12. July 2008 by Lonnie.

One wonders what process the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates used to determine that “Resolution 205 on Home Deliveries” was a prudent and reasonable proposal to adopt. AMA Resolution 205 attempts to outlaw a woman’s choice to birth at home or in a freestanding birth center by calling for legislation to establish hospitals and hospital-based birth centers as the safest place for labor, delivery and postpartum recovery. Further, Resolution 205 seeks to establish that hospital-based midwives who work under the control of physicians are the only safe midwifery practitioners.

Calling Nurse-Midwives fickle allies is also of concern to me.  Having spent 28 years of my career in an out of hospital birth center I take offense at the undermining of the excellent statistics both the BC nationally have achieved as well as the wonderful outcomes we experienced over the 28 years of our operation.  While the outcomes have not changed in the hospital the ability to continue to practice has been a real challenge.  All of the Bergen county hospitals do not want natural birth let alone use of tubs or alternate positions in labor.  It is not suprising that their organizations would put out such obsurd resolutions that attempt to limit women’s right to birth their babies in the place of their choice and with the provider of their choice.  Lonnie

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

12. July 2008 by Lonnie.

Jennifer Block says it all in her recent article.  that women are being pushed out of the system and forced to deliver at home .  While planning a home birth with a midwife may sound old-fashioned — maybe you think it sounds crazy — but a solid body of research shows that for healthy women who seek a normal, nonsurgical birth, there are several benefits. At home, a woman can get one-on-one care and monitoring from a midwife trained to support the normal labor process. The mother-to-be is free to move about, eat and drink, sit in a birth tub — Britain’s national health guidelines call water the safest, most effective form of pain relief. A woman will be helped to give birth in positions that are effective and protective: sitting, squatting, on hands and knees, even standing.

The physiological birth process is automatic: hormones fire, the cervix gradually opens, the uterus contracts, the baby descends, muscles engage. An optimal birth, one in which mother and child emerge as healthy as can be, is one that begins spontaneously, progresses on its own and concludes with the least amount of intervention necessary.

But hospital maternity care in the U.S. is typically not supportive of this process. More than half of women are induced into labor, or it is sped up with artificial hormones; the vast majority of women labor and push in the desultory flat-on-the-back or leaning-back position; and (perhaps not surprisingly) nearly one-third of women end up giving birth through major surgery, the caesarean section.

This has led to an epidemic of pre-term births in the United States. A 2006 survey showed that the majority of babies are now born before the spontaneous onset of labor, which leaves them more prone to breathing and feeding difficulties. Caesareans are also contributing to a rising maternal death rate, announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year.

Which is why some women, such as those in the film Lake produced, choose to give birth somewhere other than a hospital. Their choice is backed by sound science. Studies of “low-risk” women in North America planning out-of-hospital births with midwives have found that 95% give birth vaginally with hardly any medical intervention. The largest and most rigorous study to date, published in the British Medical Journal, found that in North America, babies were born at home just as safely as in the hospital.

Organized medicine can’t believe this. Dismissing the research evidence, the AMA resolution states that “the safest setting for labor, delivery and the immediate postpartum period is in the hospital” or an accredited birth center. In its own statement earlier this year, the American College of Ob/Gyns went even further, implying that women who choose home birth are selfish and irresponsible: “choosing to deliver a baby at home … is to place the process of giving birth over the goal of having a healthy baby.”

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

7. July 2008 by Lonnie.

I am really excited to announce the 1st NJ Preview of the film Orgasmic Birth.  Join me and a panel of experts on Wed. July 30th at 7PM for a eye opening evening on birth the way it was meant to be.  Lonnie

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

5. June 2008 by emccullagh.

Yes Lonnie I do read your blogs and agree with you about the c-section rate/premature births. I do think that many women want a natural birth but don’t take the time to educate themselves enough to know they have this as a choice. I see this all the time with my friends. They choose the OB closest to their work place so they can run to their appts on their lunch break and have the most time off with the baby after the birth. Not everyone is able to afford to stay home unpaid to the baby is older than 6 weeks. I do encourage everyone to use a midwife and a doula for their births as I did. As you know my experience was wonderful and my son is now one year one month old! He is such a happy healthy little boy who still nurses even though his Mom works full time. I could not have done this without the support of a midwife, doula and oh yes most importantly my husband! I can’t figure out where to post my birth experience on your site. Let me know and I will post it. 

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

29. May 2008 by Lonnie.

I read an interesting article :WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Premature births of U.S. babies have been climbing since the mid-1990s and the increase is being driven by Caesarean section deliveries.  Dr. Alan Fleischman, medical director and senior vice president of the March of Dimes infant health advocacy group, voiced concern that a sizable portion of these C-section deliveries may be medically unnecessary.

Premature babies are at greater risk for a number of medical and developmental problems such as troubled breathing, bleeding in the brain, birth defects and death. Premature birth is defined as delivery before the 37th week of pregnancy, rather than the typical 40 weeks.

“When one looks at the numbers carefully, there was an increase of 60,000 babies who were pre-term, and 92 percent of them were by Caesarean section,”

The increase comes amid an ongoing controversy over whether some doctors are performing C-sections because they fear being sued if they do not and whether some women are opting for medically unnecessary C-sections out of convenience.

In the United States, 5 percent of babies in 1970 were born by C-section. In 2006, the figure was about 31 percent.

Meanwhile, the percentage of babies born prematurely also has been rising — increasing more than 30 percent since the early 1980s to about 13 percent of all births. 

Makes me think that we are not moving forward in the childbirth arena.  What do you think.  I am hoping that someone is reading my blogs.  Lonnie

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

28. May 2008 by Lonnie.

I just returned home from the ACNM Convention and I am packed with new info and I am excited to share it with you.  I am redoing the website and will be posting links for several products and services that may be helpful to you as you navigate through pregnancy and your childbearing years.  Stay tuned for our new developments that are coming.  Please post your questions, births and experiences to help other women. 

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

30. April 2008 by Lonnie.

This response to C-sections on demand was written by a former President of ACOG who has written extensively on C-sections and VBAC’s.  

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

31. March 2008 by Lonnie.

Dear Friends, 

We hope this letter finds you and your family healthy, happy and all doing well. May the spring, which is so full of wonder, bring much renewal and joy to your home.  We wanted to take a moment to update you about all that is going on with our practice.

  We have a new (albeit small and temporary) office space at 234A Columbia Avenue in Fort Lee.  We are so grateful to now have admitting privileges at Palisades Medical Center, a facility that truly wants to be the leader in providing every woman with the right to choose her care provider, her birth experience, and to have a safe, and excellent birth outcome.  We are so happy that the difficult journey of finding a new and supportive home is behind us.

 We are now working with two outstanding doctors, Dr. Marc Brescia and Dr. Thomas Migliaccio.  These doctors were heaven sent - they wholeheartedly support the midwifery model of care and have worked exceptionally well with us when it has been necessary to have medical collaboration or consultation.   We at The Childbirth and Women’s Wellness Center are happy to be able to continue to offer a choice for women who want to experience the incredible empowerment and health benefits of childbirth with a midwife.  We remain committed to our mission of normalizing birth and listening to women.  As a result, we have been able to maintain our documented low 9% rate of C-section within both a national and state system that finds rates as high as 50% acceptable.  We have been producing outstanding birth outcomes, family planning, primary care and gynecological care in concert with our wonderful team leaders, the women we have served, for over 32 years. 

Lonnie C. Morris CNM, ND 

Donna Tabas CNM, MS

 Deborah Bohnen CNM, MS

Mary Hunt- Office Manager

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

6. March 2008 by Lonnie.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A woman who has had one successful vaginal
birth after cesarean delivery is even more likely to succeed during
subsequent trials of vaginal birth, new research suggests.

Dr. Brian M. Mercer, of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland,
Ohio, and colleagues studied the impact of prior vaginal birth after
cesarean on outcomes of attempted vaginal births in subsequent
pregnancies in 13,532 women.

For 9012 women (67 percent), this was their first vaginal birth after
cesarean — what doctors call “VBAC.” Twenty-nine hundred women (21
percent) had a history of one prior VBAC, 1058 (7.8 percent) had a
history of two, 371 (2.7 percent) had a history of three, and 191 (1.4
percent) had a history of four or more VBACs.

Results showed that the frequency of VBAC success rose with increasing
number of prior VBACs, from 63 percent with no prior VBACs to 88
percent for women with one and 91 percent for those with two or more
prior VBACs.

The corresponding incidence of uterine rupture, a serious complication
of labor, declined from 0.87 percent to 0.45 percent and 0.43 percent.
The rates of other complications followed similar patterns with
increasing number of prior VBACs.

In contrast, the investigators note, repeated cesarean deliveries are
associated with higher risks of complications like placenta accreta
(when the placenta implants too far into the uterus) and trauma to
internal organs in the mother, as well as more frequent hysterectomies
and blood transfusions.

“Women planning large families … should be reassured by the
increasing success rates and decreasing risks associated with VBAC
attempts in successive pregnancies,” Mercer and his associates conclude.

SOURCE: Obstetrics & Gynecology, February 2008.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

5. February 2008 by Lonnie.

DALLAS, TX (Jan. 31, 2008)   New research suggests that women who take folic acid supplements for at least one year before they become pregnant can cut their risk of having a premature baby by half.

Researchers at the 28th Annual Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) meetings ”The Pregnancy Meeting” today unveiled a study linking pre-conceptional folate supplementation of at least one year to reduced early premature delivery rates of 50 to 70 percent, regardless of age, race or other factors. Of particular note is the drop in very early premature births, those babies who are at the greatest risk of complications such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, chronic lung disease, and blindness.

Lonnie C. Morris CNM, ND

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »