On February 15, the Child-Parent Security Act (CPSA) went into effect in New York. The new law makes paid gestational surrogacy legal in the state. New York mom Felicia Lebow shares her experience with gestational surrogacy before the law was passed, as well as her tips and reaction to the CPSA.
Tag: Birth
Get Off Your Back and Explore These Birthing Positions
A Mommybites reader asked: My doctor told me that I’d be giving birth lying on my back. Are there any other positions in which I can push out my baby? I am often a bit surprised by how many mothers-to-be aren’t aware of the option to push their babies out in a position other than […]
NewYork-Presbyterian Opens New Hospital for Women and Newborns
NewYork-Presbyterian celebrated the opening of the NewYork Presbyterian Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns today, which officially opened on Aug. 2. The facility is dedicated to providing exceptional, individualized care to pregnant women and their newborns before, during, and after childbirth. This includes advanced care for high-risk pregnancies and newborns who need extra support.
This Is How to Push during Labor with Epidural
According to a recent study from the Center of Disease Control, approximately 64% of women whose births were attended by a medical doctor or a doctor of osteopathic medicine received epidural/spinal anesthesia (1). Given that the majority of women birth with the help of an epidural, it is important to offer useful information to facilitate […]
This Is Why Movement Is Important during Labor
Why is it that whenever I see a movie where a woman is in labor, the people taking care of the woman have her sit down, lie down or put her in a wheel chair? It’s as if having the laboring mother walk or move on her own is a bad idea that could cause […]
The Global Fertility Crisis: The Future of Infertility and Low Birth Rates
Governments and researchers call it the ‘global fertility crisis,’ but what does that even mean? Is there a crisis, or are women in control of their reproductive systems for the first time? One thing is clear: today’s global average fertility rate is just below 2.5 children per woman, which is less than half of the global fertility rate from 50 years ago when the average woman had at least five children, if not more.
Using Labor Mantras and Birth Affirmations for Pain Management
Sometimes in class when I announce we are going to work on mantras as a pain management tool, I get some eye rolling, as if I am asking the students to start bowing down to Buddha. While mantras in their true sense are from the Vedic Hinduism period and chanted in sanskrit, the mantras we […]
This Is How to Do Perineal Massage before Labor
I am often asked about the usefulness of perineal massage for expectant mothers. To be completely honest, I haven’t heard much feedback about it either way. I decided to investigate the question a bit more and see if there was any hard data on it. What Is Perineal Massage? Let’s start at the very beginning […]