birth settings | momjeanz

here is some birthy goodness for your weekend reading:

I did some postpartum care for a family that had this feeding system. i had no personal experience with it before but after helping feed their son with this system {except taped to my finger} i kept thinking “why can’t they send one of these home with every family from the hospital instead of cans of formula? it would promote and help breastfeeding mothers so much more.” Please read this article and learn more about these supplemental feeding systems especially if you are expecting. A system like this one requires more work on the baby’s part so he/she is less likely to become dependent on the ease of the bottle in those first few days of life when the breastfeeding relationship is so delicate. In addition this article highlights that there are a myriad of medical reasons why a mother may not be physiologically able to lactate. A feeding system like this gives the opportunity to physically perform the action and the option for donor milk is even on the table. ladies! you have options!!!

my next link is for a series on the blog the resting roost called birth place. she’s interviewing moms in three different birth settings: home, birth center and hospital to gain perspective on each setting. i’m in love with the idea of this series. here’s the first installment. and since i’m already up in mary catherine’s grill these days, i’m going to go ahead and share a link to the wonderful project she and her partners are working on called the barefoot bus. i’m also in love with the idea for this bus.

and a really good article on VBACFacts. I haven’t shared much from this site because I’ve only been a handful of times. This website is and excellent source of information for any woman looking into her VBAC options.

that’s all. happy weekend. happy solstice. happy reading!

some links that my laptop explored lately:

This first link is especially interesting to me because I didn’t even start to like {read: love} the taste of coffee until I became pregnant with Darla. Fortunately, the bakery next to my work had huge self-pour dispensers and I got through with 1/3 caffeinated, 1/3 decaffeinated, 1/3 cream concoctions and kept the caffeine to a minimum. This write-up on a decade long study highlights findings that if you have a more-than-2-cups-a-day habit you’re at risk for low-birth weight babies and prolonged gestation and labor. And check this out: “one daily average cup of coffee lengthened child labor by as much as eight hours.” Is that reason enough to switch to decaf?

Evidence Based Birth is live-blogging the NIH Consensus Conference on Diagnosing Gestational Diabetes.

I’m considering swinging into the old stomping grounds in September for the Rally to Improve Birth. September will be my month off birthwork due to other commitments so why not just make the most of it. Or maybe Columbus will have their own rally. We’ll see!

and lastly,

Who loves infographics? Lovely graphic on birth settings and research in the US. Let’s just go ahead and include it. pay special attention the average cost of birth in a hospital vs. a birth center. i’ve been in lots of lovely hospitals now that have provided great care to moms but i think we can agree that lowering the average cost of birth is something our healthcare system desperately needs: