Short Cut to Important or Popula

American College
of Community Midwives
A professional organization for Community Midwives

Information on
Midwifery Services

Faith Gibson, LM, CPM
Palo Alto, California
650-328-8491

Sub-directory to
Important or Popular Files:

California College of Midwives
Midwifery Standard of Care

Neonatal Resuscitation: Life that Failed ~ by George Malcolm Morley, MB ChB FACOG
A scientific paper provides vital information on the value of physiological cord clamping under many diverse circumstances – especially premature babies, distressed neonates and following any Cesarean deliver, but particularly an emergent one performed for fetal distress. This a game-changer in the practical, political, legal and economic arena.

"EFM as a Public Health Screening Program: The Arithmetic of Failure" ~ by Dr David Grimes
Electronic fetal monitoring has failed as a public health screening program. Nevertheless, most of the
four million low-risk women giving birth in the United States each year continue to undergo this screening.

MaterntyCare2.0 by Faith Gibson, LM - overview of issues and recommendations for evidence-based, physiological management of normal childbirth in healthy women

Four Contrasting Studies on Safety: (1) unattended, (2) lay midwife-attended,
(3) professional midwife-attended and (4) obstetrician-attended
-- providing cost-effective maternity care to an essentially healthy population via
“maximal results with minimal interventions”
a beneficial ratio of interventions to outcomes for each childbearing woman

Best Evidence
of PHB Safety, Increased Risks associated with
routine use of Interventionist Obstetrics for healthy women

Best Evidence MUST READ ~ Extensive archive of links to primary sources, citation lists and excerpts documenting the scientific basis for physiological childbirth as the universal standard of care for healthy women with normal pregnancies and each of the areas of political controversy with interventive and operative obstetrics, including induction, elective C-sections and ACOG's effort to eliminate planned home birth.

Other topics included on the "Best Evidence" subdirectory are (1) community-based midwifery, and (2) political and historical forces that have inappropriately medicalized normal childbirth in the US and which underlie the push by organized medicine to declare elective Cesarean surgery the new, 21st century standard of care for in a healthy population. This archival subdirectory contains all the important article sprinkled through out the College of Midwives web site, including several on that can be accessed directly via links above and below on this home page

Evidence-Based Maternity care: What Is It and What Can It Do?
The just released PDF publication co-written by Carol Sakala and Maureen Corry from Childbirth Connection, in conjunction with the
Milbank Memorial Fund and Reforming States Group Oct 2008

Making Normal Birth a Reality -
a Consensus Statement from the Maternity Care Working Party
and endorsed by the UK’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG),
the Royal College of Midwives, the National Childbirth Trust, and other organizations.

EXCERPT: Ob-gyn and midwife organizations in the UK are endorsing a new consensus report calling for action to increase rates of ‘normal birth’ where appropriate in order to minimize morbidity and complication rates. "Choice of place of birth including home birth, a midwife-led birth centre and a maternity unit with midwifery and medical facilities.

The definition of normal birth is: “without induction, without the use of instruments, not by caesarean section and without general, spinal or epidural anaesthetic before or during delivery” (see p3 of document for details .)"Procedures used during labour which are known to increase the likelihood of medical interventions should be avoided where possible. For example, continuous electronic fetal monitoring during labour in low-risk women is associated with an increase in emergency caesarean section but no long-term health gain, (5) and use of epidural anaesthetic in labour increases the need for forceps or ventouse. (6) ...... it is important that women’s needs and wishes are respected and they should be able to make informed decisions about their care."

Birth Environments 1992
Economics of hospital obstetrical departments & Med-Mal Insurance as a money maker

Relative Risks in Childbearing ~ maternal-perinatal mortality relative to spontaneous vaginal birth, Cesarean, and VBAC -- stats from UK and Australia

2007 Maternal Mortality Rises Previous 3 years -- maternal deaths more frequent after C-section than normal birth ~ Compilation of reports and MM Stats from California, New York and the UK