CPMs are the solution
I am a home birth mother (and grandmother) and a midwife serving central Maine for 31 years. My title of Certified Professional Midwife is a national credential issued by the North American Registry of Midwives, accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies. There are more than 1,300 CPMs in the U.S., licensed in many states including New Hampshire.
As the experts in out-of-hospital birth and the only professionals attending home births in Maine, we are trained and equipped to care for families who choose home birth as well as those who need help in emergencies as part of comprehensive disaster plans. The bill to license CPMs in Maine passed the House, 85-55. The more political Senate was heavily lobbied, resulting in the nays of a dozen people denying Maine families a licensed home birth professional.
I appreciate the support of Gordon Smith and the MMA in passing an alternate bill enabling CPMs in Maine to carry and dispense emergency medications in midwifery practice, providing more safeguards for home birth families.
All studies of CPM-attended home births compared to hospital births show no difference in safety for mothers or babies, while the incidence of unnecessary intervention, surgery and infection is significantly lower for comparable populations choosing home birth. MACPM.org has information on CPMs and links to studies. The costs and dangers of a 33 percent C-section rate pose unacceptable risks to the American public. CPMs are part of the solution, not the problem.
Jill Breen
St. Albans
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Back in the USSR
Banning cell phone use in vehicles is going to the extreme. No doubt there may have been cases in which their use was such a distraction that it caused an accident. That is unfortunate, but I think things are being carried to the point of a dictatorship.
I use a hands-free device to answer my phone when out on calls and it is part of my business. But now, like many other things that are being taken away because of a few that have no common sense. These people have it glued to their ear all the time, and yes this is a distraction, but one that should be defined a little better.
The next thing you know people will be banned from walking down the street and using their cell phones. It is almost like back in the USSR I thought I lived in the land of the free, but it doesn’t appear this way because some bureaucrat has to be a goody-two-shoes. What will be next?
Stephen Smith
Milo
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Vote Deane in Brewer
Have you seen the local budget? Do you know what it is like to pick up a half-frozen homeless person in your arms? How about the mother who had taken an overdose and her 3-year-old child was asleep by her side? Or the professor who lost his family in a fire? The diabetic person who was found dead because she couldn’t get her insulin? Teenagers who give sex for shelter right here in the Bangor-Brewer area.
When you bring this up to our local government they tell you to drop them off in Bangor. Let them deal with it. Like the time I asked our local officials, “Where is the skateboarding equipment that was purchased for the local children?” I was told to send the skateboarders to Bangor! It reminds me of the paddy wagon that used to pick up the less fortunate when I was a child.
Please get out and vote against the school consolidation on Jan. 27. Help me get elected to the Brewer City Council.
Deborah Deane
Brewer
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Bare breast no big deal
I read with some amusement the hysterical letters concerning the proposed topless coffee shop. Women baring their breasts is not a crime in Maine nor should it be. I remember an incident in Newport where a woman was mowing her lawn topless. The problem was not her exposed breasts but the fools that tied up traffic to gawk at her.
I do not know how bare breasts equate with prostitution and the whole list of crimes that are supposed to follow women with bare breasts. I think people should just move along if they don’t like seeing a woman with no top on. I know I would not waste the time.
Gregory Boober Sr.
Eddington
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Cool hot lunch
I thoroughly enjoyed the article, “The coolest hot lunch” (BDN, Jan. 7). During a time when most front page news tends to be rather dismal, it was pleasurable to learn about Mount Desert Elementary School’s healthful lunch initiative, and how it engages kindergarten through eighth-grade students in such a fun way. Because the program integrates classroom education, physical education and food service, it promises to benefit children for the rest of their lives.
It was especially inspiring to read about the efforts of Dr. Jonathan Fanburg, who devotes so much of his time and energy outside of his position as a pediatrician to become positively involved in the community and meet with parents, youth, and school staff.
This initiative also helps our agricultural economy by incorporating locally produced foods in the school menus. What a wonderful example of a communitywide project in Hancock County!
Christopher Huh
Fletchers Landing Township
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Molly Ivins’ mantle
I have to admit I had never read Pat LaMarche’s column until Jan. 14, because who could possibly replace Molly Ivins!
When I saw the title of her article, “Relief in air for Bush’s final days,” I had to read it. Now I wonder how many great insightful articles I have missed.
Gwen Marshall
Cross Lake
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Stabilize milk prices
This is a response to the recent “State’s milk prices plunge” article, which I found shocking. I am a granddaughter of a first-generation farmer in Hermon and a high school senior and I have already been accepted to a college, and plan to come back home and continue working on our family farm. I have a great concern for my future in the dairy industry.
Although the milk prices in the store have been continually rising, farmers are only getting a mere $1.10 out of the $5 milk price that everyone else is paying. Anyone who agrees that it is good that the milk price should go down should definitely think about what they are saying because this catastrophe will ruin the farming industry in Maine.
“Now is the time for a change. The dairy farmer needs a more stable price of our product that we can count on every month and continue in our business,” says my grandmother. With this news, we will now have worry about how we are going to pay for vet bills, grain, trucking of milk and many other expenses.
We have the safest food chain in the world; do we want other countries to provide our dairy products? We need to think about this.
Devon D. Dekoschak
Hermon