I am always amazed at how many readers are not aware of the wide amounts of information available on the main website.  It isn’t a terribly big deal to me, but I do want you to know what you have access to.

Today I want to focus your attention to the Natural Childbirth Directory. If your childbirth educator, doula or midwife website is listed there – fantastic.  I update it about once a month, so if you are not listed be sure to submit your site and I’ll get you in on the next update.

The part I really want you to notice is under the Resources by Country link on the left hand side.  Did you realize my favorite parenting, pregnancy and birth websites were listed there in one place?  As you follow the links you will find the information is broken down by further categories to help families find exactly what they are looking for.  Could be quick and easy or you could spend hours exploring the links.   Either way, enjoy!

Have you ever seen the National Guideline Clearinghouse?  This is a place to go to help you determine what type of care is evidence based.  For example, read through the guidelines for prenatal care and after all the other explanations you will find the following recommendations:

Practices to Consider Discontinuing

• Cervical assessment
• Pelvimetry
• Routine urine dipsticks and routine urinalysis
• Routine evaluation for edema
• Routine testing for cytomegalovirus (CMV), parvovirus, toxoplasmosis
• Routine nutritional supplements
• Routine testing for bacterial vaginosis

Interesting, is it not?  What a great tool for helping families decide if the care they are receiving is actually the best quality.

Enjoy!

Perhaps you think I think too highly of Childbirth Connection?  Don’t.  They freely offer a huge amount of evidence based pregnancy and childbirth information, and that makes them one of your best friends.

I am lucky to be in school, because the university supplies me with access to any research article in any journal I would like, and I can get most of them instantly.  But if you are not in school, gaining access to research can be difficulty and costly.  There is only so much you can get from an abstract at Pub Med.

This is why Childbirth Connection is so dear to my heart. They make the research accessible, and not only to me but to the families I work with.  I know I can use their materials or give out their URL and trust ever bit of information the family will find.  That is important to me.

So today, go and check out their free information about cesarean surgery. They have fabulous handouts and great research you’ll come back to again and again.

Enjoy.

I adore research.  I am a nerd, always have been.  But research is more than a science experiment.  Research helps us understand what is likely to happen when we proceed a particular way, and that knowledge gives us tremendous power to overcome labor challneges.

But research is really only helpful if the results are reported accurately and the conclusions drawn make sense based on the data.  You need to understand how to read research.  You don’t have to like it, but you do need to be able to tell when something isn’t quite right.

To help you become more fluent in research reading, I propose you spend some time with Henci Goer at the Lamaze International Website. You will find synopses of a variety of research papers, along with commentary about the research from Henci Goer (one of my personal favorite writers).

Enjoy!

Hopefully you spent some time searching through the Childbirth Connection website yesterday.  In case you didn’t, I wanted to highlight another important document available from that sight.  It is the Listening to Mothers survey, and if you have never read it you need to.

The Listening to Mother’s survey asks a cohort of women who recently gave birth about their birth experience.  From this data we are able to get an idea about the real rates of different interventions for childbirth, and how their birth experience impacted their lives.

This may be a pay for download, it was when I got it, but the data is definitely worth it.  I believe there are some excerpts or highlight papers that are available free.

Enjoy!

It is Saturday Morning, time to sleep in and spend too much time catching up on some reading.  Since I’ve been talking about prenatal care I wanted to find some interesting things about caring for families before the baby is born.

The Mantra is early prenantal care and the best care of course begins before you are pregnant.  Even ACOG insists a woman begin prenatal care as soon as she knows she is pregnant. So this makes a new study showing that obstetrician offices themselves do not schedule a first prenatal visit until the woman is in or almost in the second trimester rather interesting.  What is a woman to do if the members of ACOG themselves don’t think enough of early care to schedule a check-up?

Cochrane released a review of research on easing morning sickness that demonstrates just how much we don’t know about pregnancy.  It seems there isn’t any strong evidence to support the use of anything that is recommended be it pharmaceutical or alternative.  If it makes you wonder what other advice may not be so great you can do some research at the Cochrane Review.

This week a study was released linking domestic abuse in pregnancy with postpartum depression. This is not new information, in fact domestic abuse in pregnancy is linked to other pregnancy complications as well. So the key is learning how to identify victims of abuse and ways to assist them in getting out.

What about educating a woman about childbirth?  I found this list of the 100 best Natural Birthing Blogs this week. I’m sure you’ll find something helpful on that list.

So enjoy!  I’m off to catch up on my reading too – but it involves a pile of text books.

Saturday Morning, time to catch up on your reading.  Here are some interesting reads from this week:

Cesarean?  This week a report was released that showed increased cesarean rates in the US are tied to increased induction rates.  Want a second opinion, here is an interview discussing another reason cesareans are so common, profit.

We know increased cesareans are not improving outcomes for mothers and babies in the US, so what can we do differently?  We could increase the number of vaginal births after a cesarean, but changing minds is not as easy at we think. Speakers at the Global Maternal Health Conference in New Dehli point to the importance of all health promotional activities for improving maternal health being designed to meet the local culture.

On the lighter side, celebrity pregnancies are always all over the news.  The lessons we can learn from them?  Pregnancy is a universal experience.  For example, Bristol Palin may be a famous teen mom, but she is still a teen mom.  This CNN Opinion article discusses some of the facts about teen pregnancy that are true for celebrities and normal folks alike. Similarly, Christina Applegate is  having the same struggles adjusting to pregnancy every other pregnant woman feels.

Saturday Morning, time to catch up on your reading.  Here are some good reads from this week:

The Navelgazing Midwife shares the proper technique for obtaining the correct blood pressure for obese clients.

Public Health Doula dives into a new public health campaign to combat the common problems that cause Los Dos for ethnic Mexican woman.

New research concludes babies separation anxiety is caused by actual stress, read article at the Daily Mail.

Peaceful parenting shares a recipe for Lactation Cookies.

Birth Sense shares some wisdom for making the best of hospital birth.