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

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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.

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