One of the valuable benefits for Lamaze International members is a subscription to Lamaze International's official journal - The Journal of Perinatal Education (JPE).  The mission of the JPE is to promote, support, and protect natural, safe, and healthy birth through education and advocacy. The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles and evidence-based, practical resources that childbirth educators and other healthcare professionals can use to enhance the quality and effectiveness of their care or teaching to prepare expectant parents for birth.

Through evidence-based articles, the JPE advances the knowledge of aspiring and seasoned educators in any setting-independent or private practice, community, hospital, nursing or midwifery school-and informs educators and other healthcare professionals on research that will improve their practice and their efforts to support natural, safe, and healthy birth.

The journal's content focuses on pregnancy, childbirth, the postpartum period, breastfeeding, neonatal care, early parenting, and young family development. In addition to childbirth educators, the JPE's readers regularly include nurses, midwives, physicians, and other professionals involved with perinatal education and maternal-child health care.  Which highlighted below articles are the ones that you want to explore?

Consider joining Lamaze International to receive this member benefit along with other perks.  There are value and benefit to all birth professionals in joining Lamaze and helping families have safe and healthy births.  This second quarter of 2019's publication is, as usual, chock full of useful information.  Articles include:

Safe and Healthy Birth Practices: Current Evidence

Author: Budin, Wendy C., PhD, RNBC, LCCE, FAAN

Abstract

In this column, the editor of The Journal of Perinatal Education (JPE) describes this special issue where distinguished authors discuss safe maternity care and provide updated evidence-based reviews of the Lamaze International Six Healthy Birth Practices that promote, support, and protect natural, safe, and healthy birth

Safe Childbirth: A Call to Action

Note: This is a Continuing Education Module

Author: Lothian, Judith A., PhD, RN, LCCE, FACCE, FAAN

Abstract

Since the publication of Lamaze's Six Healthy Birth Practice papers in 2014, there has been increasing concern with the safety of the current maternity care system. A doubling of the maternal mortality rate in the United States and the continued high cesarean rate, as well as ongoing research that supports physiologic birth and identifies the risks of interfering with the physiologic process, has resulted in updated guidelines for care and has spurred advocacy efforts to transform maternity care. This article presents a number of these advocacy efforts.

Healthy Birth Practice #1: Let Labor Begin on Its Own

Author: Amis, Debby, RN, CD(DONA), LCCE, FACCE

Abstract

Current evidence and professional organizations identify letting labor begin on its own as one of the most important strategies for promoting normal, physiologic birth. It also prevents iatrogenic prematurity and the need for high-tech medical interventions required for labor induction. Because the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) now states that it is reasonable for obstetric care providers to offer induction at 39 weeks to low-risk nulliparous women, it is more important than ever for childbirth educators to be familiar with best evidence on letting labor begin on its own.

Healthy Birth Practice #2: Walk, Move Around and Change Positions Throughout Labor

Author:  Ondeck, Michele, RN, Med, LCCE, FACCE

Abstract

Women who use upright positions and are mobile during labor have shorter labors, less intervention, fewer cesarean births, and report less severe pain, and describe more satisfaction with their childbirth experience than women in recumbent positions. The evidence for supporting physiologic childbearing for optimal birth fails to disrupt intervention intensive hospital practices that deny 60% of women mobility in labor despite calls by maternity care organizations to not restrict mobility for low-risk women in spontaneous labor.

Healthy Birth Practice #3: Bring a Loved One, Friend or Doula for Continuous Support

Author: Green, Jeanne, MT, CD(DON). LCCE, FACCE & Hotelling, Barbara A., MSN, FACCE, AdvCD(DONA), CHT

Abstract

All women should be allowed and encouraged to bring a loved one, friend, or doula to their birth without financial or cultural barriers. Continuous labor support offers benefits to mothers and their babies with no known harm.

Healthy Birth Practice #4:  Avoid Interventions Unless They Are Medically Necessary

Author: Lothian, Judith A., PhD, RN, LCCE, FACCE, FAAN

Abstract

Maternity care in the United States continues to be intervention intensive. The routine use of intravenous fluids, restrictions on eating and drinking, continuous electronic fetal monitoring, epidural analgesia, and augmentation of labor characterize most U.S. births. The use of episiotomy has decreased but is still higher than it should be. These interventions disturb the normal physiology of labor and birth and restrict women's ability to cope with labor. The result is a cascade of interventions that increase risk, including the risk of cesarean surgery, for women and babies. This paper describes the use and effect of routine interventions on the physiologic process of labor and birth and identifies the unintended consequences resulting from the routine use of these interventions in labor and birth.

Healthy Birth Practice #5: Avoid Giving Birth on Your Back and Follow Your Body’s Urge to Push

Author: Curl, Marilyn RNC, CNM, LCCE, FACCE

Abstract

Tradition, not evidence, continues to drive the management of the second stage of labor in most hospitals. This is an overview of current evidence associated with best practices for healthy outcomes for mothers and babies.

Healthy Birth Practiced #6: Keep Mother ad Newborn Together ­— It’s Best for Mother, Newborn and Breastfeeding

Author: Crenshaw, Jeanette, T., DNP, RN, IBCLC, NEA-BC, LCCE, FACCE, FAAN

Abstract

Mothers and newborns have an emotional and physiological need to be together at the moment of birth and during the hours and days that follow. Keeping mothers and newborns together is a safe and healthy birth practice. Evidence supports immediate, undisturbed skin-to-skin care after vaginal birth and during and after cesarean surgery for all medically stable mothers and newborns, regardless of feeding preference; and, no routine separation during the days after birth. Childbirth educators and other health-care professionals have an ethical responsibility to support this essential healthy birth practice through education, advocacy, and implementation of evidence-based maternity practices.

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