A fun website for my expecting mommies

I just found this site and I thought this would be a great link post for all my expecting mommies out there. Babystrology.com has several neat gadgets over there to play with. My favorite is the baby ticker, which you can find under tools. There you plug in your due date and a ticker with an image of the development of a baby the same age of yours pops us. It even shows the baby floating about, how cute is that! Have fun!

What is a doula?

Midwives and Mothers

"It's not just the making of babies, but the making of mothers that midwives see as the miracle of birth."

-- Barbara Katz Rothman, Sociologist, Author of The Tentative Pregnancy, Genetic Maps and Human Imaginations and other books.

Ultrasound in Pregnancy

While doing some research for a friend of mine concerning her pregnancy I came across this article from Midwifery Today. I do not think many mommies are aware of these issues with routine ultrasounds. As always is is about educating ourselves to make wise and informed decisions.



Ultrasound in Pregnancy
Ultrasound: high-frequency sound waves that travel at 10 to 20 million cycles per second. The pattern of echo waves creates a picture of tissue and bone.

In 1987, UK radiologist H.D. Meire, who had been performing pregnancy scans for 20 years, commented, "The casual observer might be forgiven for wondering why the medical profession is now involved in the wholesale examination of pregnant patients with machines emanating vastly different powers of energy which is not proven to be harmless to obtain information which is not proven to be of any clinical value by operators who are not certified as competent to perform the operations" (1).

Routine prenatal ultrasound (RPU) actually detects only between 17 and 85 percent of the 1 in 50 babies who have major abnormalities at birth (2,3).

RPU can identify a low-lying placenta (placenta previa). However, 19 of 20 women who have placenta previa detected on an early scan will be needlessly worried: the placenta will effectively move up without causing problems at the birth. Furthermore, detection of placenta previa by RPU has not been found to be safer than detection in labor (4).

The American College of Obstetricians has concluded that "in a population of women with low-risk pregnancies, neither a reduction in perinatal morbidity and mortality nor a lower rate of unnecessary interventions can be expected from routine diagnostic ultrasound. Thus ultrasound should be performed for specific indications in low-risk pregnancy (5).

Effects of ultrasound include cavitation, a process wherein the small pockets of gas that exist within mammalian tissue vibrate and then collapse. In this situation "...temperatures of many thousands of degrees Celsius in the gas create a wide range of chemical products, some of which are potentially toxic. These violent processes may be produced by microsecond pulses of the kind which are used in medical diagnosis." (American Institute of Ultrasound Medicine Bioeffects Report 1988). The significance of cavitation in human tissue is unknown.

Studies have suggested that these effects are of real concern in living tissues:

Cell abnormalities caused by exposure to ultrasound were seen to persist for several generations (6).
In newborn rats (similar stage of development as human fetuses at four to five months in utero), ultrasound can damage the myelin that covers nerves (7).
Exposing mice to dosages typical of obstetric ultrasound cased a 22% reduction in the rate of cell division and doubling of the rate of aptosis (programmed cell death), in the cells of the small intestine (8).
Two long-term randomized controlled trials comparing exposed and unexposed childrens' development at eight to nine years old found no measurable effect from ultrasound. However, the authors comment that intensities used today are many times higher than there were in 1979 and 1981 (9).
— Excerpted from "Ultrasound Scans: Cause for Concern,"
by Sarah Buckley, MD, Midwifery Today Issue 64, also published in Nexux, Oct–Nov 2002

Excerpt references:

Meire, HB (1987). "The Safety of Diagnostic Ultrasound," British J of Ob Gyn 94: 1121–22.
Ewigman, BG et al. (1993). "Effect of Prenatal Ultrasound Screening on Perinatal Outcome: RADIUS Study Group," New Eng J Med 329(12): 821–7.
Luck, CA (1992). "Value of Routine Ultrasound Scanning at 19 Weeks: a Four-Year Study of 8849 Deliveries," Brit Med J 34(6840): 1474–8.
Saari-Kemppainen, A., et al. (1990). "Ultrasound Screening and Perinatal Mortality: Controlled Trial of Systematic One-Stage Screening in Pregnancy. The Helsinki Ultrasound Trial," Lancet 336(8712): 387–89.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) (August 1997). Practice Patterns: Evidence-Based Guidelines for Clinical Issues in Obstetrics and Gynecology. "Routine Ultrasound in Low-Risk Pregnancy." No. 5.
Liebeskind, D. et al. (1979). "Diagnostic Ultrasound: Effects on the DNAS and Growth Patterns of Animal Cells," Radiology 131(1): 177–84.
Ellisman, MH et al.,(1987). "Diagnostic Levels of Ultrasound May disrupt Myelination," Exper Neur 98(1): 78–92.
Brennan P et al. (1999). "Shadow of Doubt," New Scientist 12:23.
Salvesen KA et al. (1999). "Ultrasound in Pregnancy and Subsequent Childhood Non-Right-Handedness: A Meta-Analysis," Ultrasound Obstet Gyn 13(4): 241–6.

Supermarket Discussions

Anyone who knows me knows I love to talk about birth. I am a doula after all and it is my job to empower women to believe in themselves and how Hashem has created them. I am so about them knowing the strength that lies within. One of my other favorite topics is Moshiach. Well, today I was in the grocery store and met up with one of the incredible ladies that lives in my neighborhood. After greeting each other we almost immediately started to speak of things spiritual and began talking of Moshiach! Right there near the frozen gefilte fish we encouraged each other and spoke of the times we are in. We spoke of the 'birth pangs' of Moshiach. It seems there are many of us women in the community here talking about this very thing. So many of us are in great anticipation. It is like something has shifted and we feel it.
After all it is we women who know when the baby is coming. We see and feel all the signs. We feel the baby drop in our wombs and feel the increase in contractions. We feel the baby's activity quiet down right before labor and ours intensify as we go into a flurry of activity when we get our nesting urges. When the actual labor starts we are not totally shocked as we knew and felt the time was coming. We felt it and we prepared for it. Well, ladies, I think we are in beginning labor. I believe it is time to prepare. If we are indeed feeling the birth pangs of Moshiach than we need to be ready. We need to do teshuvah, increase in our tefilla, and to draw closer to Hashem. We need to encourage those around us, our beloved husbands, children, family and friends. We also need to encourage ourselves. Labor and delivery are not easy but they are possible and we can do it. This is an exciting time and as it was before so again now may it be in the merit of the righteous women's that we are redeemed from galut. May we have such emunah in our Father that we actively anticipate it.

I am getting my tambourine ready, how about yours?

MAZAL TOV!!

My baby sister has just had her first baby! A fine and very handsome (poo poo poo) boy! He weighed a very nice 6lbs 12oz, 19 inches long and was born the second day of Sukkot at 1:10 PM...which is why I was unable to get there to be her doula. She also lives about an hour from me. :-( Mom and her best friend were there so thank G-d she did have support. Mommy said she was awesome and from what I can tell she really did a great job! I am sorry I was unable to be there I so wanted to help with her birth, but I was able to pray. A friend of mine who was able to, got messages for me and told me when the baby came, which was so very nice. B"H, the new Mommy and baby are well and healthy and we are so happy for our new little addition to the family!
WELCOME LITTLE ONE!