Happy Friday! I hope the holiday finds you all rested and full of good food and sweets. We have way to many cookies sitting around our house and the temptation to eat one every time we pass by the cookie tins wins every day. Our Christmas Day was filled with a three year old opening presents like someone was timing her with a stopwatch and a one year old following behind her eating and tearing up every piece of wrapping paper he could get his hands on! Onto the Friday Five…
- As usual, I might be the LAST person to find out about this, but did anyone else know that 2020 is the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife?? I am beyond excited. We get to celebrate nursing and midwifery all year long (well, here at AMN, we celebrate nursing and midwifery every day). Who decided to make 2020 such a special year? The World Health Organization. Snaps for them! The W-H-O recognizes that midwives play a special role in the maternity health care system and that we are underutilized. In fact, they even recognize that midwifery care is magical. I’m just loving the recognition and can’t wait to see their plans come to fruition. Want to read more? Check it out here. See what ACNM is doing here.
- Male midwives – yup, it’s a thing and they are awesome! I did my final rotation in Florida under a male midwife that was prior active duty, then retired and now a government employee. He had been a midwife for over 25 years and was amazing! Read this article for a few more shout outs. And if you’re a male midwife – shoot me an email so we can highlight your story!
- Breastfeeding your toddler…yes I am. I had to brush up on my nursing a toddler after my baby turned one year old this month. We recently had to drop some bottles at day care (why does this always cause me anxiety??) and now nurse on demand when mama is around. Even so, with teeth growing in every day and the on and off again every 5 seconds (while your boob just hangs out in public!) this article was a lovely refresher.
- H.R.3849 – Midwives for Maximizing Optimal Maternity Services Act of 2019 – yup, a bill to help educate more midwives. You gotta love that. If you live in one of the states that has a representative sponsoring the bill (check here), please consider emailing them a letter of support for the bill. Make midwifery great again!
- Lastly, this humbling research article put out my The New England Journal….I haven’t gotten my hands on the full text yet to see if the research was soundly conducted, but the article predicts that in 10 years, 1 in 2 adults will be obese. Obesity and pregnancy intersect almost every single day in my clinic, and often times, every single patient. Obesity brings a number of risks to women desiring to be pregnant, women who are pregnant, women who are delivering a baby, and postpartum. Read the abstract yourself here.
Enjoy the weekend!
Jamie