Strollerderby : labor

YouTube Helps Man Deliver Baby

Jen Chaney — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:06:00 GMT

YouTube: It sucks hours away from our lives by allowing us to watch complete episodes of "T.J. Hooker" and annoying videos about a kid named Fred. But evidently it also is (indrectly) responsible for bringing new life into the world.

After watching some how-to videos on YouTube, a British engineer named Marc Stephens delivered his son last month when his wife quickly went into labor. As the BBC reports, Stephens's wife, Jo, reported some discomfort one evening, which prompted her husband to Google "how to deliver a baby." He watched a few videos, just in case. When Jo woke up in the middle of the night already in labor and found that no midwives were available to perform the home birth the couple had planned, Stephens was able to put his recently acquired medical expertise to use. He calmly delivered a healthy 5 lb., 5 oz. baby boy named Gabriel, the fourth addition to the Stephens family.

This is obviously a very happy story (and, possibly, awesome fodder for a future YouTube ad campaign). But a few of the stories that reported this news actually made me laugh out loud, simply because some of the quotes from the Stephens family are so hilarious. Some highlights:

From the BBC: "I Googled how to deliver a baby, watched a few videos and basically swotted up."

Also from the BBC: "This is our fourth child now and while for our first I spent most of the time at my wife's head, now I'm not afraid to go down to the business end."

Then there's this punchline, delivered by Jo Stephens to The Guardian: "I was quite relaxed. I have to say, out of all my four labours, that was the one I enjoyed the most. Marc is one of those people who can put his hand to anything."

Put his hand to anything? You got that right, sister.

Anyway, we here at Strollerderby wish the Stephens family congratulations. And we also offer this link to a YouTube video as a public service to anyone who thinks he or she may have to deliver a baby sometime in the near future. The video delivery takes place in a taxi cab. And (obviously) it involves a fake mommy and a doll baby. But if it worked for Stephens, maybe it can work for you, too.

New Jersey Woman Tweeting While Giving Birth

Brett Singer — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Melissa Skabich of Cedar Grove, New Jersey is 39 weeks pregnant. She is being induced today due to high blood pressure. You can read more about it on her blog. You can also follow the delivery process live via Twitter. So, what's for dinner? I was thinking hamburgers, but I guess we had that once already...

Wait, what?

Yes, Melissa will be tweeting. Not before. Not after. DURING. DELIVERY.

My initial reaction is summed up by this commenter at NJ.com: "Worry about giving birth to your child, not tweeting. You twit." I would have left out the "twit" part, but I understand the frustration.

On the other hand, what's the harm? If she's into it, that's cool, right?

Mostly it seems like an unnecessary distraction. Isn't being in labor difficult enough without being concerned about tweeting? I'm also wondering if her doctor will tell her to put the darn Blackberry away and focus on pushing. This is her third kid, so I guess she knows what she's doing.

What do you think? Would you tweet while giving birth? Or is this just plain silly?

You can follow Melissa on Twitter at twitter.com/mommyblogger76.

Source: NJ.com

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Home Birth: A Right or a Must?

JeanneSager — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:38:00 GMT

I wasn't surprised to read Melanie Reid's assumption that home birthing moms are all sandal-wearing hippie freaks (OK, I added that last part). It's the way a lot of people look at women who decided to deliver a baby at home. That's not to say I agreed with her.

But even with her narrow description of the type of woman who decides to give birth at home, Reid's piece in the Times of London this week hit upon some pretty shocking numbers: home birthing is on the rise after decades of decline, but so too are the numbers of people pushing to make home birth THE way to give birth.

And that, I have to admit, I'm not kosher with.

Because for all the wonderful things that home birth offers, and all the reasons I think it should be available to any mother who wants to try it, the one thing I have heard from most moms who have actually given birth at home is that what empowered them to do it was knowing the hospital was just a phone call - and an ambulance ride - away should they need it.

I'm not sure if Reid has met your average home birther, to be honest. She calls the countries where home birthing rates are low as the "sensible" ones, and calls hospitals"the only intelligent, progressive, logical place to give birth." Ask your average home birthing advocate, and she will actually tell you hospitals ARE progressive, intelligent, logical places to give birth - if you need them. The truly sensible home birthers decided to make the choice based on medical assessments, which you very well might call progressive - considering back in the day there was no doctor checking for fetal distress before a woman on the prairie gave birth in her house. If the hospital becomes necessary, the sensible homebirthers say OK, and get there . . . pronto.

As our own home birthing Strollerderby writer Madeline Holler pointed out in her Babble essay on the topic, when she asked her midwife all the what ifs, the dangerous ones pointed to a trip to the hospital - no matter what:

What if the cord slips out before the baby? (We go straight to the hospital.) Bleeding? (Hospital.) Premature labor? (Hospital.)

But, as Reid explains, there's a difference between helping women to realize their dreams of a homebirth and actively advocating we all head in that direction. Wales actually put out a target of having at least ten percent of women give birth at home (this was in 2002, and their target year was 2007 - they're two years past and nowhere near it).

Why?

Because for all its advantages (and there are plenty - read Madeline's essay, she's been there, done that, and can explain them much better than a hospital birther like me), the hospital birth remains its back up because it has something a home can't have: the means to deal with complications. Midwives have modern medical training and are fantastic for your average birth, but outside of a hospital setting, if something DOES go wrong, where do they send you? You got it.

Which means pushing women to have a homebirth, rather than simply accommodating those who want to give it a go, does indeed put us back toward the dark ages. It means putting more women at risk, more babies at risk. The reason a select few women give birth at home in countries like the U.K. and the U.S. is not only because, as Reid claims "We're squeamish. We are hardwired to go to hospital and have our babies there. It's what we do. It's in our modern DNA."

It's because that's a better option for a lot of women. Not all. But a lot. Women like me who had to have pitocin adminstered because my daughter just WOULD NOT come out. Or women like my friend whose son had been improperly measured by her midwife and came out with shoulder distortion because he was just too darn big for her tiny frame. It's better for women with pre-existing conditions, babies with elevated heart rates.

Pushing for the opposite, pushing women to return to their homes, to take away their access to the modern advances of technology heightens the risks for women, gives insurance companies the excuse NOT to cover services and demeans the needs many women experience during labor and delivery. So some women can do just fine in a birthing pool at home. So some women make it through balancing on a ball in their bedroom. Not all of us can.

Very simply: it's one thing to chose a home birth. It's another to get the most out of home birth.

Image: TrueBirth

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Baby Born in Penn Station During Rush Hour

Brett Singer — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Rush hour in New York is so dull. Pushing, shoving, playing the old "how many people can we fit into this subway car" game. A couple of days ago, commuters heard something new:

"Forget the ambulance ... I'm going to have the baby right here."

Well then. You go right ahead, Miss. As Susan Wagner at ParentDish wrote, "And you thought your commute was rough this morning."

Marie Boothe went into labor at Penn Station in New York City on Wednesday (she was on her way to the hospital with her husband), and successfully delivered a baby boy with the help of three members of the NYPD counter-terrorism patrol team, as well as an Amtrak police officer. Adhering to cries of, "'Name him Penn, after Penn Station!" from the crowd, Marie named her seven-pound bundle of joy Caesar Penn Boothe.

I wonder if counter-terrorism officers, or Amtrak police, receive training in labor and delivery. Somehow I doubt it, but maybe.

Mother and baby are doing well, proving that yes, you can give birth just about anywhere. Doesn't mean you have to, but if it happens, hey, go with it.

Anyone give birth someplace a little different?

Image/Source: CNN via ParentDish via Babble

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Woman In Labor Calls Radio Station To Find Husband

Cole Gamble — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:00:00 GMT

In this age of communication advancement, (cell phones, texting, twittering, IM, Facebook pokes, etc) it’s so easy for people to reach you; you almost wish it wasn’t so easy. But communication is important, like say, when your wife goes into labor. That’s something you want to know, so thank heavens you have this massive communications super structure to keep you in touch.

Of course that all falls apart if you leave your phone at home.

In Portland, Oregon, A woman in labor couldn't get in touch with her husband because he left his cell phone at home. Stuck in a desperate situation, the woman got innovative and sought to reach her husband by what would be in today’s technologically advanced environment, the equivalent of sending smoke signals: she called local radio station 97.1 Charlie FM.

She told morning hosts Dr. Doug and Skippy that her husband listens to the show every day and didn't know of any other way to reach him.

"I am in labor with our first baby, and my husband has left his cell phone at home. I have no way to get a hold of him other than you guys. He faithfully listens to you every single morning. So hopefully he is listening right now. Dan, you need to get to the hospital. We are having our baby," the woman said.

So perhaps our sophisticated communication system can sometimes fail, but on the plus side, people apparently still listen to the radio.

And for the record, Dr. Doug is not a real doctor.

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UPS Guy Really Delivers

Amy Kuras — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:02:00 GMT

What can brown do for you? Well, for UPS delivery driver Craig Ramirez, he took “rapid delivery” to a whole new level last week when he delivered his fifth kid in his living room. In the dark, no less.

Ramirez’s wife Lisa woke him at 3:30 am to tell him she was in labor. They’d been through this four previous times, so they both felt they knew the drill. However, Lisa was putting on her shoes at the front door, ready to head to the hospital, when she started yelling that she felt the head.

His reaction was about the same as mine would be in the same situation: "I said, 'No, it can't be coming. It can't. That's not even in the realm of reality.'"

He called 911, but there wasn’t enough time to get there. Lisa stood up and leaned on the sofa, and Craig put his hands on his daughter’ head, and helped her slip out into the world.

He said he was guided by what he’s seen the doctors do in the births of their previous four children, but was pretty terrified. "I thought, 'I can't do this.' But there was nothing else I could do. It was me. That's it. I said, 'Craig, it's all you, man.' "

The 911 operator told him to tie off the cord, which he did, and the paramedics arrived totake them to the hospital to get checked over.

Little Amelia Yvonne and her mother are doing fine. And dad is taking tons of ribbing from his fellow delivery drivers.

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Move Over Angie's List: It's the Birth Survey

Miriam Axel-Lute — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:30:00 GMT

The Internet is a wonderful thing for making our opinions known: We can rate our professors, our Amazon purchases, our contractors, and our favorite blog posts (hint, cough). Why not our midwives and doctors and hospitals?

After a pilot in New York City, the Coalition for the Improvement of Maternity Services has launched The Birth Survey to collect detailed information about mothers' experiences with their pre-natal, labor and delivery, and post-partum care. If you've given birth in the last three years, I strongly urge you to go fill it out. The sooner they get a volume of responses, the sooner other parents can get meaningful information on the options in their area. (NYC parents can already view the pilot data here.)

The survey is anonymous, and takes about 20 minutes (longer probably if you're ranking more than one care giver, which you have the option to do). It gives you almost entirely questions that are relevant to you based on your previous answers, which makes it much more pleasant to fill out than many surveys, especially on something that can go as many different ways as birth.

The questions focus on issues that feed into CIMS's 10 Steps to Mother-Friendly Childbirth, especially things like how much support and information care providers gave and how well they listened and respected parents' wishes, as well as breastfeeding support provided and what sorts of procedures were done during labor and delivery and what rationales were given for them.

I also took the demo survey to see what kind of questions they asked about hospital births, and though it's clear they are concerned about high c-section rates, for example, I think they did a good job of being non-judgmental and focused on the mother's experience and assessment. And in case the survey brings up bad memories for anyone who had even half as miserable an experience as Catherine Skol (the Chicago mom suing her abusive OB), they also provide links to networks of counselors experienced in helping with birth trauma at the end of the survey.

If you've always wanted to officially record your displeasure with or your gratitude for (or ambivalence about) your birth attendants, now's the time!

Photo by peretzpup.

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They Say: Planning to Work Until the First Contraction? Plan for Surgery.

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Women who worked up until their due date had four times the rate of c-sections as women who started their maternity leave at 35 weeks, a new study from UC Berkeley has found.

Now, I'm not sure how you can control for self-selection in that kind of study. I imagine that women starting their maternity leave early are both more likely to be placing a priority on their birth experience and better off financially, each of which could affect their outcomes. (I'm assuming they excluded people with scheduled c-sections from the study.)

On the other hand, the results were is four times as likely, not a titchy 10 to 15 percent or something. That, as Dr. Seuss might say, is a whopping number, and it makes me inclined to think there really is something going on here.

It's not really hard to imagine what either: On the one hand, there's the stress of trying to do your job with an open-ended question of whether you might have to leave at a moment's notice, trying to have things ready and yet still work, with bosses and people who are going to step into your shoes watching you anxiously. And other hand, there's the stress of trying to decide when/if you have to leave when contractions start, whether you're up for driving yourself home, when to call the family, and then changing gears in an instant from worker to woman-in-labor. Hardly optimal conditions.

I was lucky: Since I was leaving my job instead of taking maternity leave, it was easier for me to choose to set my last day at 35 weeks. And I have to say, since my daughter came early (37 weeks and 2 days), I'm extremely glad I did. Even though you never exactly feel prepared, having tied up loose ends, cleared out my desk and said my goodbyes and then taking those two weeks free of deadline pressure and office details to sleep/nest/prepare felt wonderful. It may be the closest thing to taking a complete vacation without traveling I've ever done. Can I prove that that helped with my fairly uncomplicated birth? Of course not, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I know how much of a luxury that sounds like to so many people. I sure as hell couldn't blithely skip five (or even two) weeks of work now. In general, it's hard enough to get maternity or paternity leave at all, and the UC Berkeley researchers, while advocating strongly that maternity leave start earlier, note that people who choose to work up to their due date (or up to their labor as the case often is) are usually doing so because they can't afford maternity leave after the birth otherwise, and clearly that trumps.

I guess for now we can add the health advantages they've identified to the list of casualties of our work-over-family culture.

Image from Take Back Your Time.

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JeanneSager — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:28:00 GMT

Freezing my tuchus off in New York this week, the story of the mom who delivered in her freezing cold Connecticut car warmed those cockles.

Husband and wife had apparently made it outside of the house and into the car on the way to the hospital when their baby's head started pushing its way out. Dad did the only thing he could think to do - he called the cops.

The dispatcher grabbed a trooper, put him on the phone and pulled out a medical book. Reading off instructions to Trooper First Class Carlo Marandola - so he could relay them to the parents, dispatcher Nancy Martin helped make sure the umbilical cord was unwrapped from around the baby boy's neck before calling on the fire department to send an ambulance straight to the waiting car. The fire department in the parents' native Norwalk was already tied up with weather-related accidents, however, so their son's rush to get here meant a wait in the car. With temperatures below freezing, mom's body temperature kept the baby warm during the twelve minutes it took for emergency workers to arrive.

Baby and mom (and dad too) are all doing fine, nice and toasty now.

If that doesn't put being cold in perspective, eh, your cockles will never be warm!

Image: BeSafeInternational

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The Hello Kitty Maternity Ward

SunnyChanel — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Hello Kitty is everywhere, and pert near everything. Now you, yes you, can brand the birth of your child with Sanrio magic. A 30-Bed hospital in central Taiwan has created a Hello Kitty themed maternity ward, for those wanting to cute up their birth journey. The newborns are wrapped in pink and blue receiving blankies, the room décor is dolled up with cute kitties, all the linens are Hello Kitty branded, and the nurses wear official Hello Kitty uniforms.

"I wish that everyone who comes here, mothers who suffer while giving birth and children who suffer from an illness, can get medical care while seeing these kitties and bring a smile to their faces, helping forget about discomfort and recover faster," the director of the hospital told Reuters. He opened the hospital because his mom, wife and his daughter all liked the Hello Kitty character. You can check out a video about the hospital here.

Would you make any kind of special effort to deliver your baby in a themed maternity ward? And if so, what kind of theme would you want?

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