Strollers & Baby Stress

Here’s a report that will have you investigating types of slings and reading books on attachment parenting, if you haven’t already.  Come on over to my house, I’ve got a bunch of both!  And you can find great slings and helpful info at Along For the Ride.  ~Jenn

“Infants who spend a lot of time being pushed along in a front-facing stroller become anxious and stressed, possibly suffering long-lasting psychological damage, says a new study. Researchers at Dundee University in Scotland studied 3,000 infants, some of whom were pushed by parents in front-facing strollers, and others in rear-facing strollers in which the infant and parent could see each other. In the rear-facing strollers, the study found, parents made eye contact and spoke to babies more often, which reassured them and let them drift off to sleep. Babies in the front-facing strollers, who could not see their parents, had higher heart rates and other detectable signs of stress. “Life in a stroller is emotionally impoverished and possibly stressful,” researcher Suzanne Zeedyk tells the London Daily Telegraph. “Stressed babies grow into anxious adults.”

Client Survey Now Online!

For all of our past and future clients, our evaluation form is now automated on the internet. No more mailing back paper surveys!   The link can be found on the In Your Words… page here at DecaturDoulas.com.

Client Evaluation Survey

We love when we get feedback from our clients about how we served you at your birth.  It’s also very helpful to share your comments with pregnant couples who are considering working with a doula.

Thank you!
Jenn

Patience During Labor

Patience after stalled labor advised
Source: Obstetrics and Gynecology 2008; 112: 1109-15

Comparing the outcomes of vaginal versus cesarean delivery following stalling of active labor.

MedWire News: Persevering for a vaginal delivery if labor stalls during the active phase can avoid the maternal complications associated with cesarean section, with no detrimental effect on neonatal outcomes, research indicates.

“One-third of all first-time cesareans are performed due to active-phase arrest during labor, which contributes to approximately 400,000 surgical births per year,” said senior author Aaron Caughey (University of California, San Francisco, USA).

“In our study, we found that just by being patient, one-third of those women could have avoided the more dangerous and costly surgical approach.”

The investigators studied data on 1,014 women who experienced active phase arrest during labor. Among these women, 335 (33 percent) went on to deliver vaginally, while the rest underwent cesarean deliveries.

Analysis revealed that cesarean delivery was associated with an increased risk for maternal complications, including endomyometrisis (odds ratio = 48.4) and postpartum hemorrhage (odds ratio = 5.2). However, the mode of delivery showed no significant impact on perinatal outcomes such as the rate of admission to neonatal intensive care and 5-minute Apgar scores.

“Given the extensive data on the risk for cesarean deliveries, both during the procedure and for later births, prevention of the first cesarean delivery should be given high priority,” Caughey recommended.

Contributed by Juliana Finch

Veggies!

Why is it important to eat lots of different foods during pregnancy? For the best nutrition, obviously, but a new study from Penn State University also shows that pregnant women who eat a wide variety of foods expose their children to different tastes, as the flavor of amniotic fluid changes around week 13.  Breastfeeding babies are exposed to a variety of different tastes through their mothers’ milk depending upon what moms eat.  Formula fed babies do not experience this as their milk flavor is the same each time.  So, eating a wide variety of vegetables and other whole foods during pregnancy and breastfeeding helps give babies a sample of what’s to come on their own plates.  If you don’t want a picky eater, keep hitting that farmers’ market and breastfeed your baby!

Does Your Uterus Need Help?

Excerpt from Born In The USA by Marsden Wagner, MD, MS, pp. 95-96.

“When an obstetrician sets out to convince a pregnant woman to consent to an induction, he is almost always successful. All he has to do is communicate his own fears by conveying directly and indirectly all that might go wrong with a natural birth. The baby might suddenly die in the uterus. The baby’s heart might suddenly stop. All these tests we’re doing are to make sure that the baby is okay. When the woman is finally asked to sign an informed consent form, the form is likely to list every disaster that might happen if the induction is not done, but it does not list every disaster that could result from doing the induction.

“So when the doctor suggests induction, the idea is appealing to the woman because it appears to end a dangerous situation for the baby – remaining in the womb. Women are rarely told that every day the baby remains in the uterus, it grows bigger and stronger and becomes less likely to develop complications during the birth. They are rarely told that a woman’s body knows when the baby is ready. Women are not told that only 3 percent of pregnancies, if left alone, will go beyond 42 weeks and that only 10 percent of those babies past 43 weeks get into trouble – 10 percent of 3 percent = 0.3 percent of babies will get into trouble.

“Yet in the United States we are inducing labor in more than 40 percent of all pregnancies. It’s like taking a baseball bat to a mosquito. The obstetrician’s fear that a pregnancy will have trouble if it goes “too long” dovetails nicely with the great convenience of being able to schedule an induction.

“A Maternity Center Association survey found that in 2004 we were inducing labor in 44 percent of births. If we add to this the 16 percent of cases in which drugs are used to stimulate or speed up a labor that has already started (augmentation), the total number of pregnancies in which powerful and dangerous drugs are used is 60 percent, or nearly two-thirds of all births. It is ridiculous to think that two-thirds of American women have such lousy uteruses that they must be whipped into shape with drugs in order to have babies.”

OB or Midwife?

“Scientific data have proven that for attending low-risk births (that is, births without complications), midwives are not second-class obstetricians, but rather obstetricians are second-class midwives.”

- Marsden Wagner, MD, MS in Born In the USA, p. 103.

Film Screening: Orgasmic Birth

WHEN:  Sunday, September 7th, 3-5pm

WHERE:  The Plaza Theater, 1049 Ponce de Leon Ave.

ADVANCE TICKETS:  $10         AT THE DOOR:  $12
Expecting Couples:  $6 per person

PURCHASE TICKETS:  The Pregnancy Massage Center, 1164 N. Highland Ave., Atlanta, GA  30306 or www.pregnancymassage.com

Contact:  Kai Martin-Short   404-514-6558

Orgasmic Birth dismantles untruths about labor and birth that women have been told for generations. This extraordinary documentary film captures stunning moments of women riding waves of pleasure in the ecstatic release of childbirth. Through interviews with the couples and more than a dozen international experts in birth, we come to understand that labor and birth were intended to be enjoyed, not merely endured.

The film demonstrates ways in which modern society, by subjecting healthy women to the medicalization of birth, denies them a prime experience that is their right.

Among the dozen birth specialists interviewed in the film are Sarah J Buckley, MD, author of Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering; Elizabeth Davis, director of the National Midwifery Institute; Marsden Wagner, MD, former director of Women’s and Children’s Health for the World Health Organization; and other physicians, midwives, and experts in the field.

In the film, Ina May Gaskin, founder/director of the Farm Midwifery Center in Summertown, Tennessee, explains,  “Women can be completely surprised by the change in them from giving birth. You have something powerful in you—that fierce thing comes up. Babies need moms to have that fierceness. You feel you can do anything.”

Pascali-Bonaro’s goal in making the film was to educate people about their options and the implications of the circumstances of birth for women’s and babies’ health and well-being lifelong. “Undisturbed birth is an integral part of woman’s sexuality and a widely neglected human right,” she says. Yet as Christiane Northrup, MD, cautions in the film, we have been brainwashed to view birth not as a natural process but as “an emergency waiting to happen.”

On the contrary, Pascali-Bonaro asserts, the body is well prepared to handle birth. During labor and birth, oxytocin, the hormone of sex and love, rises to peak levels in both mother and baby. The same elements that would create a sensuous experience with a lover—dim lights, privacy, a sense of safety—facilitate birth.

Orgasmic Birth’s evocative soundtrack was created by John McDowell, composer of the score for the Oscar-winning documentary Born Into Brothels.

National Perinatal Association’s Position Paper on Choice of Birth Setting

Quote from the position paper:

“A 2008 Cochrane Database review of ‘Home vs. Hospital Births’ concluded that there was no strong evidence to favor planned hospital birth vs. planned homebirth for low-risk pregnant women.  ‘Planned hospital birth may even be increase unnecessary interventions and complications without any benefit for low-risk women.’  In the United States, 50% of all labors are induced, an ever-increasing number of births are through major surgery, and there is a recent epidemic of late pre-term births.”

September Meet Decatur Doulas

Come by for an informal time to learn what birth doulas do and meet several at once.  Ask your questions, meet other pregnant moms, etc.  We’re meeting in Avondale Estates at 3pm on Saturday, Sept. 6.  Please call or email Jenn Purdy for exact location and to RSVP.  Husbands, moms, friends are all welcome.

Perceived Low Amniotic Fluid & Induction

Q: A lot of women these days seem to be getting their labor induced because they have oligohydramnios, or too little amniotic fluid. How is this determined? And how accurate is the test that is done to show that this “problem” exists? Is it a real problem? If so, what causes it?

— Anonymous

A: Doctor: “You have too little water. The ultrasound shows oligohydramnios, which means decreased amniotic fluid. Your baby is in trouble! We’ll induce labor and try to avoid a cesarean.”

These are words pregnant women often hear from well-meaning obstetricians. The only problem is that the reason given for interfering with nature has no medical basis. Too little water or too much water are associated with problems in the newborn. That is true. But it is not possible at this time to accurately estimate whether there is too little or too much water until after the baby is born.

This is similar to the problem of estimating the fetus’s weight. The estimated fetal weight is most accurate for average size babies and not as accurate for very small and for very big babies. Those of course, are the babies for which the estimate is needed.

A study in the November 1998 issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, the journal of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (Obstet Gynecol 92:5: 823–27) looked at 1038 women who had their amniotic fluid measured by ultrasound near the end of pregnancy. The technician measures, in centimeters, the length of the pockets of amniotic fluid that are seen on the screen and then takes an average of the some of the pockets surrounding the fetus. The pockets surrounding the fetus depend on its position at the time of measurement. The conclusion of this study is that indexing amniotic fluid by measuring the pockets of amniotic fluid—Amniotic Fluid Index (AFI)—is “a poor screening test” to identify infants at risk. AFI is simply not sensitive or accurate enough to be used as a diagnostic tool. This is the only tool that is used to date. The study mentioned that scientists are trying to develop a tool that will be useful for diagnosis of fetuses at risk.

Unfortunately, sometimes women are told that they have too little water or too much water, without any ultrasound measurements, after the doctor palpates the uterus. Clearly, it is impossible to accurately assess that there is too much water or too little water by just feeling the abdomen.

— Judy Slome Cohain, in Midwifery Today eNews