Wisdom and Births

Happy 3rd Annual Empowered Birth Awareness Week!!! September 2-9, 2013 http://www.birthpower.us/eba.html This is my second year blogging as Wisdom and Birth for Empowered Birth Awareness Week (EBAW) and I am SO happy to see the movement growing! Last year, for my first EBAW (which was actually the second annual EBAW, but the first one I was aware of!) I wrote a post about what you can do on Empowered Birth Awareness Week to spread the knowledge and advocate for better maternity care for mothers, babies, and families. You can read that post here . Empowered Birth Awareness Week is one week, at the beginning of September, in which we ALL can do something, no matter how big or small, to improve birth for women all around the world. Why do we need to improve birth for women in the U.S (and around the world)? Because WE CAN DO BETTER.   WE CAN DO BETTER than one out of every three babies being born surgically! WE CAN DO BETTER than two-thirds of women pushing on their backs! WE...

True to form, the medical community has routinely over-used an intervention on women and babies EXPERIMENTALLY before knowing the risks or benefits of wide-scale use. Mass experimentation on women and children has been an ongoing issue with modern western medicine and CLEARLY continues... this time with the drug Pitocin.  Pitocin, a synthetic form of Oxytocin, is used all too frequently in maternity care to either induce (start) or augment (speed up) labor... a typical intervention on the 'cascade' that SO many women unnecessarily face in the hospital system today. It is WELL KNOWN that Pitocin makes contractions more frequent, more intense, and longer. ...so how could it NOT adversely effect a newborn!? Additionally, research has demonstrated that Pitocin use to induce labor can double the risk of a surgical delivery (Cesarean Section). According to Birth Certificate data from the CDC 2010 Report and the recently released Listening to Mother Survey III , somewhere between 2...

Empowered Birth Awareness Week is quickly approaching and I am continuing my efforts to draw attention to Evidence-Based Maternity Care and safe birth choices for all women. Birth is an event we all share. I have heard before, that the status of a country, government, or people can be judged off how they treat their most vulnerable, in this case the United States and the American people fare poorly in regards to how our mothers and infants are treated during Birth.   Our modern maternity care system has seen some positive changes, but there is still so much room for growth. Most importantly we need hospitals and Birth professionals to be accountable for the care they provide and women deserve Evidence-Based Care.The long-term effects of obstetrical interventions are finally being realized and we need to change the face of medically managed birth! EMPOWERED BIRTH AWARENESS WEEK is September 3rd-10th.  Here are a few ideas that you can do to support Evidence-Based Maternity Care...