What’s Behind America’s Maternal Death Rate

moncler sale As a neonatal intensive care nurse, Lauren Bloomstein had been taking care of other people’s babies for years. Finally, at 33, she was expecting one of her own. The prospect of becoming a mother made her giddy, her husband, Larry, recalled recently “the happiest and most alive I’d ever seen her.” moncler sale

cheap moncler jackets When Lauren was 13, her own mother had died of a massive heart attack. The chance to create moncler outlet sale her own family Moncler Outlet, to be the mother she didn’t have, touched a place deep inside her. cheap moncler jackets

moncler outlet jackets “All she wanted to do was be loved,” said Frankie Hedges, who took Lauren in as a teenager and thought of her as her daughter. “I think everybody loved her, but nobody loved her the way she wanted to be loved.” moncler outlet jackets

Other than some nausea in her first cheap moncler trimester, the pregnancy went smoothly. Lauren was “tired in the beginning, achy in the end,” said Jackie Ennis, her best friend since high school, who talked to her at least once a day. “She gained what she’s supposed to. She looked great, she felt good, she worked as much as she could” at least three, 12 hour shifts a week until late into her ninth month. Larry, a doctor, helped monitor her blood pressure at home, and all was normal.

On her days off she got organized, picking out strollers and car seats, stocking up on diapers and onesies. Lauren wanted the baby’s gender to be a surprise, so when she set up the nursery she left the walls unpainted she figured she’d have plenty of time to choose colors later. Despite all she knew about what could go wrong, she seemed untroubled by the normal expectant mom anxieties. Her only real worry was going into labor prematurely. “You have to stay in there at least until 32 weeks,” she would tell her belly. “I see how the babies do before 32. Just don’t come out too soon.”

When she reached 39 weeks and six days moncler mens jackets Friday, Sept. 30, 2011 Larry and Lauren drove to Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, the hospital where the two of them had met in 2004 and where she’d spent virtually her entire career. If anyone would watch out for her and her baby, Lauren figured, it would be the doctors and nurses she worked with on a daily basis. She was especially fond of her obstetrician/gynecologist, who had trained as a resident at Monmouth at the same time as Larry. Lauren wasn’t having contractions, but she and the ob/gyn agreed to schedule an induction of labor he was on call that weekend and would be sure to handle the delivery himself.

moncler outlet store Inductions often go slowly, and Lauren’s labor stretched well into monlcer down jackets the next day. Ennis talked to her on the phone several times: “She said she was feeling OK, she was just really uncomfortable.” At one point, Lauren was overcome by a sudden, sharp pain in her back near her kidneys or liver, but the nurses bumped up her epidural and the stabbing stopped. moncler outlet store

Inductions have been associated with higher cesarean section rates, but Lauren progressed well cheap moncler sale enough to deliver vaginally. On Saturday, Oct. Larry and Lauren’s family had been camped out in the waiting room; now they swarmed into the delivery area to ooh and aah, marveling moncler sale outlet at how Lauren seemed to glow.

moncler outlet sale Larry floated around on his own cloud of euphoria, phone camera in hand. In one 35 second video, Lauren holds their daughter on her chest, stroking her cheek with a practiced touch. Hailey is bundled in hospital issued pastels and flannel, unusually alert for a newborn; she studies her mother’s face as if trying to make sense of a mystery that will never be solved. The delivery room staff bustles in the background in the low key way of cheap moncler outlet people who believe everything has gone exactly as it’s supposed to. moncler outlet sale

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moncler factory outlet American women are more than three times as likely as Canadian women to die in the maternal period (defined by the Centers for Disease Control as the start of pregnancy to one year after delivery or termination), six times as likely to die as Scandinavians. In a recent analysis by the CDC Foundation, nearly 60 percent of such deaths are preventable. ProPublica and NPR spent the last several months scouring social media and other sources, ultimately identifying more than 450 expectant and new mothers who have died since 2011. moncler factory outlet

cheap moncler jackets sale The list includes teachers, insurance brokers, homeless women, journalists, a spokeswoman for Yellowstone National Park, a co founder of the YouTube channel WhatsUpMoms, and more than a dozen doctors and nurses like Lauren Bloomstein. They died from cardiomyopathy and other heart problems, massive hemorrhage, blood clots, infections and pregnancy induced hypertension (preeclampsia) as well as rarer causes. Many died days or weeks after leaving the hospital. Maternal mortality is commonplace enough that three new mothers who died https://www.moncleronlineoutlet.com , including Lauren, were cared for by the same ob/gyn. are moncler outlet online manifold. New mothers are older than they used to be, with more complex medical histories. are unplanned, so many women don’t address chronic health issues beforehand. Greater prevalence of C sections leads to more life threatening complications. The fragmented health system makes it harder for new mothers, especially those without good insurance, to get the care they need. Confusion about how to recognize worrisome symptoms and treat obstetric emergencies makes caregivers more prone to error. maternal mortality numbers contrast sharply with the impressive progress in saving babies’ lives. Infant mortality has fallen cheap moncler coats to its lowest point in history, the CDC reports, reflecting 50 years of efforts by the public health community to prevent birth defects, reduce preterm birth, and improve outcomes for very premature infants. about 23,000 in 2014 still greatly exceeds the number of expectant and new mothers who die, but the ratio is narrowing. cheap moncler jackets sale

The divergent trends for mothers and babies highlight a theme that has emerged repeatedly in ProPublica’s and NPR’s reporting. In recent decades, under the assumption that it had conquered maternal mortality, the American medical system has focused more on fetal and infant safety and survival than on the mother’s health and well being.

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moncler outlet online More American women are dying of pregnancy related complications than any other developed country. has the rate of women who die been rising. There’s a hodgepodge of hospital protocols for dealing with potentially fatal complications, allowing for treatable complications to become lethal. Hospitals including those with intensive care units for newborns can be woefully unprepared for a maternal emergency. Federal and state funding show only 6 percent of block grants for “maternal and child health” actually go to the health of mothers. Read more from Propublica. moncler outlet online

“We worry a lot about vulnerable little babies,” said Barbara Levy, vice president for health policy/advocacy at the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and a member of the Council on Patient Safety in Women’s Health Care.

moncler outlet uk Under the Title V federal state program supporting maternal and child health, states devoted about 6 percent of block grants in 2016 to programs for mothers, compared to 78 percent for infants and special needs children. The notion that babies deserve more care than mothers is similarly enshrined in the Medicaid program, moncler outlet which pays for about 45 percent of births. In cheap moncler jackets many states, the program covers moms for 60 days postpartum, their infants for a full year. House of Representatives earlier this month, could gut Medicaid for mothers and babies alike. moncler outlet uk

cheap moncler outlet At the provider level, advances in technology have widened the gap between maternal and fetal and infant care. “People became really enchanted with the ability to do ultrasound, and then high resolution ultrasound, to do invasive procedures, to stick needles in the amniotic cavity,” said William Callaghan chief of the CDC’s Maternal and Infant Health Branch. cheap moncler outlet

The growing specialty of maternal fetal medicine drifted so far toward care of the fetus that as recently as 2012, young doctors who wanted to work in the field didn’t have to spend time learning to care for birthing mothers. “There were some fellows that could finish their maternal fetal medicine training without ever being in a labor and delivery unit.”

moncler outlet In regular maternity wards, too, babies are monitored more closely than mothers during and after birth, maternal health advocates told ProPublica and NPR. Newborns in the slightest danger are buy moncler jackets whisked off to neonatal intensive care units like the one Lauren Bloomstein worked at, staffed by highly trained specialists ready for the worst, while their mothers are tended by nurses and doctors who expect things to be fine and are often unprepared when they aren’t. moncler outlet

cheap moncler coats When women are discharged, they routinely receive information about how to breast feed and what to do if their newborn is sick but not necessarily how to tell if they need medical attention themselves. “It was only when I had my own child that I realized, ‘Oh my goodness. That was completely insufficient information,'” said Elizabeth Howell, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City cheap moncler coats.