I'm back- after a 3 day head cold induced coma, just coherent enough to blog. My son Airick won the seat on the local school board : ) I was disqualified from the speech competition for my paperwork not being in on time : ( And somewhere in the midst of my awake/asleep/dream state, I envisioned a movement. A massive uprising of men and women who said enough is enough. Things cannot go on the way they are, the way we treat birth must change. Our values in birth must be consistent with our values for living. This movement needed a name, a banner. Something common to the times- that immediately conjured up images of a new approach to birth. Something that would make a catchy domain name and an easy to remember web address. Something they'd talk about on CNN and pick up on at Associated Press. Something that would run rampant through the mommy-blogs as well as the medi-blogs. Something like-minded folks could rally around. A social cause, a consumer movement, a healthcare protest, an Ina Mae- load up the busses, we're headed for Tennessee, honest-to-goodness birth epiphany, THE LIKES OF WHICH THE WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN.
Or maybe that's just the headcold medicine talking.
Stat Counter
The Mission
- LaborPayne
- LaborPayne has a masters in nursing education and works as a nursing instructor teaching maternal infant health. She is a lactation consultant candidate and a CNM (certified nurse midwife)student at Kansas University. Upon completion of her midwifery studies, she plans to pursue a MPH/PhD dual degree. She has been a doula and childbirth educator for 20 years, a nurse for 12 years, worked labor and delivery for 8 years, and has taught for 3 1/2 years. She owns Perinatal ReSource an education, training and consulting firm, and The CPR Lady, a safety training firm. In addition to authoring this blog, she is an editor for Clinical Lactation Journal, and sits on the board of CIMS, Coalition to Improve Maternity Services. She also sits on her local FIMR Board (fetal infant mortality review) as well as her city and state breastfeeding committees. She presents nationally on perinatal issues. Her career goals include decreasing perinatal morbidity and increasing lactation rates in the African American community through published investigative research and application of evidence based clinical practice. She also has plans to open a community based birth center in the urban core.
5 comments:
Oh my. When I was in bed last month with the super-crud, I had the same thoughts. I bought New Paradigm Midwifery domains, and had some ideas for implementation. But, you are right, it needs to be bigger. We have a group of ladies doing a seminar about Humanizing Birth in Colorado this fall. the site should be up soon humanizingbirth . org
Keep pressing.
Love it. www.womenofservice.org
Hmmm....I can see it now. "I'd like a green birth please." A birth free of electric gadgets such as constant monitoring and the computer and the paper of the tape. A birth with less wasted iv plastic and tubes, needles, and the like. A birth without all the waste in a hospital room. A birth with no electricity used for a warmer since mommy will warm the baby and with no bottles thrown away or those liners because mommy will breast feed. A green birth wastes less, and uses human work rather than machine and electricity to to the job. Human hands vs electric monitors. Human voices and low lights vs. nurses charting every moment. Human encouragement and trying position changes rather than breaking water and eventually using scissors or the knife (again, more clean up, more chemicals). I know that when I've had a more natural birth (in the hospital) because baby was so fast they couldn't "make up the bed" there was less chemical in use (iodine or whatever), less plastic (they changed all that several times this last birth because they had me pushing pee out instead of letting me labor down or go to the bathroom when I wanted). All the utensils they needed to clean, all those gloves for internal checks my nurse was doing ever freaking twenty minutes...all that stuff just for birth. Yes, green birth not green hospital scrubs!
Dawn
Thanks Dawn,
for describing so perfectly the concept of green birth. Less disposible medical waste, greater utilization of human resources.
I'm hopping on this band wagon.... in fact, from now on when people ask me what kind of birth I'm having I'll just tell them 'a green birth!'
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