Easy-to-copy-&-share link ~ https://tinyurl.com/y4v323ux
Dear Midwives and Special Friends ^O^
Below are four groups of TinyURL links to the most informative and timely posts on topics that combine an ethical, technical and political challenge to our “Business as Usual” obstetrical system.
You can click directly from the webpage and also copy the links to send via text or email to other people, or even post on your own websites.
The first two groups include scientific information on the lack of efficacy of c-EFM when routinely used on healthy women with low-risk pregnancies.
The consensus of the scientific literature has has likewise documented a direct, unambiguous cause-and-effect relationship between the routine use c-EFM and a statistically-significant increase in the rate of Cesarean and all it many complications (such as emergency hysterectomies, placenta percreta and increased maternal mortality).
Now think of how illogical it would be for any of us to know these unequivocally FACTS — actually Truths, with a capital “T” — and yet do nothing at all to change this 50-year ‘status quo’
I’m describing an illogical obstetrical standard that routinely uses the same highly medicalized and technologically-centric protocols and procedures developed to treat high-risk, on healthy American mothers-to-be with normal, low-risk pregnancies, even though these protocols and interventions increase the rate of maternal morbidity and mortality.
In other words, high-powered medical strategies developed to make childbirth safer of women with high-risk pregnancies and complications are being used in ways that are routinely making normal childbirth more dangerous for healthy women.
It’s time to start making different choice, different decisions — in particular, to conclude that its unethical for us — midwives and many other politically active groups — not to stand up and say what we see. The current hospital-based obstetrical system has no clothes and it’s time to stop pretending that it does.
Be sure to read the last of this series: The Me-3 Movement: An Action Plan to end use of inappropriate, ineffective & potentially-dangerous obstetrical practices
Start here:
Group One ~ Professional-level technical & academic topics
The first group the a 3-part series on The False Association btw routine use of continuous electronic fetal monitoring (c-EFM) to prevent Cerebral Palsy & Protect OBs from Lawsuits
Gibson Report-2019_#1 Part 1 (of 3) http://tinyurl.com/y3ty2392
Gibson Report #1 – continued Part 2 (of 3) ~ 2019 http://tinyurl.com/yxz3h5oe
Gibson Report #1 – continued ~ Part 3 (of 3) http://tinyurl.com/y65wzon5
Stand-alone Educational Addendum ~ History, Theory & Practice of Auscultation
This post is an addendum to the previous “False Association” series
Easy-to-copy-&-share shortcut –> http://tinyurl.com/y3evnwwa
Last in this series is a stand-along educational “addendum” that repeats some of the historical material in order to provide required background information for the public, other health care professionals, and students of nursing and midwifery to understand the context for the contemporary practice of hands-on listening.
Instead of a machine, auscultation is done in person, as part of one-on-one relationship btw a trained labor and birth attendant and the laboring women, instead of nurses and doctors sitting in front of a bank of computer screens at a central desk in the hallway.
This educational addendum includes practice videos that records a quartz clock face with second hand and several minutes of recorded fetal heart tones. This allows labor and birth attendants (nurses, midwives, medical and mfry students, etc) to practice the techniques to crucial auscultation, which requires regular listening to FHTs in 5-second sampling over a 60-second (or longer) timespan.
This gathers the data that allows the labor and birth attendant to assess the 4 critical criteria of fetal wellbeing and take timely action as indicated.
Auscultation for determining fetal wellbeing monitors for:
(1) normal baseline {y/n}
(2) normal variability {y/n}
(3) normal accelerations {y/n}
(4) the absence of pathological decelerations {y/n}
This is essentially the same information provided by EFM, but without immobilizing the mother in a hospital labor bed OR the increased Cesarean rate associated with the routine use of c-EFM for healthy women w/ low-risk pregnancies.
Auscultation is the often unnamed “control” against which all c-EFM studies are compared
Remember that the hundreds of published studies, randomized trials and other types of research on the efficacy of c-EFm used auscultation — all versions and over many decades — as the “control” against which all the efficacy of c-EFM was compared and measured.
The often unvoiced consensus of the scientific literature is that monitoring the fetus on a regular schedule during labor with a fetoscope or hand-held doppler is equally as effective as c-EFM when compared to the rates of cerebral palsy and other newborn neurological pathologies and perinatal mortality.
However, c-EFM is LESS efficacious (as established by statistically-significant outcomes), in that EFM is proven to increase the rate of C-sections and its many complications.
Therefore, the use of auscultation is safer for healthy women with normal low-risk pregnancies and is the scientifically-validated standard of care for this healthy population of childbearing women.
Group Two – Written for the mainstream public; includes many scientific references but a lesser number and fewer direct citations.
Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! ~ A Call to all Americans to fix a problem that is wasting millions of healthcare dollars & results in preventable maternal death.
Ruthless Reality: Making Abortion Illegal or Unattainable as a political strategy to Win Elections ~
Easy shortcut to share –>http://tinyurl.com/y6jpguf2
Editor’s Note ~ On my computer screen the text below is a normal sized but when you view it on the Internet, it is gigantic! I have tried several times to fix it but it seems the nomes (or G*D) want these sentences (and I’d say, these ideas) to be really big, so I decided to leave then as the “gods prefer”.
faith ^O^
Pregnancy – planned or unplanned – is a gender issue that originates with the male of the species.
The way to eliminate non-medical abortions is to stop the problem at its source — the end of the penis of the man who is seconds away from fathering a baby by ejaculating in the birth canal of a woman that he may not have any long-term relationship with or even personally know.
The only cure this problem, one that obviously originates with men, is both simple and effective:
“If you don’t want to raise a baby,
then don’t ejaculate in a woman’s birth canal!”
This eliminates the complicated issue of unwanted pregnancies, which simultaneously eliminates the need for abortion services, and best of all, gets male legislators, judges and US Supreme Court Justices out of the business of legislating and criminalizing women’s reproductive services.
Chapter 1. https://tinyurl.com/y5ojmvue
Chapter 2. https://tinyurl.com/y5gsetf6
Chapter 3. https://tinyurl.com/y3rbgdet
Chapter 4. https://tinyurl.com/y48tcu6g
Chapter 5. The Me-3 Movement: https://tinyurl.com/y53plzej
Me-3 is an Action Plan to end use of inappropriate, ineffective & potentially-dangerous obstetrical practices that are current obstetrical standard for healthy women with normal pregnancies (ex. routine use c-EFM; asssc. increased in C-sections, etc
Reading opportunities for inquiring minds
(w/ convention links)
1. Time-traveler’s Perspective on Normal Childbirth
faith gibson, LM, published in the journal BIRTH Sept 2011
PDF link: BIRTH-PracPerspective_MyArticle_Sept11_2011
2. Historical and contemporary comments by physicians about midwives ~ 1820 to 2014
Easy-to-share link ~ https://tinyURL.com/y3fvpprb Female Biology as inherently defective, and the “Midwife Problem” as defined by the medical profession, 1820 to 2014: ~
The Perfect storm that turned healthy childbearing women into the patients of a surgical specialty and normal childbirth into a surgical procedure~ the last and most unimportant
UNTOLD story of the 20th century ~
4. PDF link –> Man-Midwives ~The Historical Tension
Between Midwifery and Obstetrics During the 20th century
5. ~ Especially for California LMs
A specially-designed placenta-percreta operating suite outfitted with the latest interventional radiological equipment for performing Cesarean-hysterectomy on previous C-section mothers. In addition to multi-million dollar equipment, there are over 20 doctors, OR nurses, neonatal nurses and specialty hospital staff.
