Evidence Based Information in Maternity Care

While evidence is the way our society dissects information, categorizes groups of individuals, and compartmentalizes us into more manageable systems it is also a way we accept the continual systemic abuse of women and children within institutionalized systems.

 What is evidence based maternity care?

Using the best, most accurate research about the safety and effectiveness of specific tests, treatments, and other interventions to help guide maternity care decisions, rather than the common assumptions that both lay people and even health professionals have based their beliefs in about birth.

Some widely held beliefs about birth that our society has accepted and are detrimental to the well being of women and children are:

~Birth is a medical event that requires constant monitoring throughout the laboring process.

~Birth is unbearably painful for a woman to handle on her own without the use of drugs and/or interventions.

~Birth is an event in which the baby's well being is more important than the mother's.


Books:

The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth
-Henci Goer

Obstetric Myths Vs. Research Realities
- Henci Goer

Birth, An American Rite of Passage
- Robbie Davis Floyd

Safer Childbirth
-Marjorie Tew

American Way of Birth
-Jessica Mitford

Understanding Diagnostic Tests in the Childbearing Year
-Frye

Home Birth and Alternatives to the Hospital
-Kitzinger

Where to Be Born: The Debate and the Evidence
-Campbell, MacFarlane

Open Season
-Cohen

Take this Book to the Hospital With You
-Inlander

Misconceptions
-Wolfe


Links:
The Cochrane report
Maternity Wise