A Brooklyn Doula Shares Tips on IVF, "Natural" Birth, and What to Do When Doctors Won't Listen

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A Brooklyn Doula Shares Tips on IVF, "Natural" Birth, and What to Do When Doctors Won't Listen

“Deliveries are for pizzas, births are for babies,” Tia Dowling-Ketant told me when we sat down to chat and caffeinate one late-summer morning in Brooklyn. It was one of the dozens of quotable moments that stuck with me from the hour I got to spend with Tia, hearing about her work as a doula with a mix of clients ranging from low-income pregnant women in underserved neighborhoods, to affluent women looking for an experienced doula who knows the ropes, to couples of all backgrounds coping with infertility.

Hiring a doula can be expensive, but more and more community-based organizations like By My Side Doula Support—which Tia works with in Brooklyn—are helping lower-income women access the kind of care that usually only wealthier families can afford. This is especially crucial in neighborhoods with higher-than-average rates of maternal complications and mortality. Doulas are making a huge difference, and the data backs it up: “One-to-one emotional, physical and educational support provided by support personnel, such as a doula, is associated with improved outcomes for women in labor,” the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) said in a recent report.

Tia spoke to Crunch Time Parents about why she switched careers to do this tough and life-changing work, and gave tips on how women can become our own vocal advocates before, during and after pregnancy. And because Tia is also a fertility doula who experienced infertility before she went through IVF and gave birth to her son, she shared insights for anyone on a similar path.

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Let's Stop Fat-Shaming Pregnant Women (Oh, and Age-Shaming Too)

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Let's Stop Fat-Shaming Pregnant Women (Oh, and Age-Shaming Too)

A Huffington Post article this week makes the long-overdue case that doctors need to stop fat-shaming pregnant women who suffer from obesity or are simply overweight. In a nutshell:

"The reality is that the vast majority of overweight and obese women have perfectly normal pregnancies. But medical professionals are not immune to society’s tendency to disrespect fat people," as Brianna Snyder writes in the HuffPo article, titled "Fat-Shaming the Pregnant: How the Medical Community Fails Overweight Moms."

What does that disrespect look and sound like? Bullying women into believing that they'll be required to have a C-section if they don't lose weight. Frightening plus-size women into thinking they're risking their lives just by becoming pregnant. Asking them to abort the baby, lose weight, then get pregnant again. The horrors go on.

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Fertility Education Needs to Start Early, But When's the Right Time?

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Fertility Education Needs to Start Early, But When's the Right Time?

Sex-ed classes in schools tend to steer clear of a topic that most people will face at some point in their lives: Do I want kids, and if so, when? 

That question is thorny enough for adults, so it's no surprise that sex-ed curricula ignore it, or barely skim the surface. But considering that in a recent study of college students, less than half of women, and even fewer men, didn't know when women's or men's fertility starts to decline, it's time

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Hospitals Can Prevent More Than Half of Maternal Deaths: Why Aren't They?

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Hospitals Can Prevent More Than Half of Maternal Deaths: Why Aren't They?

Two of the most common causes of death during and after childbirth are blood loss and sharply rising blood pressure. Hospitals can reduce deaths by fatal hemorrhages by up to 90 percent, and deaths by stroke and other blood-pressure-related conditions by 60 percent. They know what to do, but they aren't doing it. Why?

Following up on ProPublica's groundbreaking Lost Mothers series, USA Today's "Deadly Deliveries" report this week analyzes data from 75 hospitals around the U.S. to figure out when and if hospital staff are following basic protocols. Reporters found that dozens aren't doing two basic things: weighing bloody pads to measure blood loss, and giving medication for high blood pressure within the crucial 60-minute timeframe after it's detected. 

Those two basic protocols would dramatically reduce the rates of maternal death in the U.S.. Incredibly, "there are no requirements that U.S. maternity hospitals follow best practices," the article notes.  

California is the only state where hospitals across the board are implementing best practices. The initiative has had stunning results: California chopped its maternal death rate by half in recent years.

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New Autism Findings Are Couched in "Don't Blame Parents" Rhetoric, but Critics Say Report Points Fingers

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New Autism Findings Are Couched in "Don't Blame Parents" Rhetoric, but Critics Say Report Points Fingers

By Salma A.

A new report about a potential cause of autism points to clues in a baby's teeth. In children who later develop autism, researchers can see "records of what exposures occurred during fetal development, and when they occurred, in a manner similar to the rings on trees." says a New York Times column headlined; "In Baby Teeth, Links Between Chemical Exposures in Pregnancy and Autism."

Author Peri Klass, M.D., a regular contributor to NYT's Checkup column, takes pains to note that the findings should NOT in any way suggest that mothers, and parents in general, are responsible for kids' early exposure to those factors, but many readers aren't buying the sincerity of the "don't blame parents" approach. 

In the intro to her column, Klass writes that "so many different exposures have been linked to problems in the developing fetal brain that parents can sometimes feel both bewildered and, inevitably, at fault for failing or having failed to take all possible precautions" to prevent autism in their child. Her piece, which has ignited a controversy,

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The Life-Saving Magic of Doulas

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The Life-Saving Magic of Doulas

If you don't read anything else this week, read this: the New York Times Magazine's "Why America's Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life or Death Crisis." Reporter Linda Villarosa tells the jaw-dropping story of a 23-year-old black mother of two named Simone Landrum, whose third pregnancy ended in a tragedy that could've been prevented if anyone bothered to listen.

Landrum's doctors and nurses kept ignoring the excruciatingly painful symptoms she reported all through her pregnancy—which should be shocking but, sadly, comes as little surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to reports on the horrendous rate of black maternal and infant mortality in America (black women are 12 times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women). Institutional and structural racism in the medical system is killing mothers and babies at a sky-high rate—the racial disparity in childbirth-related deaths between is now higher than it was in 1850—and the only good news is that this issue is making headlines now. 

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The Complex Math of Egg-Freezing Just Got Easier

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The Complex Math of Egg-Freezing Just Got Easier

Planning to freeze your eggs? Trying to figure out how many eggs you should freeze, how your age factors into the equation, and what you can actually afford usually means grappling with a series of complex math problems. But the numbers just got a lot simpler.

Joseph Doyle, M.D. recently did the math for the journal Fertility and Sterility, as noted in a recent article in Pregnantish, a site devoted to fertility and infertility issues. Doyle, who works with the Shady Grove Fertility clinics, suggests this formula:

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Chime In! Send in Names of Favorite Doctors & Health Providers for Moms 35-Plus

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Chime In! Send in Names of Favorite Doctors & Health Providers for Moms 35-Plus

Thanks to all of you readers who've submitted the names of doctors, fertility specialists, and other health providers who've been super-supportive and positive (as opposed to judgmental, weird or plain mean) as you've navigated your pregnancy and childbirth in your late 30s or 40s. We've started a little list of Health Providers and Organizations in our Resources section, and we're always looking for more names to help anyone who is starting out on this path or thinking about it. We want to cover as many cities and regions as we can, so please keep the names coming.

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Why We Need More Midwives in America: It's a Life or Death Issue

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Why We Need More Midwives in America: It's a Life or Death Issue

If you've never seen the BBC series Call the Midwife, check it out on your next Netflix-and-chill night—that's if you're game for an hour (and then another hour, and then another hour) of the most rollicking, eye-opening, laugh-and-cry TV entertainment to grace screens in a long while. Set in London's East End in the 1950s and '60s, the series kicked off in 2012, and Season 7 starts on March 25. So catch up fast if you get hooked, like we are! The show is based on the memoirs of former midwife Jennifer Worth, and early episodes had voice-overs by Vanessa Redgrave.

In England, midwives play a central role and are involved in half of all childbirths. Kate Middleton used a midwife for her first two births. In the U.S., midwifery is marginalized, and some states make it nearly impossible for midwives to practice. But a new article this week in ProPublica by Nina Martin, one of the journalists behind the groundbreaking Lost Mothers series, reports on a recent study showing how the states that integrate midwives into the health care system have the best health outcomes for mothers and babies. States that don't support midwifery show the worst outcomes

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Thinking About Having a Baby Solo? Here's How This Musician, Teacher, and Mom Did It

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Thinking About Having a Baby Solo? Here's How This Musician, Teacher, and Mom Did It

Women now have more options than ever before about when and how to have a baby. (Well, Roe v. Wade protections may vanish before our very eyes, but that’s another story.) Deciding to become a solo parent, with the help of assisted reproductive technologies, is one example of a path that wasn’t available in decades past—and it can lead to an incredibly fulfilling life as a parent.

But the path isn't easy, by any stretch of the imagination. Solo pregnancy and childbirth come with their own built-in challenges, layered right on top of the struggles that all parents face.

At Crunch Time Parents, the women we’ve met who have had babies on their own are a super-inspiring, tough, loving (and funny!) bunch, and we’re proud to be able to highlight some of their experiences here as part of our Crunch Time Q&A series.

Meet Jessica Ivry, an acclaimed Bay Area musician, educator, and mom to two-year-old Esti. Here, Jessica opens up about what it took to get where she is now: a happy, fortunate, and hard-working parent of a beautiful and active little girl.

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This New Study on Advanced Maternal Age Pregnancies Is Full of Positive News (Despite the Headline)

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This New Study on Advanced Maternal Age Pregnancies Is Full of Positive News (Despite the Headline)

If you're thinking of getting pregnant at advanced maternal age (i.e. at 35 or older), you've no doubt heard about the risks by now: higher rates of chromosomal abnormalities, miscarriage, and pregnancy or childbirth complications. But a substantial new Swedish study of more than 350,000 women showed that the increased risk isn't as high as you might think, and the chances of a healthy outcome are overwhelmingly positive.

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Egg Freezing: Should You Do It?

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Egg Freezing: Should You Do It?

"I am single and babyless not because my career is standing in the way, but because I haven’t met the person I want to make one with yet," writes 29-year-old Washington Post reporter and filmmaker Nicole Ellis in an article introducing her new serialized mini-documentary, Should I Freeze My Eggs?

Ellis appeared on the terrific Brian Lehrer radio show on New York's NPR affiliate, WNYC, this morning to talk about the documentary, and about her own attempts to figure out how egg-freezing works and whether she should do it herself. As she worked on the series, Ellis wondered why women's fertility is always framed in negative or perilous terms, and her questions led her to the guy who originally coined the notorious term "biological clock" in 1978, another Washington Post columnist named Richard Cohen.

Her response to Cohen, and Cohen's own response to Ellis, are definitely worth a listen, as is Ellis's thoughtful exploration of a question that so many women are confronting now: to freeze or not to freeze?

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