The Skeptical OB

The media loves a heartwarming story, but calling Baby Boy Accurso a “miracle baby” isn’t merely misguided; it’s grotesque. People Magazine claims ‘Miracle’ Baby Dies Just 18 Days After His 37-Year-Old Mom Suddenly Died During Childbirth: Just 18 days after his mother suddenly died during childbirth, a newborn died on Friday after his family had […]

Natural mothering advocates have a serious philosophical problem and infants and children have become the collateral damage. On one hand natural mothering ideologues are wedded to one size fits all precepts as the foundational “evidence based” recommendations around childbirth, infancy and childhood: Unmedicated vaginal birth is “best” for all mothers and all babies Breastfeeding is […]

Is contemporary midwifery the ugly stepsister of obstetrics? Everyone knows the story of Cinderella. Enslaved by her stepmother, bullied by her stepsisters, Cinderella manages (courtesy of her Fairy Godmother) to attend a ball where she meets the Prince. Rushing to leave, she loses her petite glass slipper. The bereft Prince vows to find her again […]

Apparently many conservatives believe that women should be punished for having abortions. I have a better, more just, more effective suggestion: Punish men for abortions! After all, it’s the man’s fault; there’s no way a woman can find herself with an unwanted pregnancy without a man being responsible for it. Christina Cauterucci at Slate wrote […]

Midwives have a problem with scientific evidence. It wasn’t always that way. [M]idwives were initially enthusiastic about basing clinical practice on scientific evidence. That’s because they had long told each other that midwifery was “science based” while obstetrics was not… It has been quite a shock to midwives and childbirth educators to learn that most […]

Even as his 11 year old daughter lay dying, he refused to seek medical care: Prosecutors contended he should have rushed the girl to a hospital because she couldn’t walk, talk, eat or drink. Instead, Madeline died on the floor of the family’s rural home as people surrounded her and prayed. It wasn’t until Dale […]

Imagine if I told you that tens of thousands of babies were being hospitalized each year for a common problem and yet we weren’t merely doing nothing about it; we were actively promoting more harm. You’d be outraged, wouldn’t you? Prepare to be outraged. Tens of thousands of babies are being hospitalized each year, some […]

On Friday I asked if natural mothering is really a religion, albeit one that replaces God with Nature. I wrote about two features common to the stories natural mothering advocates tell about themselves, conversion experiences and submission to a higher power. How to they know that what they believe is true? The same way religious […]

Whether it’s childbirth, breastfeeding or postpartum depression and anxiety, for the past three decades we have been harming mothers grievously by pretending that ideology is science. For three decades we’ve obsessing over C-section rates, induction rates and interventions rates. Meanwhile C-sections weren’t harming women and actually cost less than vaginal births. Routine induction at 39 […]

Natural mothering is a cultural pre-occupation of both the Right and the Left. Consider the lifestyle of fundamentalist mothers: every moment of the day consumed with child and family care. From homebirth to homeschooling, from growing her own food to baking her own bread, from extended breastfeeding to rejection of conventional medical care, women are […]