Voting for Robin Lim is a vote for:

Gentle Birth for Mother & Child Survival ~ Culturally Sensitive Natural Community Health Care & Disaster Relief, Midwife to Mother Care to effectively save lives kindly. Imagine a world in which each child is born with an intact capacity to LOVE & Trust... this is the world Midwives work day & night to build.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cnn.heroes/archive11/robin.lim.html

Hello all!

The attorneys of Legal Advocates for Birth Options and Rights (LABOR) are asking women who have experienced a transfer to the hospital after a planned home birth or birth center birth to please share their stories so that we may use them in support of our research, public education, and advocacy efforts.

We will be sharing these statements with hospital administrators, physicians, nurses, and other hospital staff, as well as with legislators and policy makers, in order to raise awareness about the institutional barriers facing women who plan an out-of-hospital birth. Our goal is to develop effective solutions to ensure that all pregnant and laboring women experience respectful continuity of care, regardless of birth setting. We are looking for stories that shed light on the range of experiences women have in transferring to the hospital from home or a birth center, including the positive as well as the negative.

Attached is a declaration form that we are asking participants to use to ensure that their experiences may not be dismissed as made-up or exaggerated "stories." To this end, we cannot honor requests for anonymity. We do, however, hope that you are inspired to step forward and make your voice heard.

Please fill out the attached form and email it to us at birthlawyerresearch@gmail.com

You may also direct questions to the above email address.

May thanks for your support of this project!


-LABOR is a community of attorneys whose mission is to develop the legal tools and policies necessary to uphold the rights of pregnant and laboring women and to secure access to the full range of birth options for all women

http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/national-c-section-rate-highest-ever-study-says-11553

More than one in three babies in the U.S. is now delivered by cesarean section, according to a study released today by the hospital quality tracking group HealthGrades.

Thirty-four percent of single-baby births in 2009 were done surgically, the highest percentage ever. The study – based on data from 19 states, including California – reflects the growing popularity of C-sections, whose use increased by more than 50 percent from 1996 to 2007. The study also rates individual hospital performance based on maternal care and gynecologic surgery.

California ranked eighth among the 19 states in the rate of C-section use, at 32.82 percent.

"This is a big issue, and this is actually going to come under a lot of scrutiny in the coming year," said Dr. Elliott Main, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cali­fornia Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. "A lot of organizations and bodies are going to start paying a lot more attention."

While C-sections most often are used when complications arise during labor, the study says changing physician practices, such as inducing labor and a desire by physicians and patients to schedule convenient times for labor, may be leading to the increase. Risk factors that could lead to necessary C-sections – including obesity, diabetes, multiple births and older pregnant women – also are more common, though Main says they account for only a small portion of the increase.

"It's more an attitudinal issue of doctors and patients not wanting to spend extra time in labor or not wanting to take any perceived extra risk," he said.

According to quality measures set out by The Joint Commission, a leading health care ac­creditation group, no data exists to show “that higher rates improve any outcomes, yet the C-section rates continue to rise.”

Main echoed that idea. "At the end of the day, the C-section rate has risen ... over the past decade, and we don't have any improved baby outcomes to show for it, so there is a big question of what we are getting for our money," he said.

In fact, hemorrhaging from C-sections is one of several possible factors in the state’s in­creased maternal death rate, the subject of a California Watch report last year. The number of women in California who died from pregnancy-related complications rose from 5.6 out of 100,000 live births in 1996 to 14 out of 100,000 in 2008. Only about 30 percent of that in­crease can be accounted for by improvements in the reporting of deaths.

A study [PDF] released this year by the California Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review Committee, which Main leads, says more research is needed on the relationship between C-sections and maternal deaths.

"It's actually a very hard one to tease apart, what the role of C-section is in maternal mortal­ity," Main said, "but we do know it causes increased morbidity, or complications, so the thought is if you do enough of them, you're going to see more direct complications."

Main said the main risk comes when women have a second, third or fourth C-section. As the procedure's use increases, more women will have multiple C-sections, meaning the risks will be increasingly present in the future.

Although cesarean sections generally are a safe option for giving birth, The Joint Commission and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality both have endorsed reducing their use in certain types of pregnancies, the study says.

"Part of the problem is that no one has said – either the medical community or the public or the insurance companies – that we’re doing too many C-sections," Main said. "In the absence of that kind of pressure, it has floated up like a balloon."

In the study's other findings:

While the use of C-sections is increasing, the number of hysterectomies is falling. Hysterec­tomies, surgeries to remove the uterus, still account for nearly 80 percent of all gyneco­logic surgeries, but the number of hysterectomies has decreased by 31 percent since 2002, mostly thanks to the availability of less invasive treatments.

The study gave hospitals in the 19 states ratings of one, three or five stars based on mater­nal care and gynecologic surgery between 2007 and 2009. In California, 57 hospitals received five stars for maternal care, and 117 received five stars for gynecologic sur­gery. To see how a specific hospital fared, search for it here.

About 7 percent of women in single-baby labor and 9 percent of women having gynecologic surgery experienced complications while in the hospital. The study estimates that 32 percent of complications during delivery (141,869) and 35 percent of complications dur­ing surgery (30,675) could have been prevented if all of the hospitals had performed at the level of the five-star winners.

"Women can optimize their chances for receiving the highest possible quality of care by researching and comparing the clinical outcomes of hospitals and doctors in their area," Dr. Divya Cantor, senior physician consultant at HealthGrades, said in a statement.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/jun/03/orgasmic-birth/

SAN DIEGO — The vast majority of mothers in the U.S. give birth in a hospital. They’re usually hooked up to a fetal monitor or other medical device. And they often get pain medication to help them through what many consider to be an agonizing experience.

View image
Photo by KPBS
Above: Ebony Manchion had Charles Jr. at a San Diego midwife-run birth center in April. She says she’s glad she gave birth the all-natural way.

View image
Photo by KPBS
Above: San Diego midwife Michelle Freund says childbirth can be a pleasurable, even a sensual experience.
Enlarge this image
Photo by KPBS
Above: UCSD OBGYN Yvette LaCoursiere agrees that childbirth has become medicalized in the U.S. But she says that’s not without reason.
But a growing number of mothers-to-be are choosing a different approach.

At Cal State San Marcos, the sound of a woman in ecstasy echoes through a classroom.
“Oh, oh, oh…..”
This woman isn't having sex. She’s having a baby.
It's a clip from a documentary called Orgasmic Birth.
The theme of the movie is childbirth can be pleasurable, even a sensual experience.

Michelle Freund is a licensed midwife in San Diego.

"In a home setting, the comfort of your own home," Freund said, "it’s really easy to get into an intimate, juicy groove, and really allow the natural process to unfold.

Freund said with the right mindset and the right atmosphere, a woman can have what she calls an ecstatic birth.

But Freund argued the glories of childbirth have been lost in modern society. She said birth has been turned into a medical procedure, with a doctor at the helm.

"The doctor’s sort of saying this is what we’re gonna do and this is how we’re gonna get your baby out," Freund said. "And they quote unquote deliver a woman’s baby. I believe a woman delivers her own baby. And she’s self-empowered."

That’s the experience Ebony Manchion was looking for with her baby.
Manchion gave birth to little Charles Jr. on April 17th at a midwife-run birth center in San Diego.

Manchion said when she arrived at the birth center, she and her husband were pretty much left alone in a quiet room.

They lit some candles, got into a big tub, and held each other.
"We were laboring for about three hours," Manchion recalls, "and then, the last 15 minutes of the birth, is when my nurse-midwife came, and she caught the baby. So it was like, not really too supervised. So it just was very natural.

Contrast that with many hospital births.

On the second floor of UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, a woman in labor lies flat on her bed.

A fetal monitor is strapped to her bulging stomach. The device allows medical staff to keep track of the baby’s heartbeat.

This woman may be given the drug Pitocin to speed up the labor process. And in the final stages, she might get an epidural to block the pain.
OBGYN Yvette LaCoursiere stands outside the woman’s room.

The UCSD doctor doesn’t disagree with people who say 'we’ve medicalized birth in this country.' But she said over the last 30 years or so, some of that has become necessary.

"We went from a time where young, healthy women were having babies," Dr. LaCoursiere points out, "to a time now where maternal age is advancing, to more diabetic pregnancies, more obese pregnancies, more multiple pregnancies, and higher rates of pre-term delivery, requiring this level of care."

Dr. LaCoursiere said the vast majority of women can have a normal birth with few, if any interventions. But….

"It’s often difficult to tell who the one will be that has the normal delivery, and who will end up with a slow, protracted labor, " she warned, "or a non-reassuring fetal heart rate tracing, or something that makes us intervene."
That’s why a growing number of maternity hospitals like UCSD offer a natural birth option, where women can deliver their baby with the help of a midwife. If problems arise, doctors can be at the bedside at a moment’s notice.

San Diego midwife Michelle Freund said the way a woman gives birth is important.

"Women who experience natural birth, it’s an imprint in a woman’s life," Freund emphasized. "It’s rewarding, and for the baby, as well. When it’s a gentle birth experience, the bonding is uninterrupted; their connection is more enhanced.

More and more American women are looking for that.

A new study reveals home births in the U.S. rose 20 percent between 2004 and 2008.

Reunion - March 2011 > More Photos