Birth support with Bairbre Brooke

31/01/2024

Posting for a member

Hi all, i just had my smear test few weeks ago after having baby 5 months ago.. result came back as HPV positive with abnormal cell changes.. my last one was hpv negative. Was referred for colposcopy and they rang me to come next week. Seems to me lik it could be something serious as they rang me to come so soon so im really worried 😢 anyone else have similar?

07/01/2024

Whether you're scheduling a C-section, or trying to learn how emergency ones go, watching C-section birth videos can help you understand them better.

07/06/2023

20/09/2022

We have evidence from studies involving thousands of women and babies that using water for labour and birth is safe and leads to good outcomes.

Using water also brings advantages for some women, including less need for other kinds of pain relief and increased maternal satisfaction.

But, as with many things in obstetrics, practice doesn’t always follow evidence.

Some organisations, such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, do not recommend waterbirth.

They sometimes cite anecdotal stories and hypothetical risks, while ignoring large studies which evidence that waterbirth is safe for women and babies.

This means that researchers need to keep doing more studies in order to demonstrate that woman-centred options are safe and effective.

Last year, US researchers published another analysis of waterbirth outcomes.

This is just one of a number of studies that evidence waterbirth safety.

Again, this study showed that waterbirth is safe for babies.

“In this cohort of low-risk pregnant women, births in water and on land were associated with similar rates of admission to the NICU.” (Lanier et al 2021).

Will it change anything?

Well for that to happen, obstetric organisations would have to become as evidence-based as they like to claim they are.

You can read the research at https://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Fulltext/2021/10000/Neonatal_Outcomes_After_Delivery_in_Water.15.aspx

I list all the waterbirth studies that I have shared at https://www.sarawickham.com/research-updates/more-benefits-of-water-for-birth/

Find out more about birth, research and how to make sense of it all at www.sarawickham.com

05/09/2022

I'm not anti-induction.

And neither are most of the people who will share this post with you.

In fact, there are some really good reasons to induce labour.

I wrote about some of those in a blog post a few months ago. I explained what I see as good reasons for induction. And I also listed the reasons for induction that I would consider to be questionable.

Because, sometimes, induction is offered or recommended for less-than-good reasons.

Convenience, fear or a lack of trust in the female body. In fact, those of us who work in birth-related areas see many unnecessary inductions. We also see the negative consequences that can sometimes result.

That's why we discuss it and want everyone to make the decision that's right for them.

Once they have ALL the facts.

You can read my blog posts about good reasons to induce labour at https://www.sarawickham.com/articles-2/are-there-good-reasons-to-induce-labour/

It offers links to many others as well as the books that I have written on this topic.

And yes, please feel free to share/repost our pic with our text, credit and link intact. Please don't put Sara's material into your own branding.

08/06/2022

I am often asked about vitamin K and tongue tie division.

For instance, Cathy wrote:

“Sara, what are your thoughts on tongue tie division with baby who hasn’t had vit k?

If mother has made informed decision, can a medical professional decline to do division?”

Well, as is so often the case, the answer to this does depend a bit on where you are in the world.

And many other factors affect the availability of health care, as we have learned from the measures taken in an attempt to reduce the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

But, as I wrote in my book, Vitamin K and the Newborn, I am aware that, “many of the people who perform tongue-tie division surgery won’t carry this out on babies under 12 weeks unless the baby has either received IM vitamin K or it can be demonstrated via a blood test that the baby has an adequate blood clotting result.”

This is a really tricky situation in which a few different issues are tangled up.

It's too long for a social media post, so I've written a blog post in which I explain.

You can read it at https://www.sarawickham.com/questions-and-answers/vitamin-k-and-tongue-tie-division/

Or follow the link to my Vitamin K resources page in my bio.

I hope it helps you make the decisions that are right for you and your baby.

If you'd like to know more about vitamin K, my book on this topic looks at the issues in depth.

More at www.sarawickham.com/vk

12/05/2022

Today, Tanya Cawthorne reviews a recently released book; “In Your Own Time - How Western Medicine Contrils the Start of Labour and Why this Needs to Stop” by Sara Wickham, MD examining labour inductions from an interesting perspective. - Sharon Muza, Connecting the Dots Community Manager. If you...