With the Duchess of Cambridge apparently lobbying for a home birth (Be it ever so grandiose, there’s no place like home?) and inspiring U.K. women to follow in her wake, it seems relevant to summarize the newest community birth study, a New Zealand study of...
Abstract: Obstetrician-gynecologists . . . can help women meet their goals for labor and birth by using techniques that are associated with minimal interventions and high rates of patient satisfaction. Many common obstetric practices are of limited or uncertain...
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...
The Leapfrog Group, which collects data on a voluntary basis from hospitals and compares results with national standards in order to evaluate quality of care, opens its 2015 report on U.S. maternity care with: “[T]here is substantial evidence that U.S. hospitals...
Popping up all over the internet this past week were the results of a New England Journal of Medicine study of Oregon State statistics finding that planned out-of-hospital birth slightly increases risk of perinatal death but greatly reduces likelihood of cesarean in...
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...
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.
