andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2011-11-25 11:00 am

Interesting Links for 25-11-2011

[identity profile] alitheapipkin.livejournal.com 2011-11-25 08:03 pm (UTC)(link)
My choice too. Despite my Home Ec teacher at high school who once thought it was appropriate to tell me I was silly for not wanting children and that getting pregnant was the only way I was ever going to have decent sized breasts...

[identity profile] alitheapipkin.livejournal.com 2011-11-25 08:15 pm (UTC)(link)
As well as the chances of catching MRSA etc, hospital births tend to be 60 % longer, which can increase the chances of complications. In a hospital, a woman is more likely to give birth on her back (not helped by a lot of medical professionals who think you need to be lying down if you have monitors attached to you) which is apparently much worse than squatting.

(This info is via the Boy who is training to be a nurse; I'd look up some articles to reference but a) I should be working or turning the laptop off and b) no-one without a journal subscription is likely to be able to read them)

I'm unclear whether the data on the length of hospital births is comparing like-for-like births, or whether it is affected by higher risk births being almost entirely hospital based, unfortunately.

[identity profile] laplor.livejournal.com 2011-11-25 10:26 pm (UTC)(link)
If we're going anecdotal, my son nearly died due to complications caused and worsened by hospital procedures and conditions. For one thing, the hospital had no air conditioning or hot water - I'm not kidding! I had both at home.

Then they saved him, then he had an 8 minute seizure. He's only marginally impaired.

I was very tempted to have my second baby at home, but lived more than an hour from hospital so decided it wasn't prudent. He was born with no doctor in the room because I had him so fast they didn't have time to get there from down the hall.

In light of my experience, I absolutely believe that, in the case of a healthy woman who has been screened for complications and attended by a midwife, home within reasonable range of a hospital is just as safe as hospital.

[identity profile] del-c.livejournal.com 2011-11-28 01:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Because complications are rare, pulling complications out of the home birth pool is like pulling tokens out of a bag with a lot of tokens. So removing the mothers who had complications the first time shouldn't affect the home birth statistics positively enough to detect. Which is just what we observe: home births rise to the safety level of hospital births on and after second birth, but do not exceed it, despite the theoretical skew from first-birth complications electing hospital the second time around.

[identity profile] skreidle.livejournal.com 2011-12-02 08:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Gardasil has been in use here for a few years, though it's only been approved for use in women up to age 26, if I recall correctly. Sucks to be older than that -- you can't get it on request, It Hasn't Been Approved.

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