“But here’s a wrenching fact: 41 countries have better infant mortality rates than the US.
In 2002 our infant mortality rate went up, not down.
What about these infants’ mothers? Women in the United States are 70% more likely to die in childbirth than women in Europe. Although we are in no position to export our style of health care, finding examples in many countries where we have influenced the way of caring for pregnant and birthing women and their babies is not hard.
The Global Evolution of Birthing Practices
In order to understand why exporting a very flawed US maternity care system is a global disaster, we need to begin by looking at the evolution of maternity care practices. This evolution of global birthing practices is diagrammed in the graph below.
Two hundred years ago midwives were autonomous care providers who assisted women during childbirth. Essentially, the woman and midwife worked together without outside interference. Then as men and doctors began to interfere in childbirth and childbirth came under the control of doctors and hospitals, both the woman and the midwife gradually but surely lost more and more of their autonomy. Under this model, birthing women are no longer allowed to decide what happens during their pregnancy and birth and midwives are nothing more than slaves to the doctors.
Today, urban areas in developing countries are in this early part of the evolution of maternity care. This is what one sees in those parts of the world where the West has been able to penetrate, such as big cities and in places like China, Russia and much of Latin America, where they are so eager to be “modern.”
Marsden Wagner
Go Here, and here, and here
World Fact book
“U.S. Babies Die at Higher Rate
Infant Mortality Rates Are Rising in U.S., While Rates in Other Countries Are Improving
By MARC LALLANILLA
Nov. 1, 2005 — – What’s causing the increased death rate among babies in the United States?
While the health of infants in many countries is improving, babies born in the United States now face an increased risk of dying in the first year of life.
The U.S. infant mortality rate is on the rise for the first time since 1958, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2001, the infant mortality rate was 6.8 deaths per 1,000 live births — in 2002, the rate rose to 7.0. (2003 data is not yet complete.)”
The author of this ABC article implys that the socialized medicine of Cuba is the reason the infant mortality rates there are improving. I completely reject that notion, because the underlying implication is that more medicine will mean better outcomes. No, what will give the US better outcomes is for women to take personal responsibility for their own health, and not be so dependent on doctors who know nothing about prenatal nutrition. Then the prematurity rates will go down, and mothers of multiples will be able to carry twins to term.
We also need to move away from medicated birth to more natural birth.
AND, we need to more fully educate our mothers on the benefits of breastmilk.
This year it was reported that more babies than ever are being born to single mothers. I don’t know what effect this fact has on the infant mortality rate, but I do know that it will have a profound effect on the bonding between mother and baby and the ability of a mother to breastfeed her child.
I have described myself as a strong ANTI-feminist. What this means is that I completely acknowledge my dependance on my husband to provide me and my children the necessities of life, especially when I am pregnant and nursing.
Because the raging feminists have dismissed the need for a husband and father for children, claiming that they do just as well with a single mother, our young women are not being taught the truth about what intentionally bringing a child into the world will mean for them as single mothers.
For most it will mean lonliness, poverty, and the mother not being able to give the baby the best of herself in terms of bonding, breastfeeding, and a full time mother for the first three years. I found this article to be interesting. It was written with a very biased perspective towards single motherhood, and yet the undercurrent message, even from the four mothers who were profiled was; “I would not want to do this alone ever again”.
Motherhood is difficult. Nursing a baby on demand for years at a time has proved to be one of the most difficult tasks I have ever personally taken on. I have spent 12 of the 17 years of my marriage with one or two babies on the breast, and it is my husband who has enabled me to have the luxury to raise our kids this way. I know how completely dependant I am on him, and I honor and praise him for his clarity, and willingness to get out of bed every day and go to work for our family.
About 25% of the time I have absolutely hated breastfeeding. Sometimes it is annoying and bothersome to have a toddler constantly begging to nurse. What kept me going was my childrens clarity that I was what they wanted most. They simply wanted to be with me. And how could I forget them? Isaiah knew what he was talking about. I have tried to wean my babies when I was ready (and when the child was not ready) and it never worked out. They were just so sad.
Recently I tried to wean Ben, and he just moped around for a week. Finally I just let him back on, and his whole day revolves around when he gets to nurse. I figure if it means that much to him, then we’ll just proceed and let him self wean.
I would hope that smart women would take the time, energy, and effort to prepare themselves emotionally and physically for motherhood. Prepare yourself by staying morally clean. Go looking for a mate at church. Do you honestly want the person who is the father of your child to be someone you met at a bar? Look for a man who has a strong desire to be a good father, and is willing for you to stay at home to mother the children while he provides food, clothing, and shelter. This is the ideal situation to raise children, and it is one that I unapologetically promote as the best way to lower our infant mortality rates in America.
This set up coupled with good nutrition, gentle birth, and breastfeeding is the foundation for long term health in our nation and babies living healthy and happy lives.
Jenny Hatch

“A twenty-eight-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, Paul Bishop currently directs a Sexual Assault Detail with responsibility for investigations in more than twenty-five percent of the city. His career has included a tour with the department’s Anti-Terrorist Division and more than twenty years’ experience investigating sex crimes.”
“Using Information Wisely
The proper use of sex offender registration laws and technology can provide a wonderful tool to protect those who are dearest to us. As mention earlier, using the Megan’s Law computers or web sites can provide information on adults whose criminal actions should red flag any contact with our family members – especially our children. Don’t rely on another organization or individual to do this checking. Do it yourself.
Sports coaches (especially for travel teams), music teachers, dance instructors, new personal relationships — don’t let that new love use you to get to your kids — karate instructors, and the adult neighbor down the street who lives with his mother and always has teenage boys hanging around, should all be checked. Is the last one a stereotype? Absolutely. But even if the individual has never been convicted of a sex crime, the described situation is far too often a recipe for disaster.
Make sure your children avoid it at all costs. Don’t be conned into thinking the individual is just somebody who likes kids. He does like kids — far too much. Normal male adults do not have the kind of tolerance for young male testosterone that makes them want to spend all their time with them. Sooner or later somebody like me is going to be starting an investigation into the individual. This will inevitably lead to neighbors in the area saying in wonder, “But he was such a nice man.”
If you are concerned about sex offenders living in close proximity to your home, there are a number of appropriate steps you can take. These don’t necessarily depend on Megan’s Law technologies, but are guidelines designed to protect you and your family.
Make sure your children and teens understand it is wrong for adults to touch them inappropriately, engage them in sexual conversation, or attempt to get them to participate in overt sexual activity. Make your children feel comfortable telling you anything, especially if it involves an adult (even if that adult is another parent or relative). Teach your children about their bodies, giving them the correct language to use when describing their private parts. Stress the importance of those parts remaining private.
Always make an effort to know the people with whom your children interact. In our busy lives this is difficult, but nonetheless imperative. You need to observe first-hand how other ‘in charge’ adults in interact with your children. If you become concerned about any behavior you consider odd, report it to the sponsoring organization.
Know where your children are at all times. Be clear about the places and homes they may visit. It should be a requirement for your children to check in with you when they arrive or depart a location and when there is a change in their plans. They will hate you for this. TOO BAD. Your job is to be their parent first, then their friend — sometimes you can’t be both. Conversely, you should also let them know when you are running late or your plans have changed. This helps your children realize this rule is for everyone’s safety — not just a way of depriving them of freedom.
If your children tell you they don’t want to be left with somebody or go somewhere, it is imperative to listen. Trust their intuition. This reluctance may indicate far more than a personality conflict or a lack of interest in an activity.
Help your children understand they have the right to say, “No,” to any unwelcome touching and to report it to you immediately. It is important to remember the vast majority of child molest cases involve somebody the victim knows, so do not allow yourself to focus exclusively on stranger danger.
The single most important thing you can do is trust your instincts. For those of us in the Church, we know this is truly part of communing with the Holy Ghost. If you feel uncomfortable with someone in an isolated situation (an elevator, a car, even in your home) get out. Do not talk yourself out of feeling uncomfortable being alone with somebody simply because they are an acquaintance. Be wary of friends or dates who test your boundaries by making unwanted physical advances and then attempting to minimize your protests.
All of the above does not mean you must live your life in fear, never trusting anyone. It is simply a call for awareness. Tools such as the Megan’s Law computers and web sites are designed to help us keep our families safe. Used as designed, they can help prevent tragedy and heartbreak. Misused or ignored, the results can be problematic.
Take care of yourselves and your children out there in the world. My unit and our counterparts across the nation are here if you need us. Hopefully, however, our contact will not be from a professional prospective, but through fellowshipping and a shared love of the gospel.”
Sexual Offenders

“It is time to come to grips with what all too many have denied for all too long, namely, that all disconcerting news about adverse effects cannot be attributed to low-quality care, which has been more or less the mantra of the field of child development and the child-care advocacy community for decades,” Belsky said.
But advocates of universal preschool insist that quality is key. The Preschool for All initiative in California calls for offering every 4-year-old access to half-day preschool three hours a day, five days a week from teachers holding bachelor’s degrees.
“You have to look at all the research together and draw from it the lessons that have been clear for quite a while — that the quality of the program makes an enormous difference, and it makes a difference in terms of the social and emotional development of young children,” said Alan Simpson, spokesman for the National Association for the Education of Young Children in Washington, D.C., which accredits preschool programs nationwide. “A quality program has teachers and staff that know how to nurture children’s social and emotional development.”
Sorry to disagree with a “spokesperson for the National Association for the Education of Young Children”, but what gives children proper social and emotional development is an intense bond with Mom for the first three years, and a nurturing family environment until the child is eight.
One of the other telling points in the article, and this is important for those families who may be feeling the need for mother to work outside the home to purchase more “stuff”….
“Children from lower-income families lagged behind their peers who didn’t attend preschool an average of 7 percentage points on the measure of social behavioral growth. But children from higher-income families lagged 9 percentage points behind their peers. These wealthier children did even worse when they attended preschool for 30 hours or more: They trailed their peers by 15 percentage points.
It’s not clear why children from higher-income families exhibit more negative behaviors than their stay-at-home peers. Fuller speculated their peers might be in enriching home environments that include things like trips to the library as well as dance and music lessons.
Other studies have found childcare centers negatively affect children’s social development, said Jay Belsky, director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues at Birkbeck University of London, in an e-mail interview.”
Mommas! Stay home! And take care of your own babies! You will never regret the time you spent or the investment you make in your children! If you don’t think you can manage it financially….ask your friends to give you some cloth diapers and a good book on Breastfeeding for a baby shower gift. Get a good cook book, and start making meals from scratch. You will be amazed at what these simply measures will do for your home budget. Baby formula, plastic diapers, prepared foods, and day care/preschool are the major reasons mothers feel the need to work. Please, just stay home with your babies and give them the best of yourself….every day…
Preschool study…
Jenny Hatch

Great News!
“More Parents Buying Kids Organic Food
NewsMax.com Wires
Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005
WASHINGTON — Erin O’Neal has two daughters and a fridge stocked with organic cheese, milk, fruits and vegetables in her Annapolis, Md., home.
She is among the increasing number of parents who buy organic to keep their children’s diets free of food grown with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics or genetic engineering.
“The pesticide issue just scares me – it wigs me out to think about the amount of chemicals that might be going into my kid,” said O’Neal, 36.
Sales of organic baby food have jumped nearly 18 percent since last year – double the overall growth of organic food sales, according to the marketing information company ACNielsen.
As demand has risen, organic food for children has been popping up outside natural food stores.”
More parents buying kids organic foods
Jenny HatchJenny@NaturalFamilyCo.com

One of my all time favorite birth essays…
Rape of the Twentieth Century
Leilah McCracken. Written in March of 1998; revised April 2000.
“A few days later, at home, this thought went through my head- a swirling black flicker of sentience that translated into the following sentence- hospital birth is the rape of the twentieth century.
Women are systematically, routinely, and willingly assaulted every day by individuals and institutions who claim to have their best interests at heart, and most women have no concept of what is lost. Yes, it is rape: just as a man forcing sexual intercourse on a woman strips her of her powers, and wounds her in sacred places, so does birth rape. Women are left shaking, enraged and filled with sorrow after both rapes, because the rape is the same. And just as it would matter if our children were conceived through rape, it matters if they are born through rape. And in both rapes we bleed.
~~~~
Women are made to bleed, often uncontrollably, in hospital births. They bleed because of the standard shot of oxytocin in the leg after birth: a woman’s natural oxytocin-making mechanisms (which contract the uterus to its previous size) shut down when a huge dose of the synthetic hormone is in her bloodstream.
And when the artificial stuff wears off, a woman will suddenly feel faint and collapse in a pool of her own blood. (The uterus has stopped contracting, and the placental site is nearly as large and raw as it was after birth. Artificial hormones used to induce labor cause excessive bleeding, too.) Hemorrhage also happens when “fundus fiddling” is involved: impatient birth attendants will externally manipulate a woman’s uterus to expel the placenta, and will even tug on the cord. This is agonizing, as well as bloody.
A bigger cause of bleeding is episiotomy. Most blood loss in a typical birth will actually come from an episiotomy wound; so much so that a woman can even become anemic. Episiotomy is a foul, malevolent invention- created out of the incredible logic of trying to prevent a perineal injury by inflicting one.
When vaginas are cut open, women suffer: episiotomies can rip through a woman’s perineal tissues, causing extensive tearing; they hurt intensely- doctors will often not even wait for the local anesthetic to kick in before cutting (or even bother administering one); women will cry when they pee for a month. Scar tissue can make sex painful or difficult, often for a woman’s lifetime; and sexual sensation can be diminished because episiotomy permanently severs the nerves that flow far into the perineum from the clitoris.
The wound often becomes painfully infected- in which case the sutures need to be removed to drain the wound, and the perineum needs to be painfully restitched. Deathly gangrenous infections- necrotizing fasciitis and clostridial myonecrosis- are caused by episiotomy. Cancer, endometriosis, and brain abscesses are known to be seeded from the episiotomy site, too.”
Join Birth Love – it will change your life…

Jenny Hatch