"The Folly of 'Fully'"

Practising Midwife May 2009

Sara Wickham's article breaks into the accepted idea of 10 centimetres exactly as the universal "fully dilated" measurement.

I have always thought 10 centimetres was a suspiciously round number. I mean, did someone at the Academie Francaise des Sciences, where the metric system now called the ISU system first saw the light of day, think hard and say, "I know, let's measure a woman's fully dilated cervix, and adopt a standard measurement exactly ten times that, and call it a metre!" I don't think so.

Indeed history tells us that the metre was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator along the meridian which runs near Dunkirk and Barcelona. Even though you could presumably fit exactly one million fully dilated cervixes along that line, I doubt this was a test uppermost in the Academie's minds.

Wickham proposes that a normal range for "fully" or as one of my doula friends says, "fully delighted" would be more natural and more in line with the acceptance of RANGES of normality for all other measurements in childbirth.

Great birth story

Another fantastic birth story from a HypnoBirthing client today.
Her waters broke early one evening, she went briefly to hospital for a check, and within 24 hours she was having 20 second surges every five minutes (she rang me around 7pm to tell me). This intensified through the night, she managed the night with a TENS and HypnoBirthing breathing. When she got to the birth centre at 5am she was 7 centimetres dilated.
The first water leakage must have been hindwaters as as she stepped into her birthing room her forewaters went with a gush. She got straight into a birth pool and after quite a long second stage birthed her little girl. The long second stage was mainly due to the baby's having her hand up by her face.
She had no pain relief besides the TENs at first then the pool - otherwise she depended entirely on the self-relaxation and breathing techniques I had taught her in her HypnoBirthing sessions. Partner stuck her special birth pictures up around the room when they got to hospital. She listened to her HypnoBirthing affirmations throughout the second stage pushing.
In her own words she felt calm and relaxed throughout her labour!

Home Birth Safety - major study

Major study in the Netherlands shows home birth as safe as hospital for low risk mothers, reported 15 April 2009:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7998417.stm

Very stupid and annoying columnist called Melanie Reid in The Times the next day:


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/melanie_reid/article6101189.ece

Well, Melanie Reid, how would you like to be told you, or women like you, are "spoilt and complacent" because you insist on tying up scarce NHS resources with your expensive, consultant-delivered epidural anaesthesia and the cascade of interventions, requiring more and more medical staff to be involved in the delivery of your baby, which it often brings in its wake?
You wouldn't like it one bit. And of course no birth professional would be so purblind, mean-spirited and stupid as to describe a woman as "selfish" because she insists on the kind of high-maintenance birth environment Melanie Reid clearly thinks is essential for all women. Yet she thinks it is fine to throw this abuse at other women who want to make different choices.
How sick I am of women journalists who think that because they had a baby once, they know all there is to know about EVERYONE ELSE's labour and birth!

Euphemisms and birthing language

The language around birth is very important. With HypnoBirthing it is all-important since hypnotherapy is an entirely language-based therapy.
in this month's "Practising Midwife", the distinguished midwife Sara Wickham discusses euphemisms such as "pop" - "often preceded by the word just"..."an attempt to soften any number of clinical procedures which are routine but which individual women might not consent to if it was made explicitly clear that she had a choice"
and points out, perhaps subversively, that language which softens ie makes less frightening a procedure might not be bad. "I avoid using medical terms that I perceive as fear-filled (haemorrhage, risk factor) and choose words which I feel to be less hormonally and emotionally upsetting to women (bleeding, challenge).
She prefers calling sanitary towels bunnies - "removes the connotation of dirtiness"
She mentions Ina May Gaskin's rushes for contractions, but sadly not the HypnoBirthing surge...
She might have added that linguistically many of these "less threatening" words are of Anglo-Saxon origin instead of Latin/Greek origin.
Wickham S Euphemisms: good, bad or ugly? (2) The Practising Midwife Vol 12 Number 4 April 2009 page 35
Also refers to Nicky Leap (1992). The power of words, Nursing Times 88:60-61

Pre-labour cervix weeping

Back in October 2006 - have I really been a doula all this time? I noted with interest in this blog a midwife discussing the phenomenon of the cervix "weeping" a few days (5-7) before going into labour.
Well whaddyaknow, my current birth client seems to have had that exact experience last night, at 38 weeks exactly. It was so noticeable, with a distinct "gush" of clear fluid, that she thought it might be her waters breaking and we were on the QV all night.

Home Birth as safe as hospital birth

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7998417.stm

Strange that it is thought that breech birth and prolonged labour can only be dealt with in hospital.

Excellent birth story from a US HB mum

http://bebeprocawood.blogspot.com/2008/04/here-it-is-neils-birth-story.html

Home Birth: The Sunday Telegraph

Excellent and factual article about home birth in Sunday Telegraph and no scare-mongering.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/09/nhomebirth109.xml

new breastfeeding helpline

A breastfeeding helpline to support new mothers has been officially launched by the Government. Public health minister Dawn Primarolo announced a £150,000 year package for the advice line to give women practical support and information. Studies have shown that babies who are breastfed are less likely to be obese in later life and gain protection against conditions like asthma, eczema and chest infections. Mothers benefit too, with studies showing a protective effect against ovarian and breast cancer. The Department of Health recommends exclusive breastfeeding up to six months, with continued breastfeeding alongside solid foods afterwards. A new report published by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN), suggests a need for more support for new mothers. It looks at the Infant Feeding Survey of 2005, which showed breast feeding rates went up from 69% in 2000 to 76% in 2005 across the UK. However, only half of women in England were still breastfeeding after six weeks. The Government cash will help support the new helpline, which will be run by two existing networks. The Breastfeeding Network and the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers, which receive around 28,000 combined calls each year on breastfeeding, will merge and run the advice line. The Government hopes the newly-created National Breastfeeding Helpline will be able to handle a far higher number of calls than either organisation on their won. The new helpline number is 0844 20 909 20. Copyright © 2008 The Press Association.

Great waterbirth

My client X asked me to be her doula for the second time, a year after I attended the waterbirth of her second child.
We had some doubts about whether this would be a straightforward labour...but as it turned out, it was totally straightforward.
X had some cervical issues that might well have given some doctors reason to refuse to support her choice of natural labour. But the hospital we were at respected her as an intelligent informed mum and agreed to support her wishes. In the event, the cervical issues made absolutely NO difference to a steady dilation speed and a strong labour which ended with a gorgeous waterbirth of a beautiful baby girl.

Nancy's HypnoBirthing home water birth

In 2006 I had the privilege of being the HypnoBirthing educator who led Nancy and her husband Tecwin through the HypnoBirthing programme. Their progress and Nancy's remarkable labour and the birth of Sid, their second son, was tracked by the series Home Grown Babies (first shown on Living TV).
Someone (don't know who yet) has put extracts from the episode on YouTube. It is an amazing story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks1-23fcERg&feature=PlayList&p=31717DCA62BBD447&index=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HiljszP1FE&feature=PlayList&p=31717DCA62BBD447&index=1

(begins with a bit of an interview with me in it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M75c73A22vE&feature=PlayList&p=31717DCA62BBD447&index=2

This bit shows the birth.