According to new guidelines by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada physicians should no longer automatically opt to perform a cesarean section in the case of a breech birth.

The guidelines, which were released yesterday, are in response to new evidence that shows many women are safely able to vaginally deliver babies who enter the birth canal with the buttocks or feet first. Normally, the infant descends head first.

“Our primary purpose is to offer choice to women,” said André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the SOGC.

“More women are feeling disappointed when there is no one who is trained to assist in breech vaginal delivery,” he adds.

Since 2000, C-sections have been the preferred method of delivery in breech births. Studies suggested that breached births were associated with an increased rate of complication when performed vaginally.

As a result, many medical schools have stopped training their physicians in breech vaginal delivery.

The problem now, according to Dr. Lalonde, is that there is a serious shortage of doctors to teach and perform these deliveries.

With the release of the new guidelines, the SOGC will launch a nationwide training program to ensure that doctors will be adequately prepared to offer vaginal breech births .

New research shows there is no difference in complication rates between vaginal and cesarean section deliveries in the case of breech births.

The SOGC stresses that because of complications that may arise, many breech deliveries will still require a cesarean section.

Breech presentations occur in 3-4 per cent of pregnant women who reach term, which translates to approximately 11,000 to 14,500 breech deliveries a year in Canada.

The new decision to offer vaginal breech birth aligns with the SOGC promotion of normal childbirth – spontaneous labour, followed by a delivery that is not assisted by forceps, vacuum or cesarean section. In December of 2008, the society release a policy statement that included its recommendation for a development of national practice guidelines on normal childbirth.

“The safest way to deliver has always been the natural way,” said Dr. Lalonde.

“Vaginal birth is the preferred method of having a baby because a C-section in itself has complications.”

Cesarean sections, in which incisions are made through a mother’s abdomen and uterus to deliver the baby, can lead to increased chance of bleeding and infections and can cause further complications for pregnancies later on.

The SOGC believes that if a woman is well-prepared during pregnancy, she has the innate ability to deliver vaginally.

The national average for babies delivered via cesarean section in Canada is 25 per cent.

The causes of breech presentations are not fully known. However, a breech birth is more common :

• In subsequent pregnancies
• In pregnancies of multiples
• When there is history of premature delivery
• When the uterus has too much or too little amniotic fluid
• In an abnormal shaped uterus or a uterus with abnormal growths, such as fibroids.
• For women with placenta previa

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• Study: Breech Birth Inherited

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Leaders of Canada’s pregnancy specialists are urging doctors not to induce labour until after the 41st week unless there are compelling medical reasons.

The call is part of a campaign to “normalize” childbirth after some studies suggest inducing labour in a first-time mother significantly increases her risk of a C-section.

According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, inductions accounted for 20 per cent of all in-hospital births in Canada (excluding Quebec) in 2006-07, which is up 9% from 1980.

Several factors are driving induction rates, including the number of older first-time mothers, medical legal concerns and convenience.

Induction of labour occurs when medications such as prostaglandin and oxytocin are used when a woman is past her due date to ripen the cervix and get the uterus contracting. It can lead to longer, more painful labour and continuous electronic monitoring of the baby’s heart rate.

The number one risk of induction is that it leads to earlier decisions about a C-section, which now stands at an all-time high in Canada. Nearly 28 per cent of babies were born surgically in Canada in 2007-08, according to a national report released last week. That’s up from five per cent in 1969.

“Once you have used certain methods, such as rupturing the membrane (breaking the waters), we know that you have to have a delivery within 12 hours, otherwise it increases the risk of infection,” said Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.

Research shows that, in healthy pregnancies, checking the baby’s heart rate after contractions by listening, or using a hand-held device, reduces the risk of interventions.

But a recently released Canadian survey of more than 6,000 women who have given birth in the last few years found most women (91 per cent) experienced electronic fetal monitoring during labour — including 63 per cent who had continuous electronic monitoring.

There is a concern that women, and their doctors, have lost confidence in the ability to give birth without technological interventions.

“The sense of letting nature decide, I think we’ve lost a little bit of that, because everything is so planned down to the minute,” said Dr. William Ehman, a family doctor in Nanaimo, B.C

Families watch the clock as the pregnancy approaches the due date, and, if women start to go over, a nervousness settles in.

“People start calling them. ‘Why haven’t you had your baby?’”

While extremely rare, the risk of a stillbirth increases after 39 to 40 weeks’ gestation, Ehman says.

“When we hear about a woman who has an unexpected stillbirth at 40 weeks and five days, you think, could we have prevented it?”

But, “we know the evidence is clear that, overall, you do much better for the women by not offering induction until after 41 weeks.”

“Nature prepares the uterus better than we can,” Ehman said. “There’s probably a whole host of things that triggers labour in the first place — and mainly it’s probably the baby. So when the baby is ready it facilitates labour by lots of mechanisms that we can’t do.

“We can add these chemicals and get the uterus contracting. But we just know that the numbers say that inductions, if they are done unnecessarily, are going to increase the risk of a C-section.”

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Last year when Camila Alves delivered her first baby, new daddy Matthew McConaughey told OK Magazine that she danced through labor saying,

“Contractions started kicking in, and we found a great rhythm. We had a 14-hour session, her and I did. I sat there with her, right between her legs. We got tribal on it. We danced to it. I was DJing this native Brazilian music.”

Dancing through labor has become increasingly popular as moms try to find natural ways to deal with contractions.

Many of the movements in belly dance are similar to movements and techniques taught in childbirth class. For instance, the belly roll in typical belly dancing is similar to the pattern of breathing progression women are taught to practice during labor: lower abdominal breaths, to more shallow chest breathing, and to the popular panting breath.

The pelvic rock that most childbirth preparation classes teach is to stretch and strengthen the pelvic muscles; allow the baby to attain a better position in the pelvis; and to ease the strain on the laboring mother’s back. These hip and pelvic movements are synonymous with the hip circles, figure eights, and hip lifts of belly dancing.

When I had my son dancing was the last thing on mind. Heck the pain was so intense I couldn’t even speak let alone dance…

How do these women do it?

The woman in the video below is 9cm dilated and dancing like she is at a Caribbean resort…

A surprised Michigan dad helped deliver his wife’s baby boy despite not knowing she was pregnant.

The man called 911 early this morning because his wife was in labor. He told the dispatcher that he didn’t know his 27-year-old wife was pregnant. He thought her recent weight gain because they had just quit smoking.

The baby was successfully delivered and then transferred to the hospital for observation.

The new baby joins the couple’s two children, and an another child from a previous relationship.

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• Baby Abandoned After Being Delivered On Airplane
  
• Soldier Secretly Delivers Baby In Army Barracks

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This is not because I don’t like being pregnant, but because I would like all of the pregnancy horror stories to end.

Even though I already have a son, I didn’t get to do the whole pregnancy thing – getting ripped off 16 weeks early. This makes me a target for those who have delivered full term babies to tell me their horror stories of 48 hour labors and ripping from one end to the other.

In the last few weeks I have heard about:

• someone losing their baby at 36 weeks (that’s where I am)
• someone who had a botched c-section
• someone who’s hubby cheated 4 days before baby #2 arrived

This on top of multiple inquiries about if I am going to bust soon…

For all of you who have had nightmare deliveries, crummy pregnancies or unfortunate things happen after, it may be nice to keep them private until others have their babies safely in their arms.

I have no control over what my little monkey is doing inside right now, how incompetent the doctor is going to be or how my body is going to react to childbirth. But I do deserve the right to enter into this with faith, which is hard when you hear negative stories.

So…if you see a pregnant woman today, resist the urge to tell her about all the bad things you have heard and say something nice!

Rosa Pereira led a team of researchers from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Sao Paulo, Brazil who investigated the effects of the aquarobics class on a group of 71 expectant mothers.

About half of the women were randomly allocated to attend three 50-minute sessions a week over the course of their pregnancy, the others did not take part in the water aerobics.

Heres what they found:

While there was no significant differences in the duration of labor or the type of delivery between the two groups – only 27% of women in the aquarobics group requested analgesia, compared to 65% in the control group. This represents a 58% reduction in requests.”

Exercise during pregnancy has been the subject of much debate, the main concern being that it may interfere with fetal/placental demands, increasing the risk of abnormalities or compromising fetal development or growth. The researchers found that there was no harmful effect on the cardiovascular health of the women who practiced water aerobics. Pereira said,

“We’ve shown that the regular practice of moderate water aerobics during pregnancy is not detrimental to the health of the mother or the child. In fact, the reduction in analgesia requests suggests that it can get women into better psycho-physical condition.”

With just a few weeks to go, I wonder if I can get in on this….

Related Articles:

• Red Raspberry Leaf Tea During Pregnancy
• Breech Baby 101
• Could A Simple Cold Sore Be Potentially Deadly For A Newborn?

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The Waterbirth Vessel is designed to offer moms-to-be every convenience to make childbirth easier.

The ‘vessel’ supports and encourages any position that woman can apply to manage their labor.

All I want to know is how do I get this vessel into the labor suite I’ll be delivering at the end of this year?

Here are some of the benefits to having a water birth:

• Relaxation for the mother
• Pain Management- less or no need for medical intervention
• Water creates support and equal pressure on all parts of a woman’s body
• Less energy used when birthing in water, less pain, less anxiety for mother and baby
• Water birth seems to result in lower adrenalin (fight or flight response) levels resulting in better oxytocin and oxygen flow to the mother, increased blood supply to the uterus. As a result contractions are more efficient
• An improved blood supply to the placenta during water birth also improves the unborn baby’s oxygen levels
• Water results in a small decrease in the mothers blood pressure
• The mother can find a comfortable position more efficiently and ease the descent of the baby through the birth canal
• Birth from water into water is a gentle transition for the baby
• There is less risk of tearing and skin tissue trauma to mother and less risk of tissue trauma to baby
• Water can make pushing easier
• The buoyancy of water means the baby does not have to be turned or twisted to deliver the shoulders in most cases
• Birthing in the water provides the baby with almost the exact replica of the womb environment- wet, warm, weightless and gentle
• Cleanup of a water birth can be very easy with little mess
• The mother feels less pressure on the abdomen and uterus with contractions

SOURCE:COROFLOT VIA BORNRICH.ORG

In December last year, the blades of an Apache helicopter accidentally severed the high voltage cables providing electricity to the nine villages that make up the municipality of Maasdriel in the east of the country.

During the ensuing 50 hours of darkness, many inhabitants sought mid-winter hospitality in other towns, “but some found heat among themselves,” town spokeswoman Annelies van Eijkeren told AFP.

There were 26 babies born in Maasdriel in September — a 44 percent rise on last year’s 18, she added.

While authorities may want to boost the population, “we are not envisaging doing so by cutting the power”, said Van Eijkeren.

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Labor Kit hospital bags are a great way to make sure that you bring everything during your moment of haste!

Starting at just $39.95 the express kit includes Deluxe Canvas Bag, Gerber Breast Pads (36),Stay Dry Icepack, Lanonlin Cream, Large Blue Pads (3), Mesh Underwear (2), Sanitary Pads (4), Newborn Diapers (20), Peri Bottle, Stress Ball, Birth Plan, Share The Joy Contact List, Hospital Checklist and Pillow Paws non-slip socks.

We recently received the Standard kit ($59.95) which included everything listed above plus Thank you Cards (8), Notepad/Pen and Lip Balm.

I LOVE this kit because there are quite a few items included that I wouldn’t have thought to buy and most certainly wouldn’t remembered to pack.

Everything comes packed neatly in the Canvas bag, with a couple empty pockets to spare. It is surprisingly compact for the amount of stuff that is loaded inside.Moms will also appreciate that all of the products included in the bag are brands that new moms have been using for years. (Pampers, Gerber, Tena, Preggie Pops, Burt’s Bees)

Friends and family looking for the most practical gift idea for an expectant mom, should consider the Labor Kit. It is the perfect gift for a first, second or even third baby.

More information available at Laborkit.com

An Indian woman was lucky enough Wednesday to have not one but three doctors to help her deliver a baby boy on a flight between Hong Kong and Adelaide.

The plane made an unscheduled landing in the far-north city of Darwin early Wednesday.

A spokesman for Royal Darwin Hospital told national broadcaster ABC that the six-week premature baby was healthy and weighed 2.7 kilograms.

Related Articles:

• Should Kids Have Their Own Section Of The Airplane?
• 28 Week Baby Arrives Early at 37,000 ft!
• Another Preemie Born on an Airplane
• Baby born on a Airplane over the Sahara Desert

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