The Rooted Womb

Putting an End to the Global Slaughter of Women Bleeding to Death Regular everyday events are rarely newsworthy. The media typically induces emotional reactions through constant reports of deaths related to emerging diseases, accidents, murders, human conflicts, and natural disasters. There is a widespread tendency to ignore the amplitude of chronic problems. Few....

“Over the years I have come to the conclusion that postpartum haemorrhages are almost always related to inappropriate interference. Postpartum haemorrhage would be extremely rare if a small number of simple rules were understood and observed. “
I will add that the narrative of hemorrhage is so overused when true hemorrhaging is extremely rare in physiological birth, like Odent names—-
“There is a widespread tendency to ignore the amplitude of chronic problems. Few people realize that bleeding is the single most common cause of maternal deaths worldwide.

These deaths are to a great extent -preventable-. Most of them will be avoided on the day when we have rediscovered the basic needs of women in labour and of newborn babies.”

Putting an End to the Global Slaughter of Women Bleeding to Death Regular everyday events are rarely newsworthy. The media typically induces emotional reactions through constant reports of deaths related to emerging diseases, accidents, murders, human conflicts, and natural disasters. There is a widespread tendency to ignore the amplitude of chronic problems. Few....

🚨 New Study: increasing breastfeeding rates to 90% could save 72,300 noncommunicable disease deaths globally per year.

✨️ Formula feeding does carry risks, which is why breastfeeding on a population level is a public health concern. Individual benefit vs risk is different for each mother baby dyad.

This study also found increasing breastfeeding to 90% could prevent 10 million cases of diabetes across the lifespan of the cohort.

Of the delayed NCDSs, most delayed deaths were from ischaemic heart disease (43%) and stroke (33%), with cancer accounting for 18%.

Study authors interpreted the data to mean: Scaling up exclusive breastfeeding coverage could lead to benefits in reducing NCDs, complementing its established benefits for child mortality and early childhood development.

Essentially, this study added to the importance of breastfeeding on a global population level. Breastfeeding absolutely saves lives.

This study, published in the Lancet, focused on low and middle income countries. What does this mean for people in wealthier countries? Breastfeeding benefits still exist wherever you live and reduce the risk of developing cancer, diabetes, etc. However, in a wealthier country, you may have access to additional preventative measures and care, and access to medical care if you become sick.

Wherever you live, breastfeeding is the biological norm following a pregnancy

At the population level, breastfeeding reduces risk and has significant benefit.

As parents, we make decisions on individual levels.

For simple math, let's say on a population level the risk of allergies is 15 in 100 in not breastfeeding infants but in breastfeeding infants it's 5 in 100. Breastfeeding does not mean there's a 0% chance of allergies and not breastfeeding doesn't mean a 100% chance of allergies. Simply, when we look at large groups, more formula fed infants have allergies compared to breastfed infants.

All this said, breastfeeding is not easy. Low rates are often associated with lack of support, early return to work, birth complications, etc.

What support did you wish you had?

One really frustrating situation for both women and midwives is the sudden appearance of a fever in a mum or baby after an epidural.

This can lead to a cascade of tests and antibiotics, even though most practitioners already know that no infection is likely to be present.

I first wrote about this phenomenon - epidural fever - in 2002, when I was working on postnatal wards and seeing it for myself.

I decided to have another look at this topic recently, and I learned that the research has come even further since then.

In particular, we now have more understanding of why this happens.

So I have completely rewritten my blog post.

In it, I describe the phenomenon and how often it occurs, look at the evidence on this topic, explain the issues, and suggest how women and practitioners can use this evidence in decision making.

You can read the blog post at https://www.sarawickham.com/questions-and-answers/epidural-fever/

I hope you find it useful.