Bloomington Area Birth Services

The next time you come into the office, you'll find posted a notice that we are moving. Yes, we have found a new place to rent that will give us more space! We are so excited about this new location-- 2458 S. Walnut in the shopping center where the old Marsh grocery on the southside of town, at the corner of S. Walnut and Country Club Rd.

We will expand our retail space and have more room for programming. The ceilings are high, so all you tall gals can enjoy stretching up for yoga.

And guess what? It's a strip mall! so LOTS of parking!!!! hooray!

We'll keep you posted on the exact date of our departure, but we really wanted to let you know that a move is on the horizon!

have a great day!
Georg'ann

Maureen Corry, the Executive Director of Childbirth Connection, the oldest maternity care organization in the US, has published an editorial addressing a subject near and dear to us. Here is a quote from the essay:

"It’s a fact: Maternity care is an essential component of women’s health care across their lifespan, and it represents a major segment of the health industry. Eighty-five percent of all women give birth, and childbirth is the No. 1 reason for hospitalization. With 4.3 million births per year, maternal and newborn charges are the runaway leader in hospital costs – topping $86 billion in 2006. Employers and private insurers pay for 49 percent of all births, and taxpayers pay for 43 percent. Although the U.S. spends more on health care than other developed nations, our performance lags way behind other countries on quality indicators including low birthweight, prematurity, and maternal death rates. According to the United Nations, 40 other countries have lower maternal death rates."

If you care about how our country spends money in the area of health-- preventative health, public health, evidenced-based health care; if you want to invest health care dollars in the most cost-effective way, that will give you the biggest bang for our buck, so to speak....well, I don't see how anyone can ignore the entire area of pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn care.

how about this for a health care reform plan? Let's increase the number of midwives that we have (both CPMs and CNMs). Let's stop using surgeons for low-risk pregnancies and use them just when we truly need them and their life-saving skills. Let's provide better support for breastfeeding. Let's truly help our mothers (and fathers and grandparents and families) care for their little ones with appropriate postpartum follow-up care. Then, with all the billions we save from that, we can take care of all the acute and chronic care cases that are right now not covered in any other way.

And guess what? lowering the cesarean rate, increasing breastfeeding, providing better postpartum care: a healthier mother & baby, a healthier community, and a healthier US!!!! YAY.

sounds like a win-win to me.

want to read more of Maureen Corry's piece? she says it all better than I do....
http://augustafreepress.com/2009/10/15/maureen-p-corry-putting-maternity-care-to-work-in-health-care-reform/

~Georg'ann
ps, this is just my opinion.....no one on the board vetted this or approved it. :-)

I know how very very hard it is to be sleep deprived and how in the middle of the night, things feel bleak and hard and impossible. You cannot be a parent and not wish that there were times to "be off the clock", when you can just not have to be "on" as a parent. And no time is that truer than when you are first learning to be a parent-- when your newborn, your infant seems to need you so much at night.

Please hang in there! nighttime parenting is so important and can be so delightful....and in terms of human biology, as well as building trust and establishing your role as a parent, waking at night is something your baby must do-- for brain development and for learning about your love for them.

here is a link to a blog-- and while the blog entry is about Enfamil and a new product that they are pushing, I'm less interested in that (though it is good to know), than I am interested in what is said a out the brain, nighttime waking, and development.

take a look. it might make it a little easier the next time you are up all night with your baby...

http://drmomma.blogspot.com/2009/08/sids-enfamil-restfull-formula-yes.html

~Georg'ann