Giving Birth With Confidence

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 [...]

This week, media outlets shared the news of a new Cochrane review that concludes upright positions are beneficial because they shorten labor by about one hour. The birth blogs have been buzzing about this, and the consensus is that we should feel delighted and vindicated to have the scientific evidence to prove what women 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). [...]