Link round-up

I've fallen off a bit in posting, mostly due to the fact that I went to the Midwifery Today conference over spring break. That alone gave me about a hundred ideas for new posts, but since I was gone/busy all of break I came back to a large amount of homework/groupwork/work in general. Then I had a birth in the middle of the week, which threw off my already nearly-destroyed sleep schedule!

So I thought until I could sit down and write more, I'd do a link round-up. As I go through my Google Reader I star posts to come back to later, or that put me in mind of a topic I want to write about. Now I've got so many, I think I just need to clear that list out. Here we go:

The Well-Rounded Mama on why it's so important for women of size to get the right size blood pressure cuff. I just learned at the conference how important it is to have the correct size and how to measure for it, but I have worked in many clinics and never once seen anything but the "standard" size.

Radical Doula's piece in RH Reality Check on The Cost of Being Born at Home. It can be very challenging, depending on the state you live in, to get Medicaid to cover all or even part of your home birth. How can we promote birth alternatives while ensuring equal access?

Blood and Milk's round-up of Favorite Posts of the Year. This is a blog about international development and there are some good posts on voluntourism, and how to make sure you are doing more good than harm when engaging in projects overseas. Being in public health, we are asked to think about this often, but probably not often enough.

Research you can use when "Saying No to Induction". Saying no to things is a huge step for women. I am surprised by the number of women who aggressively educate themselves, but when push comes to shove, they back down even with all the evidence on their side. To say no, you sometimes have to piss people off, inconvenience them, be belittled, questioned, or threatened. Women are socialized to avoid causing a scene in any way. It's hard, but with evidence to back you up you can feel more confident.

A depressing post from Gloria Lemay with e-mails from OB nurses. I don't think they reflect all hospitals or all nurses, but they show how bad things are in some places.

Why all expectant parents should tour a birth center even if they don't plan to use one.

A lactation consultant talks about how breastfeeding is not the best, or special, ideal, or optimal. It is normal - the norm for feeding human babies. Not some mountaintop pinnacle we should be aspiring to.

Why you should do your homework - not just "wait and see" - before birth. Homework is the mother of prevention!

That's all I have time for (that's probably more than I had time for but it gets addictive...)