Car Mechanic Dreams Up a Tool to Ease Births

There is a line or argument that intervention is a self-reinforcing cycle, in that the initial intervention raises stress levels in the mother, which promotes a fight-or-flight response, which causes the birth process to regress, which increases the likelihood of more intervention, and so on. This isn't to say intervention should be avoided, but only do it if it is necessary, since it does have consequences.

Source: Doulas, certification info at: http://www.icea.org/content/doula-certification

[edit] Part of it is that the patriarchal doctor wants to be "in charge" of the situation and treat childbirth like some kind of medical operation.

(This is not to say that modern medicine saves many children's and mother's lives. A modern, optimal, approach is to have a traditional birth with ready access to a hospital for a c-section, etc if necessary.)

Every scientific advancement must be preceded by a time when that advancement was not known or known but not used, no matter the age of the field.

Yes. Perhaps not all medical people personally, but as an institution, the medical field totally did.

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Expecting-Better-Conventional-Pregnanc...

i.e. The traditional methods are occasionally acknowledged but rarely adopted.

The story of the forceps is both extraordinary and disturbing, because it is the story of a life-saving idea that was kept secret for more than a century. The instrument was developed in the seventeenth century by Peter Chamberlen (1560-1631), the first of a long line of French Huguenots who delivered babies in London. It looked like a pair of big metal salad tongs, with two blades shaped to fit snugly around a baby’s head and handles that locked together with a single screw in the middle. It let doctors more or less yank stuck babies out and, carefully applied, was the first technique that could save both the baby and the mother. The Chamberlens knew that they were onto something, and they resolved to keep the device a family secret. Whenever they were called in to help a mother in obstructed labor, they ushered everyone else out of the room and covered the mother’s lower half with a sheet or a blanket so that even she couldn’t see what was going on. They kept the secret of the forceps for three generations. In 1670, Hugh Chamberlen, in the third generation, tried and failed to sell it to the French government. Late in his life, he divulged it to an Amsterdam-based surgeon, Roger van Roonhuysen, who kept the technique within his own family for sixty more years. The secret did not get out until the mid-eighteenth century.

Bad jokes aside, an opera was recently written (and performed - as part of the Ig Nobel ceremony!) about this device and its inventor, titled "The Blonsky Device".

http://www.henryakona.com/the_blonsky_device.html

"Do you think that's air you're breathing now?..."

As it turned out, this doctor some work delivering babies in Africa in third-world conditions, and only low-tech solutions were available. Things that American hospitals aren't fond of, like having mom stand up and move around, eat and drink to keep her strength up, and finding a birthing position comfortable for the mom, like squatting, hands and knees, whatever her body is telling her to do.

This device is better than forceps only that it is less likely to crush a skull, but it still carries a risk of breaking baby's neck.

On top of this, your criticism is not even valid. Let me explain why.

You clearly have never given birth with or even assisted in an obstructed delivery? Corks, prototypes, and dummies are not made to fit as tight as an obstructed birth canal and do not even try to replicate this scenario.

If you've read the article carefully, and paid attention to the details you would know the live births used are no evidence that his will work when it is actually needed.

>So far, the device has been safety-tested only on 30 Argentine women, all of whom were in hospitals, had given birth before and were in normal labor.

So the diameter of these women's birth canals were far larger than typical obstructed ones because they had given birth before. They also were in normal labor. There would be far more room available to use this device when it is not actually needed. Try shoving something like this down and around a curved surface with an obstruction preventing it's passage. The material would have to be very stiff, but to curve properly around the head and face, it would have to be very flexible. These things are mutually exclusive. Even if you managed to get it worked into place eventually (without it folding over someplace) it would take a fairly long period of time to work it into place. Suction is very quick to attach and is often used when that baby is already in distress (needs to come out in a hurry).

Here are some more reasons this won't work.

Sizing. Babies craniums are vastly different sizes. Either they will need 8 sized of these hanging on the wall, or the inflation part will have to allow for dramatic size differences. If there is only one size, and the baby's head is small, you are increasing the size of the object that needs to pass through the canal by a large margin (Actually adding to the problem). I suppose that big hospitals could have 8 sizes of these on hand, but not third world midwives.

If there is enough room for this thing to fit on, there is enough room for the Dr or midwife to just use their hands. This is far better anyway as they will have far more tactile feel.