Let it Shine

March 27, 2007 | Filed Under Home Birth | Leave a Comment

Home birth of twins Majella and Rosie

This home birth of twins occurred in Australia.

March 20, 2007 | Filed Under Home Birth | 1 Comment

Regular ‘procedure’ at home births makes study

Newborns may gain several health benefits if the umbilical cord isn’t cut for at least two minutes after birth, a new Canadian study suggests.

Delaying cutting the once life-giving cord, rather than clamping it immediately, results in better blood counts and iron levels for a baby, according to the meta-analysis — or study of previous studies — that appears in the March 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Read the whole article here: Delay Cutting the Umbilical Cord, Research Suggests

More than 25 companies, including ViaCell Inc.’s ViaCord and Celgene Corp.’s LifebankUSA, offer private storage. Privately-held Cord Blood Registry and other smaller outfits also sell the service.

The companies send parents a kit to bring when their baby is delivered. The obstetrician squeezes the blood into a container that is returned to the companies.

Health insurers do not cover the process, which costs between $1,700 to $2,500 up front plus annual fees from $115 to $200. Doctors also usually charge for collection.

But heavy marketing has some physicians concerned that parents are making emotional decisions to spend thousands of dollars without understanding cord blood’s limits.

“The banks are to some degree taking advantage of a middle-class buyer. They don’t actually educate you that the chances of using it are small,” said the cancer institute’s Antin.

Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics said parents should only bank if they have an older child with a condition that could benefit.

Because genetic diseases are already present in umbilical cord blood, the cells cannot help children who later develop that type of disease, although they could help family members.

Other limitations include the possibility that the sample is too small or that the cells lose their usefulness decades after birth when many diseases being studied now might strike.

March 20, 2007 | Filed Under In the News | Leave a Comment

Born in the USA

For most of his career Dr. Marsden Wagner was your typical American OB/GYN. A baby doctor; delivering his share of the four million babies that are born each year in the United States.

Ninety-nine percent of those births take place in hospitals. That’s the way it should be, thought Dr. Wagner until he became the Director of Women and Children’s Health at the World Health Organization and began to travel to places where midwives do the job.

What he saw changed his life.

Read the full text: Living on Earth

Listen to the interview: Born in the USA

March 10, 2007 | Filed Under Midwives/Midwifery, Podcasts, Politics | Leave a Comment