Sleep is so important for healing, for mental health and possibly even for pain perception that it is functionally a healthcare treatment. New mothers need to heal from childbirth, manage the pain that often results and are at risk for serious mental health disorders like postpartum depression and anxiety. They need sleep. So why have […]
Latest News
I’m in Facebook jail for stating a scientific fact
Far be it from me to bewail the power of social media and tech. It is social media and tech — first the platform Blogger, then my own website, as well Facebook and Twitter — that has brought my concerns about the dangers of homebirth, natural childbirth, breastfeeding and anti-vax to such a wide audience. […]
Fellow physicians, why are we letting the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative harm our patients?
No one truly knows how hard a doctor works on behalf of patients than another doctor. I understand how obstetricians struggle to make the right decision on when and how to deliver a baby to maximize the health of both infant and mother. I know what it’s like to confront at a worrisome fetal monitor […]
Rape, birth rape and the limitless hypocrisy of natural mothering advocates
Behold birth rape! According to HuffPo UK: Birth rape, they call it … Rape is really to do with having your body disrespected, contorted against your wishes, without your consent. The way the medical establishment sees it is, when you’re on the hospital bed, you have already given consent. Some men say the same thing […]
Human beings are perfectly designed to choke
Pandemonium has broken out on my Facebook page because I dared to point out that rape is both natural and evolutionarily successful in some settings. Natural childbirth advocates and lactivists are so blinded by their kindergarten level view of evolution — everything natural must be good — that they are reeling in indignation. The responses […]
Unmedicated vaginal birth and breastfeeding are natural. So is rape.
“It’s natural.” That’s often the beginning and the end of many arguments about the relative merits of C-sections and epidurals vs. unmedicated vaginal birth. It’s also supposed to be the beginning and the end of any argument about the relative merits of breastfeeding vs. formula. The declaration “it’s natural” is presumed to have cricital advantages […]
The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine values breastfeeding more than whether babies live or die.
Can you imagine the American College of Obstetrician-Gynecologists insisting that they must support the practice of routine episiotomies — even though they harm women — because obstetricians like them? I can’t. That would be deeply unethical. Can you imagine the The American Academy of Otolaryngology insisting that they must support the practice of routine tonsillectomies […]
(Nearly) everything wrong with the Baby Friendly Hospital Initative explained in one paper
When you spell it out, it sounds appalling. The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, designed to promote breastfeeding, is very unfriendly to mothers, dangerous to babies, and ignores the scientific evidence. Why then has it become so popular? A new philosophy paper, Understanding the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative: A Multi-disciplinary Analysis, attempts to answer this question. The […]
Natural mothering makes women agents of their own subjugation
The best selling non-fiction book of 1974 was Maribel Morgan’s Total Woman. The Total Woman is a self-help book for married women by Marabel Morgan published in 1973… Overall, it sold more than ten million copies… [I]t taught that “A Total Woman caters to her man’s special quirks, whether it be in salads, sex or […]
Postpartum depression is a psychiatric illness, not a marketing opportunity for natural childbirth advocates
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a natural childbirth advocate, everything looks like an opportunity to push her agenda. It was ugly when natural childbirth advocates expropriated the tragedy of maternal mortality among women of color — a tragedy largely rooted in socio-economic conditions — to claim, falsely, that these deaths reflect […]
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
