Making Sense of Pregnancy: What Experts Want you To Know About Your Body
Have you been surprised by what we do and don't know about pregnancy and birth today? If you are pregnant, or have been in the past, this show helps you understand what's happening (or has happened) to our bodies--both the short term and long term effects of this transformation. We explore the boundaries of our scientific grasp on the wildly complex processes of pregnancy and birth.
After my complicated pregnancies, I went looking for answers and have interviewed hundreds of experts about women's health in this transition.
Every Tuesday you'll hear:
- Scientists at the cutting edge who are trying to uncover how pregnancy and birth work and what happens when they don't work
- Information you could use to better understand your own body in pregnancy
- .A better sense of the limits of your responsibility for what's happening inside your body
- Listen to hear what you won't find on a blogpost or a book off the shelf.
Making Sense of Pregnancy: What Experts Want you To Know About Your Body
How Maternal Health Data Is Saving Lives: A conversation with Dr. Elliot Main
I am both hopeful and moved, AND filled with disbelief after my conversation with today's guest.
He is an OB who has done an inordinate amount of work to make birth safer first for Californians, then for women across the country. His work, which you'll hear about and be able to use in your own pregnancy, is inspiring.
What I can't get my head around is the state of maternity care he set out to change in 2006, some of which remains unchanged.
Does it make sense that you don't really know the quality of care you'll get at your birth because hospitals didn't keep track of their health outcomes in a useable way?
Does it make sense that C section rates vary widely between hospitals?
No dear listener, it does not.
We talk about the importance of data being collected and quickly disseminated so that hospitals actually know the quality of their maternal care and can compare their care with the care neighboring, and what should be competing hospitals, do, and you, too, as the consumer, can get a better handle on what you are walking into when you pick a hospital in which to give birth.