As part of our mission to contribute to safe motherhood around the globe, DTP is promoting the work of CleanBirth.org. This organization works to make birth safer in southern Laos, which has the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality in the region[1]. The vast majority of women give birth without a trained attendant or clean supplies, but CleanBirth.org is making a difference, improving outcomes through simple initiatives that provide life-saving birthing supplies and information.
To promote hygienic birth, CleanBirth.org partners with a Lao non-profit, Our Village Association (OVA) to train local nurses to distribute Clean Birth Kits – the life saving birth supplies that cost a mere $5 each. The nurses then train a volunteer from each village to distribute and track the kits and spread information about safe birthing practices.
$250 sponsors a nurse who serves as many as 1o villages
Think of this as your Valentine present to the world. Safe Motherhood is a major global movement, and organizations such as CleanBirth.org are the on-the-ground work force that is bringing about improvements in maternal and newborn survival.
This is the time of year many of us consider where to make our charitable contributions. We have assembled a list of groups to which you might want to consider giving this year. By donating to these organizations you can help improve the lives of mothers, newborns,children and families around the world. Most will also send a card or email message to a mom in whose honor you give the gift.
UNICEF Inspired Gifts. You can choose gifts that improve education, water, health, nutrition, emergency care and other factors that affect the well-being of women and children.
The Fistula Foundation. This group exists to raise awareness of and funding for fistula treatment, prevention and educational programs worldwide. Fistula is the devastating injury cause by untreated obstructed labor.
The Preeclampsia Foundation. This organization supports research to prevent and treat one of the most dangerous disorders of pregnancy, one that accounts for a large percentage of premature births and low birth weight infants. Having preeclampsia is also a risk factor for later heart disease for the mother.
Clean Birth. Clean Birth Kits are designed to provide birth attendants and/or expecting moms with the tools they need to ensure a clean birthing environment. The Kits ensure the WHO’s “6 Cleans”: clean hands, clean perineum, clean delivery surface, clean cord cutting implement, clean cord tying, and clean cord care.
March of Dimes. The “mother” of all charities for helping prevent and treat disorders and diseases that affect children.
The challenges to safe motherhood vary depending where in the world you live. In some areas the challenge may be to get adequate nutrition or clean water; in other areas, it may be to prevent infection; and in still other locations it may be trying to avoid pregnancy before your body is ready or getting access to prenatal care. In the U.S., it may mean avoiding being sedentary and making poor food choices, or having to deal with the high technology environment of medical birth that can sabotage the innate physiological process of labor and birth.
Birth begins the bonding or unique love between mother and child.
The biology of birth is a complex series of cause-effect processes…baby’s brain releases chemical signals to the mother and the placenta begins to manifest the maternal immune system’s rejection of the fetus.
To help the ball get rolling, relaxation (the trophotropic response) helps promote the release of oxytocin. With the help of gravity, the head presses on the cervix, amplifying the uterine contractions. After an ultra-distance aerobic endurance test, the cervix opens enough to let the baby move into the vagina and the mother’s discomfort moves from sharp cramping into the bony structure as she transitions to the strength test of pushing. She transitions. Relaxation modulates into an ergotropic — adrenal — response to gather her power.
Pushing is an interesting term…more masculine, I think, than the one I prefer: Releasing. Releasing or letting go of the baby. It’s a catharsis. In this portion of the labor another set of important processes help the baby clear its lungs of amniotic fluid, stimulate its adrenal system and challenge its immune system, as the contractions drive the baby downward. The mother’s deep transverse abdominal muscles — if strong enough — squeeze the uterus like a tube of tooth paste, to aid this expulsion. In the meantime, the labor is helping set up the mother to fall in love and produce milk. When the baby emerges and moves onto the mother’s chest, s/he smells and tastes the mother, recognizing her mother’s flavor and setting up the potential for bonding.
Any way you slice it, there are two parts to safe motherhood. One is a safe pregnancy…healthy nutrition, physical fitness, safe water, infection prevention, support and a safe environment. The other is a safe labor. In a safe labor, there is both an environment that promotes the natural process of labor and the means necessary for medical assistance when needed. Women die at an alarming rate from pregnancy or birth-related problems. Despite some progress made in recent years, women continue to die every minute as a result of being pregnant or giving birth.
What keeps us from having a better record on motherhood is often lack of care in the developing world and too much intervention in the U.S.. They are two sides of a coin. Mothers’ experience and health needs are not on equal footing with other cultural values. In places where basic prenatal care or family planning are low priorities, at-risk women are vulnerable to the physical stresses of pregnancy and birth. In the U.S., machine-measured data is paramount, even if it produces high rates of false positives, unnecessary interventions or counterproductive procedures. We are learning that obesity and sedentary lifestyles have detrimental effects, but fewer pregnant women than their non-pregnant counterparts exercise.
Despite the money spent to support the technological model of pregnancy and birth in the U.S., there are parts of the world with lower rates of maternal deaths — especially Scandinavia, Northern Europe and parts of the Mediterranean and Middle East (Greece, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Italy and Croatia). In fact, in the U.S., maternal deaths are on the rise.
It’s a tricky business. Clearly Western medicine has a lot to offer the developing world when there are medical concerns. On the other hand, importing the U.S. model could create more problems than it solves. Instead, the micro-solutions now being developed in many locations will be observed and evidence collected by organizations such as the White Ribbon Alliance and UNICEF.
There is an effective international midwives model adopted by JHPIEGO, the Johns Hopkins NGO working toward improved birthing outcomes. It assesses the local power structure, social connections, potential for trained birth assistants, and location of available transportation to create a network so that locals will know when a labor is in trouble and who can get the woman to the nearest hospital.
In the U.S., there are in-hospital birth centers that allow low-risk mothers the opportunity to labor and birth in a setting designed to encourage the innate processes. Women are beginning to vote with their feet…staying home for birth. Women are going abroad to give birth. At the same time, women are coming to this country to give birth, believing it is safer than where they are. There are several ways these scenes could play out.
But, I’ll wager, improving outcomes will involve compromise: Watchfulness and support in most births, plus better ways to assess danger and provide technology. No matter where you live in the world, the solution may be essentially the same.
In the U.S. and most of the developed world, approximately 51% of the population is female. Most females give birth at some point in their lives, although, in any year, only about 2% of the population gives birth.
No one living on earth got here any other way than gestation, so there ought to be some power attached to being part of that 51%. Historically, it might be said that the power has been merely for survival…the good breeders survived long enough to produce heirs and those who lived on knew where the roots and fruit grew.
Only women can make more people with their bodies.
Here are some things to consider:
Women make people
Women’s health and fitness before pregnancy affects whether the pregnancy is healthy
Women’s health and fitness during pregnancy affects her lifetime health and that of her offspring
Maternal survival is important to offspring well-being
Maternal health and fitness affects maternal adaptation and thereby offspring well-being
Thus, is it not a sanguine notion that the health and survival of women is critical to the health of everyone? After all, the health of nations is associated with this slight majority of females, and the wealth of nations is associated with its health.
The good news is that people working from this understanding are making some headway around the globe. Recently, the World Health Organization noted that maternal death among pregnant and birthing women world-wide has been dramatically reduced from the 1980’s to recently. This is very good news!
Here is the interesting footnote: Maternal death in the U.S. has risen 42% in the same period. While the absolute numbers remain small, this is a disturbing picture. What could be causing this?
Time will tell if we can figure it out and fix it. I venture to suggest some directions for consideration:
The elevated cesarean birth rate with its sequellae of cardiovascular and immune system disorders
Obesity
Metabolic syndromes
Diabetes
Heart disease
Why am I hopeful, then? I see among our current educated generation of new moms and moms-to-be a willingness to exert their influence – as breeders – over the health care scene. They want less technological birth. They want support. They want more information. They want to be healthy. These are wonderful things. I salute these young women…they also make my job easier in the process.
In addition, I see among young health care practitioners an understanding of the value of these things. Among practitioners working in public health clinics there is a sense of desperation on the one hand that the poor and indigent have no capacity or will to take care of themselves. On the other hand, the first step is always education and there are a lot of people working on this issue.
Which brings me to the closing point: How do we bring more resources and intelligence to helping women be healthy, prepare for pregnancy, have healthy babies, reduce pregnancy complications, and improve infant and maternal death rates? I, for one, will keep blogging on this issue. You, I hope, will vote for people who understand this issue. The political power and will is in our hands.
51% of us are women…some day 51% of us can set priorities
The First Stage of Childbirth is the long, hard labor. It is the slow process that produces dilation, or opening, of the cervix — the “neck” or outlet at the bottom of the uterus. Once the baby’s head can fit through the open cervix, it is time for the Second Stage, but that is another topic for another post.
Labor is generally a long, slow process…there is no “enter” button for dilation!
Before the baby can leave the mother’s body, s/he must leave the uterus. The opening of the cervix to let the baby out of the uterus generally takes up the most time. For a first time mom it can be 10 or 12 hours…or, yes, a couple of days. Of course, for some moms, this time is difficult and for others it only becomes difficult in the last few hours.
But, you know all this, right? What you want to know is: Why do I have to go through this? And, if I must, how can I make it the least painful?
Why labor is important. Let’s go to another question: How important would your offspring be if it was no big deal to drop one out? If you were walking along the sidewalk and you could simply drop a newborn on the pavement, would you even stop to pick it up if you could do it again in a few days, when, of course, it will be much more convenient?
Frankly, pregnancy and labor remind us to pay attention. A newborn cannot survive on its own for at least two years. If we don’t pay attention, it will die.
Okay, now that labor has your attention, what else does it do that is beneficial? It stimulates the baby’s stress response and teaches the newborn to be alert during situations of duress. Each contraction is pulling the cervix, helping it slowly open. If you are upright, each contraction is also alerting the baby to the influence of gravity.
Why is labor painful? So, you need to go through this because it is the bridge from pregnancy to parenthood. Why does it have to be painful?
The first thing to keep in mind about pain is that pain is a combination of sensations and emotion, mainly fear. Fear makes you tense; tension reduces blood flow. Reduced blood flow to the uterus makes the contractions less effective. In addition, cortisol is released, making sensations stronger and evoking greater fear.
Fear is the emotion of fight or flight. Interestingly, the opposite response, the relaxation response, is very effective in promoting labor. So, relax. Breathe deeply and slowly, focus, move through the center of your experience. You don’t have to be in fear if you know what is happening and if you are physically fit and prepared. Both childbirth education and physical fitness teach your body to work with discomfort. By including them in your preparation, you give yourself a tremendous advantage.
Does this mean you will never feel like you want to stop in the middle of labor? No, but it does mean you can do it. It is finite. The notion that the baby will not do well is also tied to your physical fitness…babies of fit mothers less often experience fetal distress. Your care providers will let you know if there is some factor beyond your control that requires medical intervention.
Birth is an empowering event. But, before the baby can be born, it must escape the uterus. It is a classic conflict and the mother’s body is the venue. Give yourself over; go with it. Only women can do this.
How lucky is this? Just a few days ago, yet another study was released and has been circulating on Medscape and other medical sites that indicates exercise is beneficial in pregnancy, whether the mother is a previous exerciser or not. Just in time for this entry!
Behavior Affects Pregnancy Outcome
Physical exertion (we call it “exercise” nowadays) is a normal state for healthy humans. Only in the last century has the desire to rest or the need to store extra calories as fat become more possible to achieve than our need to move about to survive.
Pregnancy is a state in which both of these factors (resting and storing calories) are enhanced through organic changes in body chemistry, adaptations that favor fetal survival. The current sedentary lifestyle exaggerates these metabolic changes and results in syndromes that increase the risk for a number of metabolic, cardiovascular and immunological disorders of pregnancy.
When confronted by the idea that it is counterintuitive to think exercise in pregnancy might be safe (let alone beneficial) I am dumbfounded. To me, it is counterintuitive to think that a sedentary lifestyle in pregnancy might be safe!
Burning Calories in Pregnancy Improves Outcomes!
What is the evidence that exercise in pregnancy is beneficial? Keep in mind that some studies have been executed more expertly than others. But, what is compelling is that numerous well-respected researchers have sought to test the hypothesis that exercise is not safe, but come away with results that indicate the opposite!
Here are some of the major findings:
• The placenta is larger and has more transport surface in exercisers than sedentary women
• The fetuses of (aerobic) exercising mothers make beneficial cardiovascular adaptations
• Women who do aerobic exercise are less likely to develop severe preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, and the long term health problems that accompany these disorders
• Women who are aerobically fit recover from birth 10 times faster than sedentary women (as measured by time needed to metabolize free radicals produced in labor)
• Women who exercise in pregnancy are more likely to be physically fit in midlife
• Babies of aerobically fit women are at reduced risk for prematurity and low birth weight
So, we have arrived at the take-home message: MOVE!! Pregnancy works best when you move and burn calories in a moderate to vigorous fashion. But, alternate this activity with rest and good nutrition, and be sure to stay well hydrated.
If you want more specifics and resources on this topic, try these:
So…are you planning to become pregnant? For the last decade, pregnancy has been in a 50/50 situation. That is, about half the pregnancies occurring in the U.S. are planned. The rest? Well, not necessarily unwelcome, but definitely unplanned.
Will this change in the current recession (or as a friend said today, Let us just call it a depression and move on)? So far, it is clear that pregnancy rates are not dropping, despite an unwillingness to spend money on many other things. What does this say?
Once again, despite living in a high tech world, having babies is a primal experience. It does not diminish when resources are scarce.
So, plan to or not, if you have a baby during this depression, do not waste your money. Figure out how to have a healthy pregnancy.
Next on the Pregnancy Pathway: the act of conception.