Breastfeeding and Birth News This Week

Lots of controversy in the news this week so I’ve broken up the news report into several posts:

Check out Breastfeeding Campaign Watered Down in the United States and Midwifery Under Scrutiny in Quebec in separate posts.

Nunavut Midwifery Goes High-tech
This really got me excited: The Ajunnginiq Centre launched a trilingual midwifery website last week, which supporters say will help strengthen the ties among midwives throughout the Inuit regions. The website has information in English, French and Inuktitut. Translation was done with the help of elders who gave advice on traditional birthing terms.

"This will be a very good communication tool for the communities and interested parties," said Natsiq Kango, head of the Midwives Association of Nunavut. "There is a lot of interest, but there aren't a lot of outlets for it. The technology in place today, this is going to provide a real channel for this."

There is a new midwifery program in Iqaluit that took on six new students this year. Nunavut Arctic College also offers classes in maternity care. The site will also be used by midwives, nurses and nutritionists.

This is exciting because in remote northern communities women often have to travel hundreds of miles to give birth in the nearest hospital. This often means being separated from family and community for weeks at a time when it is important for women to be close to family and friends. Encouraging midwifery and traditional practices is a step in the right direction for the North. It’s wonderful to see programs in place that train the local people and that foster respect for the community’s traditional ways.


‘Pushed’ Cries Out for Childbirth options

Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care, a new book by Jennifer Block, former editor at Ms. Magazine, is looking at maternity care and childbirth options. One of Block’s goals was to support women who choose alternative birth options and to spell out the truth about maternity care in the United States, care which often involves a “pushed” birth. Block describes a “pushed” birth as “one that is induced, sped up and/or heavily medicated for no good reason, and all too often concludes with surgery, invasive instruments, an episiotomy or a bad vaginal tear -- outcomes you don't want."

For more info: check out the website, or this review.


BOLD initiative: Birth, the play

All through September, a play about birth is running in Washington State and around the world. Birth, the critically acclaimed play billed as the Vagina Monologues of childbirth, is part of Birth On Labor Day (BOLD), a global movement to make maternity care mother-friendly. The play is the story of eight women, the births they experienced and their right to choose where and how they birth. The play will run in 30 cities worldwide. Unfortunately, the play is only running in one Canadian city (in Ontario). Check out the play’s website for more info about Birth and about BOLD.


Survival Tips for New Moms

Healthy Mum, Happy Baby is part survival manual and part recipe book. The idea for the book, to write a breastfeeding manual, came to Annemarie Tempelman-Kluit in the middle of the night. She researched and compiled all of the info she found and is now running two websites to help new moms. Healthymumhappybaby.com updates the information in her book, and www.yoyomama.ca provides helpful, hip info, tips and guides to local events to smooth over the yo-yo bumps of early motherhood.

---

Sweet Home Birth Boxes - the supplies you need no matter what your birth plan includes!