Objective: To describe the perceptions of a US cohort of experienced birth doulas who were among the first in the country to be trained to provide postpartum support.
Design: A qualitative, longitudinal study using ethnographic methods; participant observation and semi-structured interviews.
Setting: Midwestern, urban, US; postpartum home care over three months.
Since the 1960s, childbirth education advocates have attempted to persuade pregnant women that educational preparation for labor and birth is an essential component of the transition to motherhood. Initially, pregnant women who were seeking unmedicated births as a refuge from the inhumane childbirth treatments of the mid-20th century embraced this view. However, with the changing childbirth climate, including a growing preference for medicated birth, scheduled inductions, and cesarean sections, attendance has diminished and childbirth education finds itself at a crossroads.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Obstet Gynecol Neonatal Nurs
July 2009
Objective: To describe the domains of postpartum doula care and illustrate how doulas facilitate development of maternal responsiveness and competence.
Design: Qualitative study using ethnographic method of participant observation.
Setting: Homes of mothers who received postpartum doula care.
Most midwives are aware of the need to collect clinical practice data and of its usefulness in supporting the care they provide, which contributes to healthy outcomes for mothers and babies. For the individual midwife, there is more than one easily accessible, standardized data collection instrument from which to choose. However, despite these choices, in an American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) Division of Research (DOR) survey on midwifery clinical data collection (N = 263), the majority of member respondents (n = 135; 51%) reported using a self-designed data collection tool, and more than one-third did not know of the ACNM Nurse-Midwifery Clinical Data Sets (NMCDS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt Urogynecol J Pelvic Floor Dysfunct
October 2007
The purpose of this prospective, cross-sectional study was to determine if there was an association between postpartum depression and symptoms of overactive bladder in postpartum women. At their 6 week postpartum visit, participants completed questionnaires regarding lifestyle, personal health, urinary incontinence, and depression symptoms, including the Urge-Urinary Distress Inventory (URGE-UDI), the Urge-Incontinence Impact Questionnaire (URGE-IIQ), and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). Past medical history, including obstetric variables, family history, and medications were extracted from the medical record.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To determine to the ability of systemically administered pluripotential mesenchymal stromal cells to localize to a fracture site and whether transduction with a therapeutic gene, insulin-like growth factor-I (D1-IGF-I), could potentiate healing.
Design: Murine model, basic science study.
Setting: Laboratory.
An analog of human tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) was created involving the replacement of Cys69 with Asp and Cys101 with Arg. The solution structure and behavior of this analog were compared with the native protein. The analog exhibited a greatly decreased folding efficiency following dilution from urea, but essentially identical circular dichroic spectra in both the folded and unfolded states.
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