A heartfelt thank you to my readers for making 2012 the best year in the history of The Skeptical OB. Despite a temporary lull in traffic while moving the website to a new host, there have been approximately 900,000 visits this year, and 2 million page views, an increase of 38%.
The site is very “sticky.” The average reader visit is 4:28 minutes; 60% of the visits are repeats; and the bounce rate is 49%. meaning that more than half of all visitors stay, regardless of how they arrive at the site in the first place.
A special thank you to the people who participate in the comments sections. Posts routinely generate more than 200 comments apiece; there are quite a few that have received 400-500 comments, and even some that have approached 1000 comments.
I would put The Skeptical OB up against any blog on the Web as having the most articulate, the most intelligent and the most compelling commentors of all.
Thank you also to the many, many people who wrote to me privately, sharing their experiences, questioning my views and offering interesting links. I am especially honored that several professional homebirth advocates have been in private communication, despite the fact that I have criticized them in print and they have criticized me. Even though we disagree, sometimes quite profoundly, they trust that they can seek my opinion about medical issues or aspects of homebirth practice that unsettle them.
I know that in some corners of the blogosphere there are those who refer to me as “she who must not be named” or even “Satan.” Be assured that even you (perhaps especially you) are welcomed to this site with open arms. I am grateful to have the opportunity to inform you about the real risks of homebirth. It’s up to every woman to make her own decision where to give birth, and this blog offers information that you cannot get anywhere else outside the scientific literature.
The blog is not perfect. It is a one person effort, from the writing to the coding, and sometimes that shows. There is no editor and I am terrible at proof reading my own work. I occasionally make math mistakes. I try to correct any mistakes as soon as they are pointed out to me and the mistakes are never an attempt to mislead. I am trying to present the most accurate, most detailed and most up to date information on homebirth and other areas where parenting intersects with pseudoscience, and I fervently hope that I am usually successful in that effort. To the extent that I am not, it is not for lack of trying.
Thank you again to all my readers. Happy New Year!
Sincerely,
Amy
