The new "natural" Cesarean

The surgeon gives the nod: it's time. The drape across the patient's abdomen is lowered and her head is raised. Her eyes widen as she and her husband watch their baby, tiny and pink with a mop of black hair, being gently delivered from her. There is a moment of collective awe before the newborn's cry fills the air. “It's a boy!” his mother gasps, before enveloping him in a warm hug.

This mother has just had a “natural Caesarean”, a revolutionary technique that attempts to turn one of the world's most common operations into an experience closer to vaginal birth. The idea was conceived by Professor Nicholas Fisk in response to the rising numbers of Caesareans in the UK.

His team concentrated on three areas. First, parental involvement: this meant dropping the drape that “divorced” the mother from her abdomen, to allow her to see her baby's head emerge; the baby itself blocks the mother's view of the operation.

The second point was physiological: Fisk showed that when a Caesarean is performed slowly the baby is able to “autoresuscitate” - start breathing unaided - while still attached to the placenta, as in normal birth. The baby is “half-delivered” and a combination of the naturally contracting uterus and the baby's vigorous wriggles allow the lungs to expel fluid in a similar way to a vaginal birth. This reduces the risk of the baby needing help to breathe; a common occurrence after a Caesarean.

Finally, Fisk wanted to see newborns handed immediately to their mother for skin-to-skin bonding. “There are now official standards for skin-to-skin bonding in childbirth, but these are almost never met with Caesareans,” he says. One obstruction is that the monitoring equipment needed for patients in surgery is routinely attached to the mother's chest. “In a natural Caesarean we attach the ECG wires to the back of the chest so that the baby can be placed on the mother after birth,” Plaat says. The anaesthetic dose is lowered so that there is no “heaviness in the arms” to prevent holding the baby, and a clip that measures oxygen in the blood is attached to the toe.

Smith, whose book Your Baby, Your Body, Your Birth advocates a softer general approach to birth, adds: “And while keeping both mother and baby safe, we focus on the fact that this is a birth. We bring in the elements of normal birth: the mother can see her baby's sex at the same time as the operating team. The father can perform a second ‘cutting of the cord' and the midwife can show him where to clamp it. It is entirely different from the experience parents have had before.”

The procedure is unsuitable for babies who are in the breech position, or when the baby or mother, or both, are in danger, or for premature babies whose lungs are not mature.

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Baby Mix-Up, Moms Forced To Swap Toddler Sons

Two mothers in Russia have been forced to swap their two-year-old sons after DNA tests revealed the children had been mixed up as newborns by a careless nurse.

The error was uncovered when one of the mothers, Anna Androsova, discovered her son's maternity ward ID tag actually had the mother's name Zarema Taisumova on it.

Ms Androsova tracked down the Chechen woman, saw the blue-eyed boy and declared: "This is my son."

But Ms Taisumova refused to swap the children, dismissing the claims of physical resemblance.

The hospital in the city of Mtsensk in central Russia ordered DNA tests which came back with definitive results - the boys had been mixed up.

Ms Androsova initially pleaded with her family to keep Nikita, the boy she had raised for two years as her own.But she later decided to pursue the exchange through the court.

Weeks after the switch, Ms Taisumova was still deep in shock, interviewed on Russian television with her biological son playing on her lap.

She has changed her dark-haired and brown-eyed biological son's name from Nikita to Ali, but said she would continue to love the other little boy whom she had named Adlan.

Both children are reportedly struggling to adapt to their new families.

The maternity ward has blamed the error on a lack of staff, explaining only two nurses were caring for 20 newborns.

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Carrie-Anne Moss Is Expecting Again!

Carrie-Anne Moss is expecting her third child! The low-profile Matrix star was seen out with her two young sons in Santa Monica, CA on Wednesday. Dad is Carrie-Anne’s husband, fellow actor Steven Roy. To protect her family’s privacy, Moss has revealed only that her older son is named Owen and that he was born at the end of 2003. Her youngest son is believed to be named either Jaden or Brooke. He is said to be born in November 2005.

The Canadian actress is so private we didn’t even know she was expecting again! She looks great!

The 41-year-old Vancouver actress has two movies set for release this year: Love Hurts and Unthinkable.

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Pregnant woman kicked out of pub

A pregnant woman was recently refused a drink at a pub in England and then asked to leave by staff who said they were protecting her unborn child.

Caroline Williams, 26, was with her husband and some friends at the Cricketer pub in Hove, East Sussex. "I was on a rare night out with some friends," Williams told the Daily Mail. "I had a pint of lager and a friend offered to get me another half--that was going to be my limit. He was refused service because it was for me and when I later took a sip from another friend's glass the assistant manageress asked me and my friends to leave."

This story might surprise some U.S. women. Here, we often point to the habits of European women who legendarily drink wine, eat raw-milk cheese, and gulp Guinness to improve breast milk production, as justification for our own choices in pregnancy. But actually more European countries are adopting (or at least trying to adopt) the American stance of abstinence. In 2007, the British government ruled against even occasional consumption during pregnancy; now American-style warning labels are slapped onto all alcohol bottles. Same thing happened in France. And in Ireland they're considering similar legislation and introducing a public awareness campaign against drinking during pregnancy.

Why the change in attitude? Mainly the countries were seeing increases in fetal alcohol syndrome. The National Organization for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome UK estimated that more than 6,000 children were born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder each year.

That said, in October 2008, a large-scale British study was published showing no link between having the occasional drink during pregnancy and behavioral problems in the child. And Europeans are still swilling much more wine than American women. Some 55 per cent of women in the UK admit to drinking alcohol while pregnant and 52 percent of French women indulge. In Ireland the number is even higher at an estimated 66 percent. In America, only 12 percent of pregnant women report any alcohol use.

Was the British pub right in kicking out pregnant Caroline Williams?

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