We signed up for Consumer Reports when we bought our fixer-upper in 2007. They are the ultimate in evaluating performance  so that consumers get the most reliable product for what they are able to spend. It was great when we had to replace several major appliances last year.

Now they’ve turned their eye toward how we give birth here in the US.  What they concluded was that we overuse high-tech intervention like Electronic Fetal Monitoring and cesarean section and underuse low-tech non-invasive measures like warm baths and early skin-to-skin contact with mother and baby.

Consumer reports based its assessment on a paper published by Childbirth Connection. I have a copy of the paper, and it is an excellent evaluation of what the research shows to be best practices in maternity care. You can get a free copy of their report here.  If you don’t want to read the whole thing, you can get the summary on the Consumer Reports Page.  What’s even cooler is that they’ve designed a quiz to see how much you know about maternity care best practices.  Some of the answers go against conventional wisdom (like “once a cesarean always a cesarean”) and may surprise you.

What I love about the Childbirth Connection paper and the Consumer reports page is that they describe what research is showing to have best outcomes for mothers and babies.  And since at last check the US was 29th in the world for infant mortality, we could use all the best practices we can get.