Wisdom and Births

Since when did the birthing vagina lose it's privacy?!? In the United States, the majority of births occur in the hospital where women are EXPECTED to deliver their baby's in the lithotomy position; which is extremely counterproductive to pushing and I think we would all agree it's uncomfortable and unflattering. How humiliating the traditional hospital birth must be for some women who have kept their sexuality within the confines of their relationships and bedroom, but now their most intimate body part is exposed during a more or less "unflattering" event. Some women even experience a level of embarrassment or anxiety when it comes to topics relating to, or issues with, their vaginas. From early childhood we are trained that our genitals are "private parts" intended only for ourselves and those we love and trust. We spend years functioning with this knowledge and it becomes a part of what we believe to our very core. Then we are expected to set di...

The techno-medical management of birth is pervasive. I struggle to understand the origination of some obstetrical interventions, such as the immediate (or quick) clamping and cutting of the umbilical cord. The umbilical cord develops between 3.5 and 8 gestational weeks and sustains the baby throughout the pregnancy and even in the minutes after birth by transferring nutrients and oxygen to the fetus from the placenta and carrying fetal waste away. The transfer of nutrient rich and oxygenated blood continues after birth and is important for all babies to receive, but particularly important for babies that are slow to start breathing on their own. I recently watched a youtube video of a Grand Rounds lecture from M.D. Nicholas Fogelson ( AcademicOB/GYN ) about delayed cord clamping and the importance of this as a standard of practice in medicine. He gives an excellent presentation and discusses several large well-executed research studies in which the evidence for delayed cord clamping is...

For my first blog I would like to return to my interest in Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology (PPN) and how our current medical model of managed care can often negatively impact the optimal trajectory of human development. This topic is extensive and this blog was originally very lengthy, but I will keep this to a PPN introduction and more detailed thoughts about obstetrics and PPN will follow later. Prenatal and perinatal research has demonstrated that a baby is conscious and aware during the prenatal period and that they  experience the mother's internal and emotional states. In the womb, babies are learning about themselves and the world around them through information obtained using their five senses as well as through the transfer of chemical messengers, such as hormones, in the shared maternal blood. Emerson (1998) discusses the long-term detrimental impact of many medical interventions on both the physical and psychological well-being of babies and reminds us that the mother...