The Skeptical OB

Despite ubiquitous recommendations to breastfeed and notwithstanding sincere intention to breastfeed, women often quit for two common reasons: not enough breastmilk and too much pain while breastfeeding. For decades we’ve done nothing about either problem for the simple reason that lactation professionals have engaged in a massive campaign of denial. The most cherished article of […]

Today comes news that Sheffield maternity services have been rated as inadequate. This follows on the heels of the Ockenden Report that revealed the preventable deaths of hundreds of babies, and comes nearly seven years after the Morecambe Bay Report about the preventable deaths of babies and mothers. How did this happen? The proximate cause […]

UK midwifery is a cult. Don’t believe me? Consider Caroline Flint, former President of the Royal College of Midwives, previously found guilty of serious professional misconduct. A FORMER president of the Royal College of Midwives was found guilty of serious professional misconduct yesterday after she mishandled the delivery of a breech birth which left the […]

UK midwives love to claim they are the “guardians of normal birth.” Type “guardians of normal birth” into Google and you get page after page of midwives declaring their commitment to a specific vision of birth. I’m not sure why they boast because it’s actually an unwitting indictment of the moral rot at the heart […]

Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas about childbirth have deadly consequences. If you want to understand what went wrong with UK midwifery, read what midwives have written and said: 1. Royal College of Midwives (2006): “Louise Silverton, the RCM’s deputy general secretary, said it was the responsibility of midwives to encourage women to have a more […]

Transgender individuals make up less than 1% of the population but they’ve been inspiring a lot of fear and anger. In my view that’s the result of inappropriately conflating gender and genotype. Gender fundamentalists insist that genotype (chromosomes) and gender (identity) are ALWAYS the same. They believe that this justifies excluding both trans women and […]

Earlier this month, Gill Walton, head of the Royal College of Midwives, apologized for the RCM ‘Campaign for Normal Birth’ that has harmed so many babies and mothers. Why now, more than a decade after grieving families began complaining, billions of dollars after multiple payouts for dead and brain damaged victims, years after multiple reports […]

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 […]

Breastfeeding research is a complete and utter joke. Why? Because breastfeeding researchers ignore their OWN findings. Case in point: An exploration of pregnant women and mothers’ attitudes, perceptions and experiences of formula feeding and formula marketing, and the factors that influence decision-making about infant feeding in South Africa. Breastfeeding researchers set out to show that […]

One of the worst aspects of patriarchal societies is that women are often pressured to meet male desires by being told it will “empowering” them. We see it, for example, in the health moralism around weight: Every woman is still expected to torture her body into the male ideal of thin, lithe and cellulite free, […]