The Skeptical OB

I am not making this up. STAT News reports: Children of women who ate little or no meat while pregnant are more likely to abuse alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana at age 15 than are children of mothers who did eat meat. That’s the conclusion from a new study Meat Consumption During Pregnancy and Substance Misuse […]

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! That’s the impression you might get from an article in today’s Guardian, ‘A third of people get major surgery to be born’: why are C-sections routine in the US? Caesareans have transformed from life-saving intervention into risky procedure performed for one in three births – and often […]

Irony is dead. In the wake of the most deadly mass shooting in American history, Republicans in Congress are preparing to introduce the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. CNN reports: [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Choose life — support health insurance & gun restrictions and oppose capital punishment & police brutality.[/pullquote] […]

Another day, another US gun massacre, the biggest yet: In the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, a hail of gunfire rained down from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Sunday evening, police said. The gunman, identified as Stephen Paddock, 64, is believed to be a “lone wolf” and was found dead in his […]

NPR reports on a bizarre and unethical practice: An epidural is a common type of regional anesthesia that eases the pain of labor. As she had done many times before, Sweeney followed hospital protocol and called the anesthesia department. But to her shock, they told her they could not help her young patient. “They said […]

It’s ironic when you think about it. Many of the same people who refuse infant eye ointment because the baby might be distressed by blurry vision, who refuse neonatal vitamin K because the injection will hurt the baby for a brief moment, think nothing of letting a baby (yours or theirs) scream for hours in […]

Hallelujah! A national Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative is being shut down. Without consultation or notice, in early 2016 the HSE Health Promotion & Improvement, Health & Wellbeing Division reduced the grant-aid it had been providing to the BFHI (which ranged over recent years from slightly under €50,000 to zero). The HSE then directed maternity units […]

Breastfeeding is not a matter of will; it is a matter of biology. That’s the take home message from the paper Biological underpinnings of breastfeeding challenges: the role of genetics, diet, and environment on lactation physiology by Lee and Kelleher, graduate student and professor of cellular physiology respectively. [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]To […]

I’m been watching Ken Burn’s monumental documentary on the Vietnam War. It is a deeply sobering experience. Both those who served in the war and those who protested the war were united in a curious way. Both never considered the possibility that the government would lie to them and both felt profoundly betrayed when they […]

Yesterday I wrote about the single most important reason for the UK’s massive maternity payouts: the failure to properly investigate bad outcomes and the resulting failure to learn from them. That was the finding of a just released report, Five years of cerebral palsy claims: A thematic review of NHS Resolution data. The author of […]