The Birth Lounge Blog

Consumer Complaints: Essential To New Wave Maternity Care What Is A Consumer Complaint? Certainly we’ve all received a long awaited package, torn it open out of excitement, and come face to face with disappointment. This product we purchased is not the product we were sold. When faced with this situation, a vast majority of us will go back onto the website we purchased the item from to leave a review explaining why the product does not live up to its advertised quality. We do this not only to let the company know we’re not happy with our service, but also to warn other consumers that this product isn’t worth their time, energy, and money. This is a normal part of life, right? An online consumer’s right of passage, if you will. What if I told you that you can do the same exact thing with Drs, Hospital Staff, and Nurses? What if I told you that doing so doesn’t just warn others that they shouldn’t waste their time and money? instead, it actually sends a clear warning that their body, bab...

Things that F*ck Up your Birth Plan LATE PREGNANCY ULTRASOUNDS Ultrasounds are a ‘normal’ part of pregnancy if you ask any American woman—BUT if we look at the science behind them, you might be surprised at what you find… While you may enjoy seeing your baby, it’s worth discussing the risks before saying ‘yes’ to any and all ultrasounds and scans. Pregnant people routinely go through a number of ultrasounds during pregnancy.  Most commonly: - 11-14 weeks to confirm pregnancy - 18-22 weeks to confirm anatomy is looking normal - 35-38 weeks which is known as the growth scan (we check the ‘size of baby’ and baby’s position) I put ’size of baby’ in quotations because the accuracy of ultrasounds is so laughable that it’s ridiculous to lead anyone to ever believe we could accurately predict the size of a baby that way. Ultrasounds also get less and less accurate as the baby grows. However, there are risks with late-pregnancy ultrasounds and some are severe like misdiagnosis, unnecessar...

An Inside look at Obstetrical Violence (Derived from a podcast conversation with Tranquility By HeHe team members HeHe Stewart and Caitlin LeBeau in Episode 136 of The Birth Lounge Podcast, find it here !) Have you ever heard the term “obstetrical violence” and wondered what it meant? Or maybe you envisioned this blatant act of disrespect or an assault of sorts. These are both examples of obstetrical violence, but there is another side to it, too. A sneaky side. We're going to share a few instances of medical manipulation in the birth room. Not always aggressive, not violent. And that is a tactic- they are trying to get you to do what they want. Which is so hard to say because we are conditioned to trust our doctors, we want to trust our doctors. This isn’t about batting heads- this is about questioning, looking into research/evidence, looking into policies so you know if they are being influenced/pressured. Have that open communication if you can. You can say, 'That's not...

When Checking in Hinders the Process Today I'm going to be talking about when checking in, actually hinders the process. Now specifically, I'll be talking about birth today, but I think you're going to find this makes sense in other places of your life too. So specifically when, when hindering the birth process, I want you to think about physiological, from a natural standpoint, from an undisturbed undisrupted standpoint. So if we were to allow your body and your baby to do its own thing. Cervical Checks So the first place that I often see checking in disrupting our natural processes is that vaginal checks in the later part of pregnancy. So it used to be routine. And I mean, it still is routine in a lot of places to do vaginal checks starting at 37 weeks. However, the science is actually pretty clear that there's no benefit to having cervical exams before 40 or 41 weeks. Now this all goes back to your due date, right? And we know that first time babies are more likely g...

Your Responsibility in Labor I am bringing you my takeaway from recent births today on the blog. All of them had a layer of nature that we could not control, which is something I talk about all the time. You can control 90% of labor and birth, but that other 10% is nature. That's life, right? Those are the pieces that no matter how hard we try as humans or even medical professionals, we'll never be able to control nature. Nature will always kind of reign above us, because it's nature. We are the smaller beings when we think about nature and humans, humans actually depend on nature. Nature does not depend on humans. Nature will always have this way of playing its hand in birth. So your responsibility with that 10% is not to give up on it. Your responsibility is to know what could happen within that 10% of birth. To understand what your options are at each of those places. When you find yourself in some of those situations, because remember it's inevitable, nature will a...

 Nubain: A Magic Pill? I think that a lot of times when people think about pain relief in labor, they think about unmedicated or they think about at the general use and it doesn't necessarily have to be one or the other. There's actually a spectrum of pain relief that you can choose from when it comes to your birth. So if you need to be induced for some reason- what the reason is may also play a role in what your options are for pain relief. These are all discussions that you'll have to have with your doctor, but you really need to be having those discussions if you don't know what your options are. You need to empower yourself going into your labor. So that is why I wanted to talk about Nubain and Staidol in labor. A lot of people, when they think about having a baby, the first thing they think about is the pain and what it is going to feel like to actually have a baby. While this is a valid thought and concern, it is not necessarily where you need to start. You nee...

When Nurses Perpetuate the Patriarchy All right. I had something planned for you, but then, after being in a birth I decided to bring something different to the table today.  It's just something that I walked away with a reminder of and I wanted to pass it along so if you are having your baby soon, hopefully you will remember this and you'll come back to this conversation and find that confidence to speak up.  So what I want to share today about is how nurses can perpetuate the patriarchy of birth. And when I'm talking about the patriarchy of birth, I truly am talking about the medical system taking the power away from birthing people.  I think that there is a place where our medical system can be second tier, right? And that birthing person is the top tier. They're literally the top of the totem pole. They are number one on the pyramid. They are the peak, right? And the medical system, the medical staff, the doctor are below them. I truly believe this.  So, so deepl...

Do Inductions Really Rise Around the Holidays? As long as I can remember in my doula career, I have been told, both seriously and sarcastically, that inductions rise around the holidays because doctors want to control the births they will have to deliver on..let’s say Thanksgiving day or Christmas Day.  I have to be honest in that I never really paid much attention to it because our team typically takes off the end of the year! It has been an intentional decision in years past to not take births in the months of December and January. This provided us with the time to disconnect, visit family and friends, and wrap up one year + dive into the next with a solid foundation. As you well know, 2020 has changed so much of what we knew and, for us, this meant not having the space to disconnect without leaving birthing people vulnerable in a global crisis and not traveling for this holidays. With this, we decided to work straight through 2020 into the start of 2021. And in this moment, the ...

Failed Inductions: What You Need to Know When we talk about inductions, we often speak of them like they are 100% guaranteeing us a baby at the end. While this is true most of the time, you’d probably be surprised to learn that indcutins can fail and you may be sent home to wait it out a bit longer. Or, if the option isn’t presented to you, you can ask or take yourself home. It is important to ensure that you and your baby are safe to go home.There are thousands of women each year that experience a failed induction and it can be very hard emotionally.  What is a failed induction? A failed induction is the inability to reach active labor while being induced . There is a certain process we want to take when it comes to induction. I call this your ‘individual induction equation.’ It’s truly individual to you and you get to introduce various induction methods as you see fit which makes your equation unique to you. First we want to ripen the cervix--it needs to be soft. You have options...