Birth Matters Virginia is soliciting 4-7 minute educational videos about birth in the hopes of reducing the incidence of medically unnecessary c-sections, infant and maternal morbidity, and skyrocketing health care costs. The first-place winner will receive a prize of $1,000. Second place $500 and an “honorable mention” prize of $100 will also be awarded. The deadline for entering the contest is Mother’s Day, May 10, 2009.

Guest judges include: Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein, acclaimed producers of the Business of Being Born and Sarah J. Buckley., MD, international birth expert and author of Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering. Ricki, Abby, and Sarah will join a consumer-based panel of judges who will be evaluating the tone, educational content, creativity and more. You don’t have to be a professional to enter and you don’t have to be from Virginia. We’d love to get videos from mothers, fathers, filmmakers, film students, birth advocates, and anyone else who is interested in birth or film or wants to win $1000.

Birth Matters Virginia advocates “evidence-based” maternity care, which simply means using the best available research on the safety and effectiveness of specific practices to help guide maternity care decisions and to facilitate optimal outcomes in mothers and newborns. There are a lot of ways to approach that topic and lots of opinions on what that means, and we’re looking forward to the variety of entries.

For rules, how to enter, or to sign up for updates, please visit http://www.birthmattersva.org/videocontest.html
You can also join our Facebook group to get updates about the contest and exchange ideas with other participants at
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=73753459808
And if you have questions, email Sarah at Richmond@birthmattersva.org

Even if you don’t plan to make a video or submit an entry, please pass this email on to everyone you can think of, post it on your blog, your Facebook page, Twitter, whatever you can think of! The more people submit videos, the more will be out there on YouTube and we could use all the help we can get spreading the word.

Serious, intelligent women are saying “no” to maternity care that, contrary to what obstetricians and hospitals would lead us to believe, actually increases risk and danger for mother and baby.  Women who choose to give birth at home are making their decisions based on best evidence. If you need to be convinced visit the Cochrane Library, or read A Guide to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth, or read our book. The Childbirth Connection response to the 2006 ACOG policy statement on home birth is also important  reading.

The Cochrane review has not been updated since 1998. At that time there was only one study reviewed and that had a small sample. In spite of that, the recommendation was, and continues to be, that healthy women should not be advised against home birth. That recommendation is based on two realities: there is no evidence (and there never has been) that hospital birth is safer than planned home birth; and, there is no evidence that planned home birth is not as safe as hospital birth.  In 2005 a large study of home birth was published in the British Medical Journal. The study meets all the standards for scientific rigor. The research findings? For a healthy woman having a normal pregnancy, a planned, midwife attended home birth is as safe as a hospital birth and with far lower rates of medical interventions (that bring their own short and long term dangers).

http://www.givingbirthwithconfidence.org/?p=189

http://smallbizbee.com/index/2009/03/30/over-90-field-tested-guerrilla-marketing-tactics/

Looking for some easy ways to get your business noticed? Try one of these quick, fairly easy, and sometimes free guerilla marketing tactics.

This presentation is literally chock full of ideas on who to market your business, and what’s nice many come with real world examples and case studies.

Best viewed with full screen

A short film by five midwives and a doctor in Tanzania documenting the dire conditions of maternal health care in the country has inspired the Tanzanian government to double the number of midwives trained each year.

The 10-minute film, made by midwives trained in participatory film-making, looks at “the appalling conditions in which women have to give birth” in Tanzania and incited government action on maternal health care after it was screened before the Minister of Health (see the full story below). Click here to watch the video.

There are new details and reaction today to a breastfeeding controversy in Asheville.

Crystal Everitt says she was asked to leave Denny’s on Patton Avenue Sunday because she was breastfeeding her child. Denny’s Regional Director Rick Pate tells News 13 complaints poured into management and some patrons left. He says a manager asked Everitt to cover herself or go somewhere more private.

http://www.wlos.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/wlos_vid_2111.shtml

Breastfeeding has been known to benefit a baby’s health in numerous ways, including lowering the risk of asthma, and other illnesses and disorders, later in life.

It also has psychological benefits.

“We know that the breastfeeding creates a bond between the mother and the baby which lasts forever and ever,” notes Edith Kernerman, lactation consultant.

http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_31487.aspx

As a step toward our goal of educating women about their choices and options, we are soliciting short videos about evidence-based maternity and delivery care. We want videos that will appeal to and inspire new audiences that may not have previously been exposed to any model of childbirth other than the version we see on television and in movies: dangerous, uncertain, excruciating, and usually in need of extensive and often emergency medical interventions. Birth doesn’t have to be this scary, and people need good information in order to make good choices.

We are thrilled to announce guest judges:
Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein, acclaimed producers of The Business of Being Born.
Sarah Buckley, M.D., international birth expert and author of Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering.

The first-place winner will receive a cash prize of $1000. Second place: $500 and Honorable Mention: $100.

Deadline for Entry is 11:59pm on Mother’s Day, May 10, 2009

http://www.birthmattersva.org/videocontest.html

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.

http://a.abcnews.com/Entertainment/story?id=6804291&page=1

We first met Katherine and Todd through LocalHarvest.org as our closest Community Supported Agriculture provider. We quickly became interested in their story as small farmers trying to make a living growing food and selling it locally. Needless to say we started documenting work on their farm the week after we signed up for their CSA share. A month into taping, Katherine said “I hope this doesn’t affect the story, but I’m three months pregnant”. As you can see, it didn’t just affect the story, it helped us go deeper into it, focusing on the fact that they were planning a home birth.

http://ryanishungry.com/2009/01/21/home-birth-diy-labor-and-delivery/#

Licensed midwife Aleksandra Evanguelidi (www.SacredEntrance.com) shares what inspired her to become a midwife, what a midwife does, and why she loves being one. 1 of 7 interviews.

A discussion on the topic of Home Birthing and licensing midwives in North Carolina and other U.S. states with Russ Fawcett and Jennifer Block.

“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.

Having a Doula is more popular now than ever before. Part mother’s assistant, part birthing coach, doulas are showing up in delivery rooms and quickly becoming an important part of the maternity healthcare team. Recent studies have shown that the use of a Doula results in improved physical outcomes and emotional well-being of a mother and her infant. JustMommies.com sat down with Cheryl K. Baker, Founder of Birth Partners. Cheryl is a twenty-nine year veteran of the labor room, a DONA certified Labor Doula, a Certified Bradley Educator and a Certified Lactation Educator from UCLA. She has been a birth attendant for hundreds of births and is going to fill us in on everything we need to know about Doulas…

http://www.justmommies.com/videos/doulas.shtml

http://doulavideos.vodpod.com/

View inspiring movies and clips that truly reveal the beauty of bringing a child into the world. These movies come in all different varieties. Some are waterbirth clips while others are of homebirths and hospital births. Some of the selections even have a bit of both.

http://www.givingbirthnaturally.com/childbirth-video.html

This is a ten minute YouTube version of the fund raising video for the film, “The Other Side of the Glass: Finally, A Birth Film for Fathers.”

Part I will be available to buy in late December/early January 2009.

http://www.TheOtherSideoftheGlassthefilm.blogspot.com

Pregnant in America examines the betrayal of humanity’s greatest gift–birth–by the greed of U.S. corporations. Hospitals, insurance companies and other members of the healthcare industry have all pushed aside the best care of our infants and mothers to play the power game of raking in huge profits.

His wife pregnant, first-time filmmaker Steve Buonaugurio set out to create a film that will expose the underside of the U.S. childbirth industry and help end its neglectful exploitation of pregnancy and birth with help from producers Betsy Chasse and Straw Weisman.

http://www.pregnantinamerica.com

The film by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein:

http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/