We’ve come a long way from the first documented successful caesarean. In 1500, Swiss farmer Jacob Nufer operated on his wife after a labour of several days. She went on to have five more vaginal births.
One of the key times women need reliable contraception is soon after they give birth. But they often have a hard time getting long-acting reversible methods, like IUDs and contraceptive implants.
Are we overscheduling our children even from the moment of their birth? We live in an on-demand world. Movies are shown on request, food is delivered on call and drivers arrive when beckoned. As an economist…
Fear-based messages from practitioners and awareness campaigns encourage perfectionism and unwarranted personal responsibility for events over which new mums may have little control.
Paul Mensah, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
Ghana’s success in reduction in maternal deaths is being hampered by bad road infrastructure, female illiteracy, skills shortages and some local pastors.
One of the most common surgical procedures undertaken in the world today – one that every human alive has undergone – is the clamping and cutting of the umbilical cord at birth.
An incredibly complex and important organ in its own right, the placenta is only found in mammals. And how it functions has the potential to have profound effects on the lifelong health of the developing foetus.
It’s difficult to imagine how something as big as a baby’s head can come out of what appears to be a relatively small space. But during childbirth, the perineum – the area of skin and muscle between the…
Tony Abbott spent most of this week in North East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. In the final of our Abbott in…
I recently visited a new McDonald’s outlet on the northern fringes of Sydney. What I found inside left me gawping in astonishment: soft lighting, views of nature, a mixture of private and communal spaces…
Because of a supposed slight increase in the risk that the resulting child will be disabled, doubt has been cast on the morality of having a home delivery when one could have chosen to give birth in hospital…
In the much-loved British TV drama Call the Midwife, women are offered care from dedicated midwives through pregnancy, labour and birth. The midwives are therefore able to get to know the women and practice…
As a regional neighbour to Myanmar, the Commonwealth government has recognised Australia has a responsibility – and the capacity – to help alleviate poverty in the developing nation. Australia is also…
There is a substantial literature on labour and childbirth in medical, midwifery and social scientific research. But we still don’t know much about how labouring women experience that pivotal time when…
When the movement to promote evidence-based healthcare began in the late 1980s, it started in the field of child birth. So it might be expected that by now, nearly a quarter of a century later, there would…
Research Fellow University of Notre Dame Australia; Adjunct Fellow (National Institute of Complementary Medicine), Western Sydney University, University of Notre Dame Australia