Giving Birth With Confidence

Daniel Edwards’ Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston, a large sculpture of Britney Spears giving birth to her son naturally is due to be displayed at a Brooklyn art gallery next week. It’s causing quite a stir for lots of different reasons. I am most stirred up by the fact that Britney had [...]

Today is a historic day. A panel of experts brought together by the NIH for a State of the Science symposium on “maternal request” cesarean let women and babies down. It’s hard to tell what the back story is. But this is the front story.
Cesarean surgery without clear medical indication increases the risks for mothers [...]

I hope that the physicians and media at the NIH Consensus conference on “maternal request” cesarean take the time to listen to what women have to say on this issue. The timing of the data collection for Listening to Mothers II couldn’t have been more perfect. In January and February the Listening to Mothers II [...]

I’ve had the crazy thought of carrying around a variety of anonymous business-size cards to get the attention of perfect strangers who are doing something that irritates or angers or scares me or someone else. Just slip that person an appropriate card and get out of there. In a perfect world, they’ll stop what they’re [...]

There’s a lot of buzz lately about “maternal request cesareans”. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) opened the door to women choosing to have a cesarean rather than having a normal labor and birth in 2003, by suggesting that the medical evidence was limited, and by suggesting that it was ethical to do [...]