I just finished reading The Lancet’s new editorial on breastfeeding with its recommendation to ban all formula advertising. I have some advice for the editors: Stop infantilizing women and mind your own business! The piece, No ifs, no buts, no follow-on milk, is a masterpiece of elitist nonsense. [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Trust […]
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Obsessing about the C-section rate is not thinking outside the box; it is the box.
In a recent piece on HuffPo, Dr. Neel Shah bemoans The Massive Marketing Failure of Motherhood. He writes: While over $500 billion is spent annually on healthcare during the last nine months of life, less than $50 billion is spent on the arguably higher leverage first nine months of life. Might that be because people […]
Feminist mothering affirmations
Natural childbirth advocates employ birth affirmations as a form of magical thinking. They appear to believe that if they just wish hard enough, they can affect the likelihood of the unmedicated vaginal birth that they are supposed to want. That’s nonsense, of course. But birth affirmations are also anti-feminist. They are anti-feminist because they assume […]
Is homebirth the new anti-vax?
Imagine if I said the following: The proportion of parents refusing vaccines has steadily increased over the past decades. Let’s stop debating whether refusing vaccines is safe and instead engage in examination of the factors that may make vaccine refusal safer. I’d be roundly and appropriately condemned by pediatricians, immunologists and public health officials even […]
Henci Goer defends the natural childbirth industry on an industry website
You can’t make this stuff up. I woke up this morning to find that Gaye Demanuele, the midwife who watched Caroline Lovell bleed to death at her homebirth, extolling a piece by Henci Goer’s “rebuttal” of my Washington Post piece How the natural birth industry sets mothers up for guilt and shame. I wrote: …[T]he […]
Want to be successful at breastfeeding? Bring formula to the hospital.
Yesterday I wrote about the ways in which the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) is hurting babies (Help me stop the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative before more mothers and babies are harmed). It appears that the incidence of severe dehydration, sometimes accompanied by permanent brain damage, is rising as well as the incidence of skull […]
Help me end the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative before more babies and mothers are harmed
Dear Neonatologists, Pediatricians, Neonatal Nurses, and the organizations that represent them: Please help me help babies and mothers. The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative is killing babies and you’ve got to stop it. Nearly every day I get another email or Facebook message about a baby who has been injured seriously or even fatally by the Baby […]
I wrote in the NYTimes that US homebirth is dangerous and no one could rebut my claim
It’s been nearly two weeks since my Op-Ed, Why is American Home Birth So Dangerous?, was published in The New York Times in which I explained that American homebirth has higher death rates because of substandard self-proclaimed midwives known as CPMs (certified professional midwives). It seems to me that if anyone were going to rebut […]
What’s the difference between promoting breastfeeding because it’s natural and promoting heterosexuality because it’s natural?
For years many US and world health organizations have behaved likely wholly owned subsidiaries of the breastfeeding industry. La Leche League has been an advisor to such organizations for decades and had engineered near complete replacement of scientific evidence with the goals and personal beliefs of lactivists. [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Whether or […]
Homebirth: sacrificing babies on the altar of normal birth
Last week I wrote about the theology of quackery. Homebirth advocacy meets many of the same criteria. It imagines a Paleolithic Garden of Eden where every woman gave birth in a state of grace, easily and safely. It ascribes The Fall to the advent of modern obstetrics that “pathologized” birth. It believes in predestination; the […]
Amy Tuteur, MD
Dr. Amy Tuteur is an obstetrician gynecologist. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1979 and her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1984. Dr. Tuteur is a former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She left the practice of medicine to raise her four children. Her book, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting (HarperCollins) was published in 2016. She can be reached at DrAmy5 at aol dot com... More
