The Skeptical OB

When my boys were small and were angry with me, they would respond with what they considered a devastating insult: “You are a poopy-head.” Needless to say, it rarely produced the desired response. Instead I laughed. I was reminded of that when I came across Milli Hill’s latest tweet berating loss father James Titcombe: [S]ince […]

There’s one pregnancy intervention that everyone — midwives, doulas, childbirth educators, obstetricians — can agree on: promoting optimal nutrition. We encourage women to get all the calories necessary to grow a baby as well as the full daily requirement of vitamins and minerals. We assume that will improve pregnancy outcomes by improving the health of […]

In February I wrote about new data presented at the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine annual meeting that showed that elective induction at 39 weeks improves outcomes. The accompanying press release noted: Results include: • Lower rates of cesarean birth among the elective induction group (19%) as compared to the expectant management group (22%) • […]

Wellness has been in the news a lot in the past few weeks. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, writing about Gwyneth Paltrow a high priestess of wellness, had this to say: The minute the phrase “having it all” lost favor among women, wellness came in to pick up the pieces. It was a way to reorient ourselves — […]

Serena Williams appears to be suffering from postpartum oppression. No, that’s not a typo. It’s a wake up call. We’ve all heard of postpartum depression, a form of clinical depression that occurs after childbirth. It is a serious medical issue and is probably precipitated by wide fluctations in hormones after childbirth, compounded by lack of […]

How do academic feminists feel about breastfeeding? According to social scientist Suzana Ignjatović’s paper Breastfeeding Divisions in Ethics and Politics of Feminism, academic feminists are divided: In general, all feminist positions on infant feeding can be placed in two strongly opposed views: pro-breastfeeding and pro-choice feminists, including the option called “beyond choice” perspective, which is […]

Hundreds of women are venting their fury on my Facebook page. Why? It isn’t merely because I have spent World Breastfeeding Week 2018 challenging their cherished belief in the perfection of breastfeeding. It’s because I’m raising doubt about their conviction in their own minds. Nearly all of the touted benefits of breastfeeding are based on […]

How do we know if a public health campaign works? That’s easy. We check to see whether the benefits predicted — lives preserved, disease averted, money saved — actually occur when the plan is put into practice. In other words, we don’t accept theory; we demand proof. That’s how we know that vaccines are a […]

Lactivism has begun to seem like an endless parade of lies: Breastfeeding saves lives of term babies — a lie! Breastfeeding within the first hour of birth saves lives — a lie! Insufficient breastmilk is rare — a lie! Every baby needs nothing more than colostrum for several days — a lie! But in my […]

World Breastfeeding Week has sadly devolved into a festival of lactivist lies and WBW 2018 is no exception. Up first is the lie that breastfeeding in the first hour after birth saves lives. According to a press release from the World Health Organization: An estimated 78 million babies – or three in five – are […]