Three Rivers Birth Services

When you are pregnant, one of the most important — and most frustrating — tasks is picking your care provider (doctor or midwife) and place of birth.  We hear from friends how we really must go to Dr. X – but do we really know why they liked this doctor and how our friend’s philosophy of birth matches our own?

Now there is a new tool collecting data from real women’s birth experiences by hospital, birth center, and provider. So far, data is only available for New York City, as that is where the pilot of the study took place, but word is definitely getting out about the project and it shouldn’t take long before we have information from our area.  If you have given birth in the last three years, whatever the experience and whatever your desires for birth were, I urge you to please GO TO THIS WEBSITE NOW and take the survey. Also, please pass on the link to everyone you know who gave birth in our community so we can have access to a rich, broad range of subjects.  It’s a beautiful way to “pay it forward” so future pregnant women can make more informed decisions about their birth attendants and location, whatever their preferences.

As part of the Transparency in Maternity Care Project, the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS) developed The Birth Survey as a free online resource for new mothers in the United States to share their consumer reviews of doctors, midwives, hospitals and birth centers, learn about the choices and birth experiences of others, and view data on hospital and birth center standard practices and intervention rates.

Women who have given birth within the past three years can take the anonymous online consumer feedback survey. The survey asks mothers a variety of questions about their satisfaction with their maternity care providers and birth setting, and includes their feedback in the results. In addition to the consumer data, the Web site will begin to list obstetrical intervention data for each hospital as provided by state Departments of Health. The Birth Survey is designed to help women find quality providers and birth settings that are the best match for their needs and lifestyles. Providers and facilities also will be able to utilize The Birth Survey as a consumer feedback and quality improvement tool.

Release Date: Aug 9 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dr. Mike Hargadon, candidate for Congress in District 7, questioned last
month’s decision by the American Medical Association (AMA) to support
proposed legislation that could outlaw planned homebirths. “Is this about
safety or better birth outcomes? No, it’s about money and it’s about the
AMA trying to protect its turf, plain and simple,” said Dr. Hargadon.
“Study after study has shown that births attended by midwives outside of a
hospital are just as safe, and maybe even safer, than hospital births.”

Elaborating on why the AMA would support such legislation, Dr. Hargadon
continued, “Midwifery is a fast-growing industry. More families are
choosing to have births attended by a midwife, rather than by an OB/GYN. It
also costs significantly less to give birth outside of a hospital setting.
So it comes as no surprise that the AMA would support making homebirthing
illegal. They’re losing money and losing market share.”

Dr. Hargadon made it clear that he strongly opposes this attack on freedom
and entrepreneurship. “Here you have a group of women who are successful
and doing what they love. We need more of this in health care, not less.
Midwives are giving people what they want and doing it in an affordable way.
But the AMA wants to tell us it isn’t safe, and run these successful women
out of business or make them subservient to AMA. It’s blatantly sexist,
it’s anti-freedom, and if this legislation passes, it will increase prices.”

Dr. Hargadon expressed relief that no legislation has been drawn up yet, but
was wary about what the future may hold. “My hope is that the Congress
wouldn’t be so foolish as to try to legislate birth choice. But if you want
to know what Congress will do, just follow the money. In this election
cycle alone, the AMA Political Action Committee has donated almost $740,000
to Congressional candidates and other party committees. My opponent,
Congressman Elijah Cummings, has received $5000 in donations from them in
the past four years. So my fear is that the AMA has already bought this
legislation.”

He ended on a personal note. “Many families, including my own, have decided
that they’re unhappy with the traditional hospital birth experience and find
that midwives give them a better experience for low-risk births. My first
child was born in a hospital over 30 years ago, while the doctor was
complaining about missing the Colts’ game and trying to induce labor. So
our next three children were born in the presence of midwives. The births
of those three, who were born at their own pace, were a much more beautiful
life experience than a time management ‘problem.’”

I just got back from a beautiful birth this morning.  For the first time, I (technically) wasn’t playing doula – I was the midwife’s assistant at a home birth.  A midwife I know was stuck without an assistant and so she called me to help her.  It is fun to build rapport with a mother/family when I’ve never met them.  Usually I know the families quite well before I get to the birth – and they know and are comfortable with me.  I did a lot of my doula stuff – holding mom, helping her move from place to place, reassuring her, anchoring her with my hands, wiping her brow/chest, and generally being a confident, reassuring presence to allow her a safety net to do whatever it is she needs to do to make her way to her baby.  Then I was asked to do something technical – listen for the baby’s heartbeat with a doppler.  (This is something as a doula I would never do as it’s medical, but I was not a doula at this birth – I was a midwife’s assistant.)  The funny thing is that I’ve seen this done countless times, but I’ve never actually done it myself.  It became quite apparent I had no idea what I was doing.  When the mother looked a little worried when she wasn’t hearing a heartbeat, I let her know that there is nothing wrong except my own ineptitude.  She then grabbed the doppler, guided it down and found the heartbeat herself.  It was a cool moment where she found her power and was pretty funny to boot.

I’m back from Birthing From Within training.  It was a very intense, emotional experience (the training has been described as a brain version), so for someone like me who feels more at home in her cognitive brain, it was very tough.  But I learned so much about myself and ways I can improve as a doula, a childbirth educator, a person.  The beauty of it was that no one told me – I got to find it out for myself.  It’s one of the qualities I love most about Birthing From Within classes – you never tell a parent what they need to know – they go through processes and pull whatever out of it that they need.  I also love is that it’s anchoring the learning in a woman’s emotional/primal brain rather than her cognitive brain, which is where she is operating from in birth, so she has easy access to the information.  I’m going to try some Birthing From Within style teaching with a doula client next week and see how it goes…and very well may be teaching my classes with the BFW framework very soon.  Still working on how to incorporate all I’ve learned with my Lamaze training as well.