Together We Can Improve Birth Choice & Outcomes

Choice Begins with Objective Information

Part of allowing women to make CHOICES about their births, is to provide objective information. Knowing the likelihood of having a vaginal birth is a key piece of decision-making information and yet most of the women would never think to ask for it.

The number of cesareans in this country are entirely too high and the hospitals are not the only group to blame. To lower the cesarean rate in New Jersey, we all have to work together. Read more on this here:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2014/05/what-hospitals-do-not-want-you-to-know-about-c-sections/index.htm

The Way Forward: Improving Birth

Hospitals need to allow women the choices that help normal birth to occur like ambulation, water immersion and waterbirth and doula care. Institutions need to decrease the use of many of the interventions that cascade toward surgical birth like continuous fetal monitoring, artificial rupture of membranes, epidural anesthesia, induction and augmentation of labor.
Women need to begin to take responsibility for their health in pregnancy and for preparing for a normal birth. They cannot expect to have low interventions if they are unwilling to do the work of having a healthy pregnancy. And women need to understand that giving birth is OUR job and when we give the job to others, the result is not likely to be normal, natural birth.
Physicians need to support midwifery care by agreeing to be a consultant and allowing the midwife to practice midwifery. The physician practice that I work with, One to One Female Care, is very supportive of the Midwifery Model of Care. And because of that, our clients have access to more CHOICES than almost any women in the state.
The legal system needs to minimize the liability to hospitals and providers when allowing women to make birth CHOICES like Vaginal Birth after Cesarean. We need TORT REFORM.

If we would all work together, we could improve the health of women and families throughout the state of New Jersey. The Midwives of New Jersey along with the consumer group Your Birth Your CHOICE are working to improve women’s access to information and work with other groups and individuals in the state who are working toward the same goals.