Birthroot Midwifery

In all cultures, the midwife’s place is on the threshold of life, where intense human emotions, fear, hope, longing, triumph, and incredible physical power enable a new human being to emerge. Her vocation is unique. - Sheila Kitzinger

Happy International Day of the Midwife 2020 ♥️

A new meta-analysis of 500,000 births was published yesterday comparing perinatal outcomes of births at home vs in hospital...

Summary: "The risk of perinatal or neonatal mortality was not different when birth was intended at home or in hospital."

Perinatal or neonatal mortality among women who intend at the onset of labour to give birth at home compared to women of low obstetrical risk who intend to give birth in hospital: A systematic review and meta-analyses The risk of perinatal or neonatal mortality was not different when birth was intended at home or in hospital.

A new report in the British Medical Journal examines the need for universal GBS testing during late pregnancy...

Key messages:
-Early onset group B streptococcus (GBS) disease is an important health problem and efforts should continue to better understand and prevent it.
-Selective maternal culture is not an accurate test to predict early onset GBS disease in neonates, and we don’t know why some colonised mothers have a neonate with early onset GBS and others don’t.
-The current approach to screening would lead to 99.8% of screen positive women and their babies receiving unnecessary intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis.
-Lack of high quality evidence on clinical outcomes makes it impossible to quantify whether universal GBS screening would have any benefit and assess whether large scale intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis is safe.
-A universal antenatal culture screening programme cannot currently be recommended.

Potential harms of GBS screening "outweigh benefits" A review published in the BMJ shows that universal antenatal screening for group B streptococcus may cause more harm than good.