Birth Injuries
Giving birth should be your greatest achievement, not your greatest fear - Jane Weideman
image by: Wendy Kenin
HWN Suggests
Vaginal birth comes with risks too – so should it really be the default option?
When it comes to childbirth, vaginal delivery is often assumed to be the best thing – women have, after all, done it for thousands of years. But natural birth actually comes with risks, including tearing, haemorrhage and incontinence for the mother and injuries to the baby during labour. So why is it that the vast majority of pregnant women are only being warned about the risks of caesarean sections?
This could now change, as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists are to discuss the current view of vaginal birth as the default option for childbirth in the UK. They will consider whether there’s merit in routinely discussing the relative risks and benefits of vaginal…
Resources
Millions are left with life-changing injuries after giving birth
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ figures show that fourth-degree tears — the most severe type, which involve the perineal muscle, anal sphincter and/or rectum being damaged — increased three-fold in the ten years to 2012 and are now at an all-time high.
Suffering in silence: how Kenyan women live with profound childbirth injuries
Ending fistulas means eradicating both cultural and structural obstacles that put women at risk of developing preventable tragedies such as fistulas. It requires a complete overhaul of health infrastructure in Kenya to ensure that maternal care and women’s reproductive health are prioritised – and that no woman has to lose her life while trying to give one.
There Is a Hidden Epidemic of Doctors Abusing Women in Labor, Doulas Say
According to doulas, women are often treated horribly while they're in labor, with medical professionals engaging in abusive behavior that ranges from nonconsensual episiotomies to sexual assault.
We're really bad at making babies
Anatomical compromises from millions of years ago have made birth hard for humans.
4 Things Children With Birth Injuries And Their Parents Should Know That Could Be Worth Lots Of Money
I've been living with a condition called cerebral palsy for nearly 31 years now. It's a disease most commonly resulting from a birth injury and it can't be passed on genetically, which explains why my twin sister doesn't have a disability.
A Mother’s Right to Life
Parents and medical professionals respond to an essay on America’s rising maternal mortality rate and the competing interests of mothers and doctors during childbirth.
America Is Blaming Pregnant Women for Their Own Deaths
What is it like to face dying during childbirth in the richest country in the world in the 21st century? For experts studying the United States’ maternal mortality and injury rates — which are estimated to far surpass those in other developed countries — and for women in labor, the failure to treat mothers as people is neither antiquated nor dystopian, but absolutely pressing.
Doctors who ignore consent are traumatizing women during childbirth
Disregard of consent during childbirth and the use of unwarranted interventions are more common than one might like to think.
Giving birth can be as hard on your body as running a marathon
The women studied were already at higher risk for birth injuries, so these percentages won't hold true for all women. But the researchers estimated that up to 15 percent of women sustain pelvic injuries that don't heal, and that the Kegel exercises doctors typically prescribe will do nothing to help those injuries.
The Truth About Epidurals
Some (but not all) research suggests that they, more than other drugs, increase the risk that a doctor will use forceps or a vacuum extractor to pull the baby out of the birth canal, which can cause bruising and jaundice in the baby as well as vaginal injury. But newer epidurals reduce this risk...
Vaginal birth comes with risks too – so should it really be the default option?
When it comes to childbirth, vaginal delivery is often assumed to be the best thing – women have, after all, done it for thousands of years. But natural birth actually comes with risks, including tearing, haemorrhage and incontinence for the mother and injuries to the baby during labour. So why is it that the vast majority of pregnant women are only being warned about the risks of caesarean sections?
Birth Injury Guide
We work hard to keep our information as relevant and as up-to-date as possible. We strive to educate families on many different types of birth injuries, what the symptoms are, how birth injuries are caused, how they can be diagnosed, what the available treatment is, what the prognosis is, and what assistance programs are available to them. For very serious birth injuries such as cerebral palsy, we include information on adaptive equipment, different forms of therapy, and how you can manage your child’s symptoms to make life easier for the whole family.
Stanford Children's Health
Occasionally during the birth process, the baby may suffer a physical injury that is simply the result of being born. This is sometimes called birth trauma or birth injury.
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