The Skeptical OB

Shared anonymously by a reader. Before my son was born, I decided it would be unwise to be narrow-minded in my parenting choices. This decision was based on anecdotes I heard from friends and family who cautioned that each infant is unique and that the ways in which we meet each child’s needs are situationally-dependent. […]

The Fed Is Best Foundation has accomplished so much in such a short time that professional lactivists, who ignored just about everyone and everything that did not support their preferred narrative, have been forced to take it into account. The most prominent example to date has been Dr. Alison Stuebe of the Academy of Breastfeeding […]

Earlier this week I wrote about the closing of well baby nurseries as an expression of neoliberal philosophy: Neoliberalism places a premium on individual responsibility and minimizes the value of collective action. We see this in contemporary political philosophies that venerate private industry and derogate goverment support. But we also see its impact in mothering […]

We have a terrible problem in contemporary scientific research. Or it would be more accurate to say we have two terrible problems. First, a great deal of published research is junk, generally because of spurious statistical analysis. Second, the media credulously publishes any press release, the more irresponsible the better. [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” […]

The central conceit of organized efforts at breastfeeding promotion such as the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) is that we can best support breastfeeding by recapitulating the experience of our ancestors. The most obvious difference is technology. Hence lactivists have focused their efforts on depriving women of access to technological innovations like formula supplementation, pacifiers and […]

I’m not going to lie: I don’t have much respect for Trump voters. It amazes me that anyone with two functioning brain cells could vote for a brutal, stupid, narcissist whose previous career was notable only for his celebrity despite of a parade of bankruptcies, endless evidence of cheating and fraud, as well as personal […]

I love Facebook; I ought to know since I spend a large portion of every day engaging with it. That’s why it pains me to point out that Facebook kills babies. [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Facebook has turbo charged the ignorance of quacks, charlatans and ordinary people.[/pullquote] How? By allowing users to create […]

Pregnancy and paternalism go together like peanut butter and jelly, like milk and cookies, like salt and pepper. Where you find one, you almost always find the other. What is paternalism? It’s the practice of people in positions of authority determining the freedom and responsibilities of others in the others’ supposed best interest. It’s the […]

Perhaps this will lay the accusation that I am a shill for ACOG to rest. The president of the American College of Obstetrician Gynecologists (ACOG) wrote a letter in response to my recent piece in The Washington Post, Five myths about pregnancy, in which he vehemently disagreed with me. He seems to think we disagree […]

A long time reader shared this with me and I found it deeply moving. She graciously gave her permission to let me share it with everyone else. If I were a painter I would depict: a child huddled in a hospital bed, burritoed into an oversized raspberry-pink coat, topped by a spray of blonde hair, […]