Midwifery In The United States
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Midwifery In The United States
Midwives in the United States assist childbearing women during pregnancy, labor and birth, and the postpartum period. Some midwives also provide primary care for women including well-woman exams, health promotion, and disease prevention, family planning options, and care for common gynecological concerns. Before the turn of the 20th century, traditional midwives were informally trained and helped deliver almost all births. Today, midwives are professionals who must undergo formal training. Midwives in the United States formed the Midwifery Education, Regulation, and AssociationUS-MERA task force to establish a framework for midwifery. History Colonial period Childbirth in the United States has traditionally been attended by midwives. During the seventeenth century, the English colonies strictly had women midwives attend childbirths. Town records indicate some well-known midwives including Bridget Fuller (d. 1664) who practiced in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Mrs. Wiat of ...
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Midwives
A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialization known as midwifery. The education and training for a midwife concentrates extensively on the care of women throughout their lifespan; concentrating on being experts in what is normal and identifying conditions that need further evaluation. In most countries, midwives are recognized as skilled healthcare providers. Midwives are trained to recognize variations from the normal progress of labor and understand how to deal with deviations from normal. They may intervene in high risk situations such as breech births, twin births, and births where the baby is in a posterior position, using non-invasive techniques. For complications related to pregnancy and birth that are beyond the midwife's scope of practice, including surgical and instrumental deliveries, they refer their patients to physicians or surgeons. In many parts of the world, these professions work in tandem to provid ...
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African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African-American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. African Americans constitute the second largest racial group in the U.S. after White Americans, as well as the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Latino Americans. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West/ Central African with some European descent; some also have Native American and other ancestry. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not s ...
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Mamie Odessa Hale
Mamie Odessa Hale (November 19, 1910 – July 10, 1979) was a leader in public health and a midwife consultant who worked in Arkansas for the Department of Health from 1945 to 1950. During this time, Hale's objective was to educate and train ' granny midwives.' (These women managed the medical side of pregnancies and assisted in delivery. They also were the ones who completed birth certificates for new born babies.) Her efforts were in place to address the public health disparity between black and white women that was currently evident. Early life and education Mamie Odessa Hale was born on November 19, 1910 in Keeneys Creek, West Virginia, as the third child to Emanuel Hale and Minnie Maude Creasy Hale. Hale attended the Tuskegee School of Nurse-Midwifery for Colored Nurses in Alabama in 1941. The school was one of the few programs created to educate African American nurses. The Rosenwald Foundation and Children’s Bureau, a government organization used to record and overse ...
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Doula
A doula () is a trained professional who provides expert guidance for the service of others and who supports another person (the doula's client) through a significant health-related experience, such as childbirth, miscarriage, induced abortion or stillbirth, as well as non-reproductive experiences such as dying. A doula may also provide support to the client's partner, family, and friends. The doula's goal and role is to help the client feel safe and comfortable, complementing the role of the healthcare professionals who provide the client's medical care. Unlike a physician, midwife, or nurse, a doula cannot administer medication or other medical treatment or give medical advice. An individual may need to complete training to work as a doula, although training and certification processes vary throughout the world. Some doulas work as volunteers; others are paid for their services by their client, medical institutions, or other private and public organizations. Doulas receive va ...
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Childbirth
Childbirth, also known as labour and delivery, is the ending of pregnancy where one or more babies exits the internal environment of the mother via vaginal delivery or caesarean section. In 2019, there were about 140.11 million births globally. In the developed countries, most deliveries occur in hospitals, while in the developing countries most are home births. The most common childbirth method worldwide is vaginal delivery. It involves four stages of labour: the shortening and opening of the cervix during the first stage, descent and birth of the baby during the second, the delivery of the placenta during the third, and the recovery of the mother and infant during the fourth stage, which is referred to as the postpartum. The first stage is characterized by abdominal cramping or back pain that typically lasts half a minute and occurs every 10 to 30 minutes. Contractions gradually becomes stronger and closer together. Since the pain of childbirth correlates with cont ...
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Birth Attendant
A birth attendant, also known as skilled birth attendant, is a health professional who provides basic and emergency care to women and their newborns during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. A birth attendant, who may be a midwife, physician, obstetrician, or nurse, is trained to be present at ("attend") childbirth, whether the delivery takes place in a health care institution or at home, to recognize and respond appropriately to medical complications, and to implement interventions to help prevent them in the first place, including through prenatal care. Different birth attendants are able to provide different levels of care. Types of midwives There are three different types of midwives. There is a nurse-midwife who must obtain a high level of education, either bachelors or masters in midwifery, after becoming a nurse. Nurse-midwives can serve in most birthing centers, hospitals, and can have a private home birth practice. Then there is a Certified Professional M ...
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Midwives Alliance Of North America
The Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) was founded in April 1982 to build cooperation among midwives and to promote midwifery as a means of improving health care for North American women and their families. Its stated goal is to unify and strengthen the profession of midwifery, thereby improving the quality of health care for women, babies, and communities. History When MANA was founded there were many organizations that midwives had been instrumental in organizing and that provided a means of communication and support. However none had a membership base broad enough, an internal support system, or the political credibility to promote midwifery as an accepted part of the maternal-child health care system in North America. In October 1981, Sister Angela Murdaugh, of thAmerican College of Nurse-Midwives invited four non-nurse midwives and four nurse-midwives from around the country to Washington D.C. to discuss issues confronting all midwives, with special emphasis on the ...
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Abortifacients
An abortifacient ("that which will cause a miscarriage" from Latin: ''abortus'' "miscarriage" and '' faciens'' "making") is a substance that induces abortion. This is a nonspecific term which may refer to any number of substances or medications, ranging from herbs to prescription medications. Common abortifacients used in performing medical abortions include mifepristone, which is typically used in conjunction with misoprostol in a two-step approach. Synthetic oxytocin, which is routinely used safely during term labor, is also commonly used to induce abortion in the second or third trimester. For thousands of years writers in many parts of the world have described and recommended herbal abortifacients to women who seek to terminate a pregnancy, although their use may carry risks to the health of the woman. Medications Because "abortifacient" is a broad term used to describe a substance's effects on pregnancy, there is a wide range of drugs that can be described as abortifa ...
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Meconium
Meconium is the earliest stool of a mammalian infant resulting from defecation. Unlike later feces, meconium is composed of materials ingested during the time the infant spends in the uterus: intestinal epithelial cells, lanugo, mucus, amniotic fluid, bile, and water. Meconium, unlike later feces, is viscous and sticky like tar – its color usually being a very dark olive green and it is almost odorless. When diluted in amniotic fluid, it may appear in various shades of green, brown, or yellow. It should be completely passed by the end of the first few days after birth, with the stools progressing toward yellow (digested milk). Clinical significance Meconium in amniotic fluid Meconium is normally retained in the infant's bowel until after birth, but sometimes it is expelled into the amniotic fluid (also called "amniotic liquor") prior to birth or during labor and delivery. The stained amniotic fluid (called "meconium liquor" or "meconium-stained liquor") is recognized by ...
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Perineum
The perineum in humans is the space between the anus and scrotum in the male, or between the anus and the vulva in the female. The perineum is the region of the body between the pubic symphysis (pubic arch) and the coccyx (tail bone), including the perineal body and surrounding structures. There is some variability in how the boundaries are defined. The perineal raphe is visible and pronounced to varying degrees. The perineum is an erogenous zone. The word perineum entered English from late Latin via Greek περίναιος ~ περίνεος ''perinaios, perineos'', itself from περίνεος, περίνεοι 'male genitals' and earlier περίς ''perís'' 'penis' through influence from πηρίς ''pērís'' 'scrotum'. The term was originally understood as a purely male body-part with the perineal raphe seen as a continuation of the scrotal septum since masculinization causes the development of a large anogenital distance in men, in comparison to the corresponding lac ...
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Tuskegee University
Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature. The campus was designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site by the National Park Service in 1974. The university has been home to a number of important African American figures, including scientist George Washington Carver and World War II's Tuskegee Airmen. Tuskegee University offers 43 bachelor's degree programs, including a five-year accredited professional degree program in architecture, 17 master's degree programs, and five doctoral degree programs, including the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Tuskegee is home to nearly 3,000 students from around the U.S. and over 30 countries. Tuskegee's campus was designed by architect Robert Robinson Taylor, the first African-American to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in ...
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Margaret Charles Smith
Margaret Charles Smith (September 12, 1906–November 12, 2004) was an African-American midwife, who became known for her extraordinary skill over a long career, spanning over thirty years. Despite working primarily in rural areas with women who were often in poor health, she lost very few of the more than 3000 babies she delivered, and none of the mothers in childbirth. In 1949, she became one of the first official midwives in Green County, Alabama, and she was still practicing in 1976, when the state passed a law outlawing traditional midwifery. In the 1990s, she cowrote a book about her career, ''Listen to Me Good: The Life Story of an Alabama Midwife'', and in 2010 she was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame. Early life Margaret Charles Smith was Born in Eutaw, Alabama on September 12, 1906. About 3 weeks after Smith's birth however, her mother Beulah Sanders, passed away. After the death of her mother, Smith was raised by her grandparents on their farm in Eut ...
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