Giving Birth With Confidence

A private philanthropic organization in California that studies brain science sets up a little alarm for pregnant folks who load their baby’s ultrasound picture onto their iPhone to zip around to friends and family. The DANA Foundation alerts us to new research cautioning the rampant use of what so many folks must assume is a [...]

After reading Amy’s April 5 blog on Vitamin D testing, I read a recent piece in the Times Science section and had the gnawing question: Is there a profit-driven reason behind yet another scare about what pregnant women’s bodies need to be tested for now?
Debate is going on among doctors groups on the feasibility and [...]

The internet is abuzz about a new study out of the Netherlands comparing the outcomes of planned home birth with those of planned hospital births in low-risk women. With over half a million women involved in the study, it is the largest of its kind. Its findings provide the best evidence to date that perinatal [...]

A doula friend of mine was telling me recently about the seemingly arbitrary variation she sees across the different hospitals where she attends births. “In one hospital they always turn the epidural off when the woman is ready to push, and in another hospital just a few miles away we had to fight to get [...]

Often, the closer I look at a study, the less confident I become about the results. I’ve learned that you can’t always trust a paper’s title or abstract, and media coverage of new studies can be woefully misleading, even when it is not carefully orchestrated by those with a vested interest (which it often is). [...]