Happy New Year and thanks to my readers for another banner year!
The Skeptical OB had 1.5 million visits this year and 2.9 million page views for an increase of 67% over 2012.
According to WordPress, in 2013, there were 292 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1,215 posts.
The busiest day of the year was June 12th with 27,412 views. The most popular post that day was Would you hire this midwife?.
These are the posts that got the most views in 2013 were:
- Vaginal weight lifting 5 comments December 2008
- Vaginal tears 353 comments February 2012
- Would you hire this midwife? 292 comments June 2013
- Baby dies because mother refused newborn vitamin K shot 401 comments January 2013
- Lawsuit 792 comments January 2013
A special thank you to the 5 most active commentors:
- The Bofa on the Sofa 1726 comments
- KarenJJ 1349 comments
- Bombshellrisa 1277 comments
- Dr Kitty 1164 comments
- auntbea 1014 comments
The most commented on post in 2013 was The narcissism of lactivism with 1103 comments.
As I said last year, 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 many homebirth advocates dismiss what I write without even reading it. To those people I say: 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
