Why would you show breastfeeding if you're going to talk about babies?

"Babies" is being released this Sunday!. I'm really looking forward to seeing it, hopefully with some of my MCH buddies, but I also had to note this little fact that one of them pointed out. According to the MPAA:

"'Babies' is rated PG (Parental Guidance suggested). Breast feeding."

Yes, the movie "Babies" is PG only - only - because it depicts breastfeeding.

The mind boggles.

"Born Too Soon"

Watching this documentary reminds me of the great posts on Reality Rounds about avoiding the realities of prematurity. Here is a documentary that does NOT avoid them, and highlights the problems not only of early premature birth but also late-term prematurity, and the health disparities in preterm birth in this country.

It's called "Born Too Soon" and is a collaboration between March of Dimes and Kentucky Educational Television. Most of the officials interviewed are from Kentucky, and there's a focus on the rising prematurity rate in Kentucky, but it's generalizable across the country and everything that's happening there is happening around the country. I also love the doula interview, and highlighting the CenteringPregnancy model of care. I think it's an accessible, good overview of the prematurity problem (although let me just insert a little "ack!" here for the baby bottle imagery used. I am of course not a fan of coding "baby" as "bottle".)

You can watch the whole documentary here.

Friday night movie (trailer)

I've been looking at clips from a documentary currently being filmed about Maternidad La Luz. I first heard of Maternidad La Luz through a student several years ahead of me in undergrad, who did her own version of "junior year abroad" to become a midwife in Maternidad La Luz's One-Year Program. (At least as cool as partying somewhere in Europe!) After that, she returned to college and wrote her senior thesis summarizing her experience and evaluating a model for childbirth education, which I then found, read, and was amazed by.

Since then I've met several people who interned or trained at Maternidad La Luz, and wow...it sounds awesome! Watching the clips from the documentary, it looks awesome too. The homelike setting, the quiet chatter and bustle of life going on in the background, the gentle care by the midwives. I especially loved listening to their fluent "vagina Spanish" (as a nurse once termed her highly labor-focused language skills!) - it brought me back to my time in Denver, where at least half of our doula clients were Spanish-speaking only, and we did so many breastfeeding consults in Spanish that it felt strange to do one in English. I heard that familiar cadence of the phrase you've asked a hundred times - "Como le va con el dar el pecho?" "Se siente presión?" etc.

I'm looking forward to the whole documentary - I hope it will be out soon.

Thanks to my classmate and fellow LC trainee Jenna for the link!