The practising midwife
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Northampton Homebirth Team commenced in April 2010, with a group of midwives dedicated to supporting women choosing to birth at home. Twenty seven months since the team commenced, the home birth rate has continued to rise at a steady sustainable rate, at the time of writing this feature reaching a monthly all time high of 9.6 per cent. The team believe that the key to their success is promoting normality, management support, maternity incident review forums and a multi professional team approach for women choosing to birth at home against medical advice. Whilst the number of women cared for is somewhat smaller that the recent Birthplace study, our statistics continually support the theory that a dedicated home birth team is more likely to limit adverse outcomes in relation to planned home births.
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The aim of this bi-monthly column is to highlight Cochrane Systematic Reviews of relevance to pregnancy and childbirth and to stimulate discussion on the relevance and implications of the review for practice. The Cochrane Collaboration is an international organisation that prepares and maintains high quality systematic reviews to help people make well informed decisions about health care and health policy. ⋯ The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) is published monthly online. Residents in countries with a national license to The Cochrane Library, including the UK and Ireland, can access the Cochrane Library online free through www.thecochranelibrary.com.
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Baby massage has become increasingly popular in the West among parents and healthcare practitioners alike, with numerous studies continuing to hail the benefits of taking time to massage and bond with your baby. Newborn and infant massage is of particular interest to midwives in their primary role, helping families to bond and heal the pain of traumatic births, but now many midwives are offering baby massage sessions privately in their spare time also. Here's the low down.