Category Archives: Reviews

FemSpec and Beyond

By The Midwife | Published: January 26, 2006

Our midwifery department arranged a special treat for us today: a demonstration of the brand new speculum that’s out on the market, FemSpec. Looks pretty strange, doesn’t it? Has anyone ever used one of these things? Supposedly it works much better than a regular speculum because it doesn’t allow the vaginal walls to collapse inward […]

Also posted in Gynecology, New Products, Primary Care, Women's Health | Leave a comment

Baby Catcher

By The Midwife | Published: January 8, 2006

Who are these men who love and date and marry midwives (and student midwives)? What an amazing breed! They don’t flinch or grimace when they hear words like “vagina”, “uterus” and “cervix” being bantered around the dinner table, they let you gush on and on about the beautiful birth you saw the night before, and […]

Also posted in Books | 4 Comments

gDiapers

By The Midwife | Published: November 19, 2005

Now here is a diaper product it seems like I can really throw my weight behind: Flushable diapers! What a neat idea: putting the solid waste where it belongs, in a toilet, rather than a landfill. Another environmentally friendly alternative to disposables, and perhaps these diapers are even a bit better than cloth (and certainly […]

Also posted in Babies!, New Products, Postpartum | 10 Comments

Birth as An American Rite of Passage

By The Midwife | Published: August 27, 2005

Davis-Floyd, Robbie. 2003. Birth As An American Rite of Passage (2nd Edition). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. So, I’ve been reading this book pretty much non-stop for the past few weeks, and I have been completely blown away. C o m p l e t e l y. This is the book […]

Also posted in Books, Research | Leave a comment

Exciting new homebirth study

By The Midwife | Published: July 8, 2005

Johnson, K.C. and Daviss, B.A. (2005) Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America. British Medical Journal (BMJ), 330: 1416. This study was published in June and is a welcome addition to the homebirth v. hospitals debate which has been raging in this country for years. Some of […]

Also posted in Homebirth, Journal Articles, Research | 1 Comment

Emotional Support during labor CAN’T be overlooked

By The Midwife | Published: April 28, 2005

Full citation: Kennell, J., Klaus, M., McGrath, S., Robertson, S., & Hinkley, C. (1991). Continuous Emotional Support During Labor in a US Hospital. JAMA, 265(17), 2197-2201. Attention all doulas out there: this is something you really need to read. It’s one of my favorite studies of all time, actually. I discovered it in Nursing School […]

Also posted in Journal Articles, Labor and Birth, Labor Support, Research | Leave a comment