’s deliveries and are very concerned about the welfare and health of your unborn child, we will not participate in a “Birth Contract”, a Doulah Assisted, or a Bradley Method delivery. For those patients who are interested in such methods, please notify the nurse so we may arrange transfer of your care.

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Rachael Larimore was raped years ago and survived. More recently, she has given birth three times, all of them via c-sections. Considering her history and experiences, she’s unsympathetic toward Arizona mom Joy Szabo and others who equate forced c-sections with rape.

She’s got a point, which she makes in the post, “Childbirth is Not Burger King. You Can’t Always Have it Your Way,” at Double X. But in arguing that Szabo’s use of “rape” is hurting rape victims, she errs in the same way she’s accusing Szabo of erring: that is, she makes assumptions about the trauma of other people’s experiences and diminishes that trauma in the process. Continue reading »

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An Arizona mother who compared her hospital’s policy of not allowing VBACs to rape has come up with a solution to her dilemma:  She’s moving 350 miles away to have her baby.

Joy Szabo (who infuriated Strollerderby’s commenters with her choice of words) can’t convince Page Hospital to let her deliver her fourth child vaginally because she’s had a prior c-section.  Her third child was delivered vaginally in their hospital, but administrators have since changed their policy and refuse to budge. Continue reading »

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A male midwife in the U.K. thinks women in labor who ask for epidurals are avoiding a rite of passage and that skipping the pain isn’t preparing these women for the responsibility of bringing up a baby.

Epidurals as a gateway to child neglect? Continue reading »

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