This week I’m returning to an exploration of the literature about water birth and the perineum. The recently published paper by Sanders and colleagues (2024, in press) has already generated two letters to the editor. I want to start by looking at their criticisms and considering their validity, before making some conclusions about what I think the POOL study can teach us. Letter number 1 The first of the letters […]
As I was pondering on the question of why water birth seems to get obstetricians in a bit of a tizzy – I realised my own experience of learning to support women at water births provides some clues. This week’s post is a reflection on what I have learned as an obstetrician who has been present at over 100 water births. The early days While I had been interested in […]
Fetal monitoring guidelines around the world recommend CTG use in labour when women are considered to be a higher risk for a bad outcome for the baby that is linked to low oxygen levels in labour. Regular readers of my blog will have seen me write repeatedly about the lack of great evidence to back this up. There’s no compelling research showing better outcomes with CTG use for women planning […]
The past decade has seen quite a lot written about whether giving birth in water is good or bad for women’s perineums. The UK seems to have been the hotspot for these discussions. In today’s blog post, I’m going summarise a new piece of research that has kicked off another round of letters to the editor. How was the research done? This new, just published trial is the POOL cohort […]
Birth Small Talk 