The POOL study (more information is here if you haven’t been following along with this series) is simply the latest in a long series of studies examining aspects of safety relating to the use, or not, of water immersion at birth. Where does the POOL study evidence fit with what was already known from earlier research? Does it provide something new and controversial, or does it reinforce where the evidence […]
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 […]
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 […]
In a slight departure from normal programming, I’m tackling perineal trauma today. This is a topic I have posted about before (like this, this, and this), and have contributed to research in this area (Allen, Small, & Lee, 2022). A bit of background In the birth-world, the term perineum is generally used to mean the area between the back of the vagina and in front of the anus (back passage). […]
The #clitoris has been “discovered” many times during the #history of #anatomy. Will it disappear again?
CTG monitoring is in use during a woman’s labour. The fetal heart rate pattern is now abnormal. As her maternity professional, you know that the positive predictive value of the CTG is low, and want to avoid caesarean section unless it is going to improve the fetal outcome. And you don’t want to misidentify when caesarean section is a great idea and as a result have an avoidable poor outcome […]
I write about the importance of language from time to time. Here’s a collection of all these thoughts in the one place.
Post term risks, colour coded CTG interpretation, anaemia, and bias – research that caught my eye recently
Is more medical care always better? Reflections on the law of diminishing returns. @susan_bewley @eternal1098 #toomuchtoosoon
Birth Small Talk 