Welcome to San Diego Birth Network

Changing Birth in San Diego - One Family at a Time

San Diego Birth Network is a group of dedicated professionals that support mothers, babies, and families during the prenatal, birth and postpartum period. Pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period are milestone events in the continuum of life. These experiences profoundly affect women, babies, fathers, and families, and have important and long-lasting effects on society.Our mission is to create a place that allows families the confidence that the professionals listed believe in the normalcy of the birthing process and empower families with knowledge so that they can make educated decisions about their care.

OB Docs: What have we become?

Dr. Chukwuma Onyeije, who bills himself on Twitter as an information-age Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist, wrote a blog post about avoiding an unnecessary cesarean following a Twitter discussion that began with this commentary of CNN’s coverage of Joy Szabo’s recent birth:

In his post, 10 Ways to Avoid an Unnecessary Cesarean, Dr. Onyeije coins the term Physician VBAC Hysteria:

Patient’s trust physicians to make tough calls by virtue of our expertise, training and because they believe that we want what is best for them. My fear is that physicians risk losing the trust and goodwill we have with patients if we steer them away from safe vaginal deliveries toward unnecessary cesarean deliveries for questionable reasons. The current trend towards not offering VBAC may have begun due to concerns regarding safety or even medico-legal exposure; however at present, it has metastasized to inordinate levels that I have referred to as PVH (physician-VBAC-hysteria).

A Doula : The MUST HAVE for Expecting Parents

To put it plainly, having a Doula changed my life - as well as that of my daughter's, even before she arrived. Not exaggerating there. The experience of having a Doula changed my pregnancy, my birth experience, my perspective on advocating for my own medical care and that of my family, my views on work life balance, my perception of myself as a woman, and as a mother.

I grew up in the Midwest, and had pretty mainstream, conservative views when it came to pregnancy and childbirth. That may actually be an overstatement, because it implies I had some extensive viewpoint to begin with. I really didn't. I am NOT a woman who'd had lifelong visions of having babies, and hadn't put a whole lot of thought at ALL into what the process would be like. I was blown away at the prospect of it actually, once it was upon me. One of my dearest friends initially introduced me to the concept during her pregnancy with the ray of sunshine that would become my goddaughter (long before I myself became pregnant). Living in a pretty progressive area, I also wound up with several other close friends, as well as some vague acquaintances, who had used Doulas and had very high recommendations about the process. Curious what all the buzz was about, I investigated.

Circumcision Information for Health Professionals and Parents

The history of medicalized circumcision is a fascinating study in Victorian medicine and anti-sexuality.1 The phenomenon of circumcising boys and girls for pseudomedical reasons was almost exclusively confined to the Englishspeaking world. American pseudomedical circumcision began in 1870 when New York physician Lewis A. Sayre treated a boy for paralysis by amputating his foreskin.2 The operation appeared to succeed. Thereafter circumcision was relentlessly promoted as a necessity for hygiene as well as a treatment for all sorts of illnesses, including masturbation, epilepsy, elephantiasis, insanity, asthma, alcoholism, hernia, premature ejaculation, penile cancer, cervical cancer, and virtually every other identified ailment3