UPI has published an article on the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) data analysis, “Perspectives on risk: Assessment of risk profiles and outcomes among women planning community birth in the United States.” As you can tell by the title, the study evaluates...
A study in the most recent issue of Birth provides eye-opening illumination on non-medical reasons for high cesarean rates (Kennedy 2016). Investigators at Yale’s med-school affiliated hospital conducted in-depth interviews eliciting opinions on how the institution...
The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) has published a revised and updated Committee Opinion on “Planned Home Birth.” If you read the media reports on it, you would think the new Opinion is “same-old, same-old,” but there are some...
A few weeks ago at the American Congress of Obstetricians & Gynecologists annual meeting, Dr. Grünebaum presented his prize winning paper concluding that home VBAC resulted in worse neonatal outcomes compared with hospital VBAC. No challenge there. Other studies...
The Toronto Star reports on a large study comparing outcomes between 11,493 low-risk Canadian women planning home birth at the onset of labor and a random sample of 11,493 equally low-risk women planning hospital birth, both cared for by the same midwives. To...
Amid the ‘net brouhaha over Jessa Duggar’s postpartum transfer for severe bleeding after home birth, one article stands out as the voice of sanity: “Jessa Duggar's midwife did exactly what she should have done” explains that the system worked exactly as it should when...
A Washington Post article runs under the heading: "Giving birth at home is cheaper than at hospitals, study says, but is it safe?" The study, which is available for free, compared costs associated with planned home birth with a midwife, planned hospital birth with a...
Check out Henci’s Science & Sensibility post on Neel Shah’s New England of Journal of Medicine commentary. Shah agreed with recent U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines concluding that low-risk women would be better off at home...
The first in Henci’s new Take Charge of Your Birth Series, Labor Pain: What’s Your Best Strategy? delivers up-to-date access to the best medical research plus practical strategies for developing your plan and putting it into action. Also available in audiobook.
