The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS,
a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA
The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS,
a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA
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I just had my mind expanded this morning by Laureen Hudson's hour long online session on how to use the internet to get a message out. Laureen's session “Creating an Online Presence," gave me a wealth of information in a short time and impressed me with how many people are out there who completely rely on the internet for their information. I needed that, and maybe you do, too. - Ina May Gaskin I just hung up the phone from doing the hour long session with
Laureen Hudson on “Creating an Online Presence”. Laureen’s know-how
and expertise were enough to wake up even the birth oldtimers like me and
Ina May to the many unused opportunities of the internet. Laureen’s
engaging and easygoing teaching style made even those scary (to me) terms
like “hypertext, streaming, wordpress, technorati, feedreader and trackback”
start to make sense. Her passion is to reach the generation of young
women who have not yet given birth BEFORE they fall into the black hole
of aggressive obstetrics. I came away from the class today with lots
of ways to improve my website and make it more modern, usable and interesting
for readers. This class will run again this coming Friday (August
22) and I heartily recommend it.
Cost: $35 per session Each session will be 60 minutes in length Creating An Online Presence
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SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health 1999;89:506-510.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited
April 6, 1999
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -- Women who have a fever during labor are much more likely to have a cesarean section, and epidural anesthesia tends to increase the risk of fever, according to a study by Harvard researchers.
The findings suggest that fever may be one reason why women who have an epidural are more likely to have a cesarean rather than vaginal delivery, according to a report published in the American Journal of Public Health, the journal of the American Public Health Association.
A vaginal delivery is generally considered to be preferable to a cesarean section due to a quicker recovery time and a lower risk of complications.
In the study of 1,233 low-risk women undergoing childbirth for the first time at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, 301 women (24%) developed a fever over 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
About 25% of women who developed a fever underwent a cesarean section or an assisted vaginal delivery compared with 7% to 8% of women who did not have a fever.
Nine out of 10 women with elevated temperatures had received epidural anesthesia, but not all women receiving epidural anesthesia developed fever. Of the 736 women in the study who had an epidural, 37% developed an elevated temperature, compared with about 6% of women who did not receive an epidural, report Dr. Ellice Lieberman and colleagues from Brigham and Women's and Harvard Medical School.
While a fever can be associated with an infection, the researchers found that only a few cases of elevated temperature in the study were due to infection.
Previous studies have linked epidural use to a higher rate of cesarean and assisted vaginal deliveries, but the reason for the link was unclear.
"Our data suggest that the temperature elevation that is associated
with epidural use may in part explain the higher rates of cesarean and
assisted vaginal delivery," the authors conclude. "Given the widespread
use of epidural analgesia, we believe that it is essential that further
study be conducted to determine whether treatment or prevention of fever
during labor represents a practical means of lowering rates of cesarean
delivery and operative vaginal delivery."
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