Amazing Article - A Must Read

http://www.missingangelsbill.org/news/20031113.html

The article talks mostly about the Canadian health statistics regarding stillbirth... but then towards the end it mentions umbilical cord complications. This is what happened with William. I can even remember him 'thrashing around' a week or so before he was born. I read all of the research done by the Pregnancy Institute after William was born. And I was amazed that this information is not mainstream. Most doctors have no idea that so many deaths can be prevented.

Dr. Jason Collins, a controversial New Orleans obstetrician and president of the Pregnancy Institute, a medical research firm, believes up to 25% of stillbirths are caused by umbilical cord accidents.When women sleep, their blood pressure falls, lowering blood flow and oxygen to the baby. This can cause babies to thrash around, entangling them in the umbilical cord. But because most people are asleep between midnight and 6 a.m. they don't notice, says Dr. Collins, and that's when most babies die.

And that's a solvable problem."Most of these stillbirths, I firmly believe they're mechanical," says Dr. Collins."They're not caused by infections, they're not chromosomal. Because when they do the autopsy, they don't find anything."The reason is because when the baby is born, you pull the puzzle apart. When the baby is born you pull all the loops and positions away from where they were. And if you haven't done ultrasound prior to that, you're not going to see that."

Dr. Collins believes mothers who are 36-weeks pregnant should be given fetal monitors to keep track of their babies' heartbeats at night. If a baby goes into distress, the mother should simply get up and walk around, which would increase blood flow through the umbilical cord.

However, many doctors disagree with this theory. They say many healthy babies are born with knots in the umbilical cord. But there is universal agreement that fetal monitoring of babies whose movements have slowed down can save lives, often by doing an emergency Cesarean section.

"We don't have many stillbirths when we're monitoring [the mother] carefully, although we still have them," says Dr. Walker of the Ottawa Hospital. "The ones that you get broadsided by are the ones where you have a perfectly healthy couple, they get to 38 weeks and have decreasing movement and then the baby's dead."