The Safe Motherhood Quilt Project
Did you know…that the United States ranks behind at least 30 other nations in maternal mortality rates according to the World Health Organization. In 2003, the United States reported 12.1 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, up from 7.5 per 100,000 in 1982.
Did you know…that black women in the United States have 4 times the risk of dying from childbirth or childbirth related complications. Hispanic women in the United States, similarly, are 1.6 times more likely than non-Hispanic white women to die from pregnancy-related causes.
Did you know…that the Centers for Disease Control estimated in 1998 that the US maternal death rate is actually 1.3 to three times that reported in vital statistics records because of underreporting of such deaths.
Did you know…that reporting of maternal deaths in the United States is done via an honor system. There are no statutes providing for penalties for misreporting or failing to report maternal deaths.
Did you know…that the Centers for Disease Control estimates that more than half of the reported maternal deaths in the United States could have been prevented by early diagnosis and treatment.
The Safe Motherhood Quilt Project is a national effort developed to draw public attention to the current maternal death rates, as well as to the gross underreporting of maternal deaths in the United States, and to honor those women who have died of pregnancy-related causes since 1982.
The Project is the vision of Ina May Gaskin, midwifery pioneer and author of Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and the classic Spiritual Midwifery, who has been instrumental in bringing this issue to the public light.
The Quilt Project’s sponsor is the Safe Motherhood Initiatives, USA, an organization founded to improve maternal mortality rates in the United States.
The Quilt
The quilt is made up of individually designed squares; each one devoted to a woman in the U.S. who has died of pregnancy-related causes since 1982. One quilt square is designed and dedicated to each mother’s memory and may mention the date and place of death and the name of the woman. The Safe Motherhood Quilt is the voice for women who can no longer speak for themselves.
To be honored and remembered on The Safe Motherhood Quilt:
The woman died as a result of a complication of pregnancy or birth
The woman’s death occurred since 1982
The woman died within a calendar year after the end of her pregnancy (documented by an obituary, death certificate, relative’s or witness’ account).
Jenny Hatch

Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care (Hardcover)
by Jennifer Block (Author)
Born in the USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First (Hardcover)
by Marsden Wagner (Author)
Cesarean Delivery and the Risk–Benefit Calculus New England Journal of Medicine (This information should be considered suspect and self serving)
Interview with Jeffrey Ecker on the contributors to the increase in cesarean deliveries. Author of recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on the increase in surgical birth – He blames the patients, obesity, multiple births, VBAC, breech, and the mother lode for doctors: lawsuits and what he terms a Malpractice Crisis.
Slide Presentation of Cesarean Delivery at the New England Journal of Medicine
Philadelphia Inquiry: C-section rates nationwide: Go Here
National Institutes of Health
NIH State-of-the-Science Conference: Cesarean Delivery on Maternal Request
March 27-29, 2006
Plus Size Pregnancy Web Site
I have been close to, or well over 200 pounds during the pregnancies of all five of my children. With my first I was 197 on the day I gave birth, and with my fifth I was 260 on the day I gave birth. As a confirmed plus size momma, I believe the larger issue (no pun intended), is what the mother is eating during pregnancy, more than her actual weight. If a mother is eating the Brewer diet during pregnancy she will prevent Toxemia, no matter what her size is.
I am one of those moms who puffs out with the fluids of breastmilk, and generally put on twenty to thirty pounds after the birth while I breastfeed (All mammels do this), and I actually lose weight (usually about 20 pounds) while pregnant, have done this for my last four pregnancies. I have a full figured body and weighed 170 pounds on my wedding day, so I believe these weights have been normal for my body type. Plus size mothers are bullied into surgery during birth like no other group of women in America.

This news report includes video of an unassisted birth. It also articulates the debate of parental choice and the problems that families increasingly face around the births of their little ones.
Go Here to watch the video.
NOTE: Most news agencies only keep videos archived for a month.
Jenny Hatch

The new normal
Increasingly, giving birth is a medicalized procedure
Published: Saturday, August 18, 2007

“It must have been the cocktail of drugs they gave me before my first daughter was delivered by caesarean section, but as I lay on the operating table, I felt like chatting.

What, I asked the anesthetist seated at my head, did he think about the number of caesareans being performed? Were there too many? Was there reason for concern?

“No one ever complains about C-section rates once their babies are born,” he said in a gentle but dismissive tone, “because the babies are healthy and beautiful.”

….One of the most telling anecdotes in her book takes place at Florida Hospital Heartland Medical Centre in Sebring, Florida. When Hurricane Charley hit in 1994, it knocked the power out. The hospital had an emergency generator, but its capacity was limited. So the hospital sent most women home and asked them to come back when they were in active labour.

During the few days following the hurricane, nurses noticed a change in the way babies were being born: most babies made it into the outside world without medical intervention and within hours of their mothers arriving at the hospital; nurses saw no cases of fetal distress or respiratory distress in newborns; and the hospital’s C-section rate dropped dramatically — from more than 29 per cent to 17 per cent (six per cent if several scheduled repeat C-sections were excluded from the stats).

Prior to the storm, most mothers were induced so that their babies would be born during the day, and labours were electronically and chemically managed. Once life returned to normal, a number of nurses quit the hospital, convinced its management of labour was doing more harm than good.”

….”Still, she believes that the increasing medicalization of birth, even north of the border, is part of the culture of fear. Many women are convinced that normal birth is dangerous and to be avoided. Yet, she argues, women are seldom given accurate warnings about the risks of C-sections, which include an increased risk of infection, blood clots and stroke, emergency hysterectomies, surgical injuries and longer-lasting pain, compared to vaginal births, according to Childbirth Connections, a U.S.-based childbirth research organization.”

…”More than 30 years after the natural birth movement led many women to turn their backs on the heavy medical interventions their mothers had endured, the over-medicalization of birth is back with a vengeance. And surprisingly, few are raising alarm over the trend.

Because now it’s the new normal.”

Elizabeth Payne is the Citizen editor of senior writers. Balancing Act appears every other week.
Jenny Hatch
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