No Kidding! : Great things I've learned about pregnancy and parenting

While I have heard some very ignorant things the past few months, I have also learned a great deal about pregnancy, baby growing, and childbirth... here are some of my favorite facts I've learned so far...

Pregnancy

• Babies exposed to broccoli, cabbage, and brussels sprouts during pregnancy were much less likely to get cancer, even when exposed to known carcinogens (Origins by Annie Murphy Paul)
• A 2008 Yale study showed that women who ate 5 or more servings of chocolate per week during the 3rd trimester had a 40% lower risk of pre-eclampsia 
• 6 billion pounds of BPA are produced each year for use in plastic... as a synthetic estrogen, the low doses we are exposed to daily slip past the placenta and get passed along to the fetus, exposing it to synthetic estrogen before birth.
• A good way to avoid BPA is to remember this rhyme " Four, five, one, two... all the rest are bad for you" (in reference to the recycling number that identifies plastics)
• Women who consume the most amount of Vitamin D in pregnancy have children with the lowest risk of asthma
• Women who ate more than 2 servings of fish per week during pregnancy have infants with better cognition and children with better visual memory test scores
• Drinking plenty of liquids before an ultrasound affects the measurements of amniotic fluid, mild dehydration could give the appearance of "low amniotic fluid"

Midwives and Birth

• 87% of women receive pain medication of some sort during birth
• Doctors often raise a panic about a cord being wrapped around the neck, my midwife chuckled at this because people often ask "what if the cord is around the neck?! what will the birth center do?!"-- she informed me that it's OFTEN around the neck and just like a dog's collar, if you can stick your fingers between that and the neck, it's fine :-) 
• The US ranks 39th in terms of maternal mortality, lower than Western Europe, Croatia, Qatar, Taiwan, Singapore, and Bosnia to name a few. In case you were wondering... midwives dominate care in the countries ranking above us.
• Hospitals in America have at 34% c-section rate on average, some states are much higher. The World Health Organization states that no provider should have a rate of more than 10-15%. 
• Each time a woman has a c-section, subsequent fertility, pregnancies, and deliveries can become more complicated due to scar tissue, weakening of the uterine muscles, and trauma to the surrounding area
• Prolonged breath-holding decreases the baby's oxygenation--doctors know this and still instruct women to hold their breath for 10 seconds and bear down when being coached to push.
• Epidurals can cause profound, prolonged drops in baby's heartrate
• To profit from an anesthesiologist on-call 24/7, a hospital needs an 80% epidural rate (all hospitals must have one so they can do an emergency c-section at any time)
• Studies have shown that the presence of an experienced doula results in- shorter labors, less painful labors, lower c-section rates, less incidence of forcep or vacuum-assisted delivery, lower epidural rates

More fun to come, email me if you'd like citations for any of the stats :-)