Great press coverage in the Seattle Times yesterday about a program near and dear to my heart -- the Birth Attendants of Olympia, WA, are a dedicated group of doulas and childbirth educators who provide education and doula support to incarcerated women who are pregnant and mothering their babies.
and from the CDC, we find that the increased cesarean rate is in fact, creating more preterm births. Here's the MSNBC link to the story and some selected quotes:
"Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the March of Dimes compared single births — not twins or other multiple births, which are at an increased risk for pre-term birth — in 1996 and 2004. The rate of premature births rose by about 10 percent in that period, they said.
The number of premature births rose from 354,997 in 1996 to 414,054 in 2004, the study published in the journal Clinics in Perinatology showed.
"When one looks at the numbers carefully, there was an increase of 60,000 who were pre-term, and 92 percent of them were by Caesarean section," Fleischman said."
and
"The increase in pre-term births is really being driven by the Caesarean section rate, and really demands good research to sort out what percent of those are not medically indicated deliveries," Fleischman said in a telephone interview.
"My gut tells me its significant, but I can't give you an estimate and a percent," Fleischman added."
Finally, something you don't see every day: Photographs ofa woman's cervix every day through her cycle. It is an amazing sight. Check out My Beautiful Cervix