Every time Ruth Lubic fusses over a healthy baby, the joy in her voice comes from eight long years of beating the odds. In Washington, D.C., where the infant mortality rate is almost double the national average, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of infant deaths per 1,000 births in the United States is 6.8 – but in Washington, it’s 12.2.
Lubic and her team of midwives run a birthing clinic in one of the city’s poorest areas. After 800 babies in eight years, they have never lost a child in childbirth, and has cut the rate of premature births – the biggest risk factor for infant mortality – in half.
Midwifery is the answer to the question, “how can we afford national health care?” If every motherbaby were attended by a non-interventive but knowledgeable midwife, a national health care program would save billions of dollars on the four million births that occur in the US each year.
Our Bodies, Ourselves is seeking nominations for their “Women’s Health Heroes” contest. I can think of many women I’d like to nominate and hope to have a chance to do so soon. Here is some more information about the contest from OBOS:
When you hear the words “Women’s Health Hero,” who comes to mind? Your 9th grade health teacher who taught you about sexually transmitted infections? The midwife who sat with you through 15 hours of labor? The young Nigerian activist you read about who’s working to end gender discrimination in her country? Or maybe the neighbor who counter-protests at the abortion clinic every Saturday morning?
Whoever your heroes are, we want to know about them! We’ve created the Our Bodies Ourselves Women’s Health Heroes awards to honor those who make significant contributions to the health and well-being of women. It’s a great way to publicly recognize people who make a difference in your life or the lives of others.
Steffany Hedenkamp has experienced more in 35 years than many people have in a lifetime.
She’s lived on her own since she was 16, earned a full-ride scholarship to Carnegie Mellon University and had two home births. She started her own communications company, worked on Kay Barnes’ mayoral campaign, met Matt Damon and Army Gen. David Petraeus, and once got a thank-you letter from a little-known senator named Barack Obama.
Recently she designed a national campaign to get midwives licensed in all 50 states.
We are a dedicated group of individuals and families from across the state of Iowa working to ensure that Iowans have access to home birth as one of many safe childbirth options. Our success depends on your support and participation.
We currently have active chapters in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area, Central Iowa, and the Quad Cities.
Two major health care organizations have joined the growing number of groups calling on policy makers to increase access to Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) and out-of-hospital maternity care. Acknowledging the large body of evidence supporting the safety of home delivery with CPMs, who are specifically trained to care for mothers and babies in out-of-hospital settings, nursing and perinatal health care organizations criticized the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) resolutions calling for bans on CPMs and home birth. The groups also joined Consumer Reports magazine in highlighting the need for a major overhaul of the U.S. maternity care system.
Jan 28, 2009, California – A series of life-sized photographs of women breastfeeding their babies, cut-out and plastered on poster board, are going to be displayed over Marin County starting today. It’s part of an eye-catching campaign to encourage breastfeeding and promote the acceptance of breastfeeding in public. The campaign will expand to the rest of the county in the coming weeks.
When actress and producer Salma Hayek arrived in Sierra Leone in September, she was not whisked off to a movie set. She was there not as a celebrity, but as a humanitarian, to see firsthand a leading cause of death in the developing world: tetanus. “Nightline” co-anchor Cynthia McFadden went along to document the journey.
With health care costs high on the national agenda, advocates of home births are challenging the medical and political establishments to give midwives a larger role in maternity care and to ease the state laws that limit their out-of-hospital practice.
Pending bills to further this goal have significant backing in several states, which home-birth supporters want to add to the 25 states that already have taken such steps.
We are just finished up our new book called “Your Best Birth” which deals with exactly that question! The book will be out in May 2009. But I think you need to spend time educating yourself about delivery options and then deciding where you would feel most comfortable.
If you are interested in seeking out a midwife or a birth center, you need to make sure that you are a good candidate for that type of birth and that your insurance will cover it. For a hospital birth, you should check out all the options in your area and find out the hospitals intervention statistics and the C-section rate of the practice your are using.
“Birth Right” is a short documentary created by Emily Jackson and Neeta Kirpalani, students in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Ethnographic Filmmaking class, which explores the efforts of the Alabama Birth Coalition to legalize Certified Professional Midwife- attended home birth. In times past the state of Alabama licensed thousands of state-trained midwives who served Alabama’s families. Today there are zero legally-recognized midwives providing home birth services.
The Alabama Birth Coalition unites groups and individuals that are committed to improving access to natural childbirth options for women, families and communities in Alabama. Our goal is to provide a statewide grassroots network connecting Members with services that support the goal of natural childbirth and respect parents’ rights to make the appropriate health care decisions for their families.
The American Association of Birth Centers has issued an appeal to supporters to contact Congress concerning a payment crisis that threatens insurance support for birth centers around the country.
After more than 20 years of providing funding, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) — the federal agency that runs Medicare/Medicaid — is now refusing to pay the federal percentage of Medicaid payments that states might make to birth centers.
“This is not a Medicaid crisis but a payment crisis for birth centers,” according to the AABC. “Historically all payers follow the lead of Medicaid. If Medicaid stops paying the birth center facility fee so will other insurers.”
The Big Push for Midwives is a nationally coordinated campaign to advocate for regulation and licensure of Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, and to push back against the attempts of the American Medical Association Scope of Practice Partnership to deny American families access to legal midwifery care.
Childbirth experts want women to know that they have more options than they think. ” A lot of people think that it is a medical necessity to be in the hospital, and really 90 percent of births actually are fine and completely normal,” said Heather Paris, a childbirth educator. “It’s a different idea that women would choose to give birth without drugs,” said Clarice Winkler, a certified nurse midwife. And they want mothers in Mid-Michigan to get used to that idea, that’s why they’re bringing natural child birth awareness to Lansing, a place they say alternative childbirth options are few and far between.
In December of 2001, Maddy Oden’s daughter, Tatia Oden French, entered a well-known and well-respected hospital to deliver her first child. She was 32 years old, in perfect health, and looking forward to a natural childbirth. There were no problems during the pregnancy. According to her doctor’s calculations, she was a little under 2 weeks overdue. She was given the drug Cytotec (Misoprostol) to induce her labor. Ten hours after being administered Cytotec, Tatia suffered hyperstimulation of her uterus, an amniotic fluid embolism was released, and an emergency C-Section was performed because the baby was also in distress. Both Tatia and her baby Zorah died in the operating room.