Birthing With Midwives

Here's a new site that may be helpful to the consumer as well as to those in the birth biz:

Birthing With Midwives

Breastfeeding and HIV-Positive Moms

Exclusive breastfeeding halves HIV infection risk for baby:

After three months, the HIV infection rate among the exclusively breastfed group was 4.04 percent.

Among the mixed group, babies who received formula milk in addition to breast milk were twice as likely to acquire HIV infection. And those who had solid food -- typically porridge -- ran 11 times the risk of infection compared with the breastfeeding-only group.

In addition, the death rate at three months among the exclusively breastfed babies was 6.1 percent; among children given replacement feeds, it was 15.1 percent.

New Email Address

Please note that I've changed my email address to (in standard format) mommyblawger at gmail.com. Thanks!

Traveling with Breastmilk

Mothering Magazine has a nice piece on Traveling With Breastmilk, including some creative tips on packing it and technical advice on how long it stays good:

When our country goes to orange alert at the airports, mothers who travel without their babies are not allowed to take their pumped breastmilk in the cabin of the plane with them. Women have traditionally been encouraged to keep pumped breastmilk on ice, so they often took it in their purse or carry-on bag. Now, however, toting breastmilk in your carry-on bag without a baby has become officially forbidden and deemed "suspicious." Of course, if you had the baby with you, you wouldn't need to pump and carry precious breastmilk. What is a mother to do? Get clever.

New research in the journal Breastfeeding Medicine has come to the rescue. The researchers took frozen breastmilk and thawed it, refroze it, refrigerated it and left it out at room temperature. Essentially, they beat it up. What did they find? Breastmilk is fairly robust and does not grow bacteria easily nor lose vitamins A and C or free fatty acids (FFA) to any degree that would harm a full term baby. Breastmilk fresh from the breast or thawed in a clean container can be left at room temperature for less than 8 hours. This means on a day trip, you can safely pack expressed breastmilk in your checked bag and take it home just as it is.

Delayed Cord Clamping

Delayed Cord Clamping at Birth May Reduce Neonatal Anemia

No Benefit to Fetal Oxygen Monitoring

This is an old article, but one that I think is important, and didn't get much press at the time:

New Childbirth Technology Tanks: A study finds no benefit from monitoring fetal oxygen during labor. The rate of Cesarean deliveries is not reduced.