Democrats were successful at passing the first major health care legislation since the New Deal. This is great news for moms and babies. The law has added the following provisions related to maternal/pregnancy and birth health care:

Medicaid reimbursement will be available for Certified Professional Midwives working in licensed birthing centers. I am hoping this will open up the door for midwives to open up birthing centers all across the nation, allowing low income women living in rural and underserved areas better access to midwifery-based maternal and child care. This is a win-win situation for women and midwives-hopefully providing choices in health care that more effectively address the cultural differences in the communities where these women live. When women feel honored, and are being cared for and served by providers that understand their culture, language and social norms, it will create an environment of support and empathy-rather than one that may leave women feeling scared and powerless at a very vulnerable time in their lives. Midwives can now effectively serve these women knowing that their work will be paid for by insurance.

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Pam is the author of Birthing From Within, a former midwife, and she’s been teaching childbirth classes for 30 years!

You will learn:

-practical knowledge every parent needs to know;
-a variety of mindfulness practices to help you cope with the intensity and unknown of labor and your postpartum return;
-how to ask questions and get information;
-how to cultivate confidence for labor or postpartum;
-how to welcome your baby;
-tips for your transition to parenthood and
-a Special Class to prepare fathers/partners for labor and postpartum;

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If you are pregnant or know anyone who is or has a baby in the last three years, please steer them in the direction of this site: The Birth Survey.

It was developed by the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services. They “believe that women of childbearing age must have access to information that will help them choose maternity care providers and institutions that are most compatible with their own philosophies and needs. We hope that the Transparency in Maternity Care Project will provide information that will help women make fully informed maternity care decisions.”

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Thank goodness for the ACLU. They have taken on the case of Samantha Burton, who at 25 weeks started experiencing premature labor and was told by her doctor to remain on bed rest for the rest of her pregnancy. When she explained that she had two toddlers at home and would unlikely be able to achieve complete bed rest and did not want to stay in the hospital, she was court ordered by the hospital to remain on bed rest to “preserve the life and health of [her] unborn child.” Sadly, she miscarried three days later.

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I had previously posted about my interest in and practice of Reiki. In the first week of January I finally attended my Reiki training and got attuned to Level 1. Very exciting stuff.

I had no idea what was going to happen because ‘attunement’ is such strange thing really. Basically you are subject to a ritual and no one knows why it works, but its purpose is to allow you to channel universal energy without having the energy of the person you are working on come back into you. This is important because using healing energy on others can make you sick if you are not careful. Attunement will also help make the conduit of energy stronger. My instructor, Shari Krauser explained how attunement can also effect your life in other ways. People have been known to manifest long-desired dreams, and become more intuitive and almost psychic.

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On January 3rd, Lifetime Channel announced its plans to air a TV movie called “The Pregnancy Pact”, based on a ‘true’ story about The 18 Gloucester, Mass teens who in 2008 supposedly made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. (This will air on January 23rd)

The ‘true’ about the story is questionable. As the story goes, there were 18 girls between the ages of 14-16 who became pregnant in the same year and seemed happy about it. Time magazine, who broke the story said they had created a pact. According to the article, these teens perceived that there was no other opportunity for their future other than motherhood and teen mothers were ‘overly encouraged’ to bring their babies to school. It was actually cool to be pregnant because ‘you got extra attention and you will get all that unconditional love from your baby and stuff’.

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Did you know?

There are currently 223 federal NuvaRing suits pending in the MDL, with another 90 cases filed in various state courts throughout the United States. All of the claims involve allegations that problems with NuvaRing caused women to suffer blood-clot related injuries, such as pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), stroke, heart attack or sudden death.

I decided to look and see the safety records of other hormonal birth control methods to compare. Many have been recalled and of the ones on the market, it seems that none are 100% safe and many (if not all) have at least one death associated with its use.
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This article is filled with good news. I love good news. Apparently there has been an ‘unexplainable’ drop in infant mortality rates in one certain county (Dane) in Illinois over the last 20 years and they are just scratching their heads even though all the ‘evidence’ as to why is sitting right there in front of them. DUH.

One huge issue in our country is the very high infant mortality rate among African American women due to premature deliveries. Nationwide for 2007, according to the latest federal data, infant mortality was 6 per 1,000 for whites and 13 for blacks-up to 20 per 1,000 in some areas. Dane county was hovering around 19 deaths per 1,000 births back in the early 1990’s. Now it is down to 5. “The steep decline, reaching parity with whites, is particularly intriguing, experts say, because obstetrical services for low-income women in the county have not changed that much.” according to the article.

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Any women who is or has been pregnant within the last 20 years or so has heard about the benefits of taking folic acid.  Folic acid is Vitamin B9. The natural form of the vitamin, called folate, is found in spinach, broccoli, beans, and peas.  Health professsionals have recommend that pregnant women take folic acid supplements to ward off the potentially fatal condition of spina bifida (a condition where part of the spinal cord is exposed).

Now, a new study has just been released drawing connections between high levels of Vitamin B9 in later pregnancy and the instances of asthma among young children.  This finding only exists if women took supplements-not if they ate lots of green, leafy vegetables.

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The first priority group for the H1N1 flu vaccine will be pregnant women.  The outbreak in pregnant women is quite a bit higher than the general population and there have been a greater number of deaths in the pregnant population-all were in women who had developed pneumonia and subsequent acute respiratory distress syndrome requiring mechanical ventilation.

Pregnant women typically have weakened immune systems due to the pregnancy and have less lung capacity because the growing baby is taking up space.  These factors make them more vulnerable to pneumonia.  Pneumonia can lead to systemic infection and possibly death.  I don’t mean to be alarmist, but this is serious business.

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