The word gravida, which means a pregnant woman, was one of the most popular "special" words used at the recent international Scrabble contest?
There was a midwife on the Mayflower. History has it that Bridget Lee Fuller attended two births while the ship traveled across the Atlantic Ocean on its quest to bring the pilgrims to the new world.
Mary Breckinridge's uncle was VP under Buchannon and later Secretrary of State for the Confederacy. Mary Breckinridge is the "mother" of nurse-midwifery in the United States.
Midwives are mentioned in the Bible. They were told by the Pharaoh to kill the first born sons of Hebrew women, but in order to protect the mothers and babies, the midwives used the excuse that the women delivered too quickly and without them in attendance..
The births of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were attended by the same midwife, even though she had to travel from Germany to England to "catch" both.
The word midwife in old English means "With Woman".
Armadillos always give birth to identical quadruplets--not singletons, twins, triplets or others.
Rumor has it the mother of Frank Sinatra was a midwife.
In 1990, Laurel Lee Ulrich won a Pulitzer Prize for her book, The Midwife's Tale, which was a discussion of a diary of Martha Ballard, a New England midwife (and also the aunt of Clara Barton who founded the US Red Cross).
In 1998, Oprah Winfrey chose a book about midwives for her book club.
Recent studies by the independent consumer group, Public Citizen (affiliated with Ralph Nader) has reported that a woman can reduce her risk of having a cesarean section birth by receiving care from a Certified Nurse-Midwives. Hospitals reduce their institutional rates by simply having CNMs on staff.
Back in the 1960's a small study was done in California about CNMs. Nurse-Midwives began to work in an area of high perinatal morbidity and mortality. After a few years, the rates had dramatically dropped. Then the federal funds ran out and the CNMs left (although other health care providers, including physicians, came into the area). And the perinatal rates went back up to previous levels within two years.
Women cared for by Certified Nurse Midwives in the United States have a reported 19 times decrease in neonatal deaths.
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