In the world of maternal health, cell phone technology is being used to provide prenatal care, linking pregnant women to health care providers when they can't otherwise reach healthcare facilities.
To try to help people have babies in a healthy way and to celebrate the process of delivering a child which will be healthy is, I think, almost the best part of healthcare.
...thousands of women could be saved each year if they had access to skilled care during pregnancy and childbirth, and access to emergency obstetric care. Most of the interventions they need are simple, affordable, and highly effective.
I'm always amazed when young women who are having babies want their husbands to watch the babies come out. I would never allow anything like that.
Another thing very injurious to the child is the tying and cutting of the navel string too soon, which should always be left till the child has not only repeatedly breathed but till all pulsation in the cord ceases. As otherwise the child is much weaker than it ought to be, a part of the blood being left in the placenta which ought to have been in the child and at the same time the placenta does not so naturally collapse, and withdraw itself from the sides of the uterus, and is not therefore removed with so much safety and certainty.
It would be a mistake, though, to consider care by family doctors or midwives inferior to that offered by obstetricians simply on the grounds that obstetricians need not refer care to a family physician or midwife if no complications develop during a course of labor.
Every woman, whoever she is, wherever she lives, should be able to give birth without the fear she's going to lose her baby or that her baby will lose her mother.
It was very easy for me to dedicate myself to the care of mothers, help them have healthy babies, help them be healthy, help them in a place where they don't have opportunities. Success breeds the excitement to continue going. It's harder to get out of bed when you've failed.
Birth Matters... It matters because it is the way we all begin our lives outside of our source, our mother's bodies. It's the means from which we enter and feel our first impression of the wider world. For each mother, it is an event that shakes and shapes her to her innermost core. Women's perceptions about their bodies and their babies' capabilities will be deeply influenced by the care they receive around the time of birth.
Natural childbirth scares me. I think before you have natural childbirth you should find out how big the baby is. Three pounds -- natural childbirth. Anything over three pounds -- heroin.
All women deserve access to care that can save their lives.
While I was pregnant, I had dozens of checkups. They covered everything from blood tests to ultrasounds, and I even had the option of attending birthing classes with my husband.
Childbirth, as a strictly physical phenomenon, is comparable to driving a United Parcel truck through an inner tube.
I wanted to deliver babies and become a midwife. I think childbirth is one of the most amazing things you could ever experience, and I loved working with people and seeing the joys in family when they welcome a new member to it. It really brought me joy to be around that.
I know we can't always know what medical surprises may happen during childbirth. But my hope is to go fully natural - no epidural, no interventions. Wish me luck.
It is unheard-of, uncivilized barbarism that any woman should still be forced to bear such monstrous torture. It should be remedied. It should be stopped. It is simply absurd that, with our modern science, painless childbirth does not exist as a matter of course.... I tremble with indignation when I think ofthe unspeakable egotism and blindness of men of science who permit such atrocities when they can be remedied.
In some countries, as many as 91 percent of women have no one at their side to assist them during labor and delivery.
I feel I've learned a lot about [experience of giving birth], and I think it's amazing. Men and women who are ob-gyns are pretty amazing.
My big thing is I think women should birth their babies, as long as they're healthy and their doctor says it's OK, however they want, whether that means in the hospital with no drugs, at home with an epidural, elective C-section, whatever.
We see very, very high rates of C-sections, Cesarean sections, in India. Lots of reasons for it, high levels of malnutrition have meant that women have very small pelvic areas often, so if they have larger babies, it's very hard to deliver.
I'm not interested in being Wonder Woman in the delivery room. Give me drugs.
The expert is a midwife. The expert is not someone who has the authority to pronounce the last word on the subject.
When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.
My wife and I would be very comfortable having a baby at home or using one of the terrific nurse-midwives at the hospital.
Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.
