How to Become Mother-Friendly: Policies and Procedures for Hospitals, Birth Centers, and Home Birth Services

Abstract

HOW TO BECOME MOTHER-FRIENDLY: POLICIES AND PROCEDURES FOR HOSPITALS, BIRTH CENTERS, AND HOME BIRTH SERVICES Barbara Hotelling and Helen Gordon, Editors New York: Springer Publishing Compan y, 2014, 184 pp., $75.00 (paperback)The Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative (MFCI) is the first and only consensus document on maternity care in the United States. It was originally published in 1997 by the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS), composed of more than 26 organizations that focused on perinatal health. CIMS intended to promote maternity care, which improves birth outcomes and reduces the costs of maternity care. The MFCI consisted of 10 evidence-based steps for birth facilities to deliver motherfriendly health care.Hotelling and Gordon's book, How to Become Mother-Friendly: Policies and Procedures for Hospitals, Birth Centers, and Home Birth Services, translates the steps of MFCI into discrete policies and procedures applicable to the environment of birth facilities. I outline the policies and procedures for each of the steps.* Step 1 ; A mother-friendly hospital, birth center, or home birth service offers all birthing mothers unrestricted access to birth companions, labor support, and professional midwifery care.* Step 2: A mother-friendly hospital, birth center, or home birth service provides accurate descriptive and statistical information to the public about the practices and procedures for birth, including measures of intervention and outcomes.* Step 3: A mother-friendly hospital, birth center, or home birth service provides culturally competent care; that is, care that is sensitive and responsive to the specific beliefs, values, and customs of the mother's ethnicity and religion.* Step 4: A mother-friendly hospital, birth center, or home birth service provides the birthing woman with the freedom to walk, move about, and assume the positions of her choice during labor and birth (unless restriction is specifically required to correct a complication), and discourages the use of the lithotomy (flat on back with legs elevated) position.* Step 5: A mother-friendly hospital, birth center, or home birth service has clearly defined policies and procedures for collaborating and consulting with other maternity services and linking the mother and baby to appropriate community resources during both the prenatal and postpartum periods.* Step 6: A mother-friendly hospital, birth center, or home birth service does not routinely employ practices and procedures that are unsupported by scientific evidence.* Step 7: A mother-friendly hospital, birth center, or home birth service educates staff in nondrug methods of pain relief, and does not promote the use of analgesic or anesthetic drugs not specifically required to correct a complication.* Step 8: A mother-friendly hospital, birth center, or home birth service encourages all mothers and families, including those with sick or premature newborns or infants with congenital problems, to touch, hold, breastfeed, and care for their babies to the extent compatible with their conditions.* Step 9: A mother-friendly hospital, birth center, or home birth service discourages nonreligious circumcision of the newborn. …