Lake fires back at AMA for childbirth statement

NEW YORK —

Ricki Lake is firing back at physicians groups that have singled her out for bringing attention to at-home childbirth.

The 39-year-old former talk-show host is named in a recent statement by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that says the home is not the safest setting for having a baby.

In her film "The Business of Being Born," a documentary about the maternity care system that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Lake is shown giving birth in the bathtub of her Manhattan apartment to her second son Owen, who turns 7 on Wednesday.

The ACOG statement, supported in a resolution Tuesday by the American Medical Association, said, "There has been much attention in the media by celebrities having home deliveries," citing a "Today Show" headline that read "Ricki Lake takes on the baby birthing industry: Actress and former talk show host shares her at-home delivery in her new film."

"It's scary that both (the ACOG and the AMA) have sort of targeted me," Lake told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "And, you know, I'm all about choice. This is not unlike the abortion issue. I am pro-choice when it comes to childbirth and choices in birth. Home birth was around long before hospitals were taking over - and I just think women need to know (the information) so that they can make the best choice for them."

The AMA resolves in the statement to support state legislation "that helps ensure safe deliveries and healthy babies by acknowledging that the safest setting" is a hospital, connected birthing center or other approved facility.

"There's a lot of provocative things that are said in the film," she said, "but I think it's very clear that we need doctors, we need the care and the technology that we have. But we also need to value the process of giving birth normally."

Lake said she had no problems delivering her oldest son Milo, 11, at the hospital, but "looking back on it, I felt that I did not necessarily need the intervention. I didn't need the (drug Pitocin, which induces labor). I just should have labored on my own."

The second time around, as long as her pregnancy continued to be low-risk, she decided to give birth at home.

"I was empowered, I was transformed and I would love for women to have had that opportunity - to be an active participant in their own birth choices and birth experience," she said.

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Jessica Simpson - Simpson Has Marriage On Her Mind Despite Split Reports

JESSICA SIMPSON is laughing off reports she and boyfriend TONY ROMO have split, suggesting the sports star might be marrying material.

With Dallas Cowboys star Romo in Chicago, Illinois for promotional duties and Simpson working in Los Angeles, rumours are rife the couple has split, but she insists that's not the case.

And, as if to prove a point, the singer/actress admits she has marriage on her mind: "I want to be married and have kids. I have a future ahead."

But she wants to make sure her second trip up the aisle is forever after splitting from her first husband Nick Lachey.

She says, "I don't know about that yet - I've been down that aisle."

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Madonna speaks about pain of adoption

Singer Madonna has spoken about the "painful" struggle that she went through while adopting her son David from Malawi.
Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival, the singer said that she was happy to be a "guinea pig" in the hope of easing future adoptions for other people.
Madonna is currently waiting for a High Court to decide on whether her adoption of David is legal, after claims that it does not conform with international conventions and procedures under the country's law.
"Up until this time there wasn't an adoption law, so consequently I'm sort of the template or the role model, so to speak, for future adoptions," she said.
"Hopefully after we get through this adoption it will be easier for other people to adopt children and I'm happy to be the guinea pig," she said.
The singer was presenting the film 'I Am Because We Are', a documentary about the plight of children in Malawi.
Speaking about her adoption struggle, she said: "Yes it was painful and it was a big struggle and I didn't understand it, but in the end I rationalised that when a woman has a child and goes through natural child birth she suffers an enormous amount."
"So I sort of went through my own kind of birthing pains dealing with the press on my front doorstep and accusing me of kidnapping or whatever you want to call it. In the end it made me stronger so I can't complain."

A Night at the Chinese Opera, Theatre Royal, Glasgow

A Night at the Chinese Opera, Theatre Royal, Glasgow

A tank's gun drum looms into vista in the first few proceedings of Scottish Opera's freshly production of Judith Weir's first opera house, sweeping a porcelain vase to the ground. A Night at the Chinese Opera may be localise in 14th-century provincial Nationalist China when the area was threatened by Kublai Khan, simply, as the matter of fact blending of historical periods and styles in Lee Blakeley's staging (with designs by Jean-Marc Puissant) implies, repression and savagery take in been constants in the country's history. Such concerns, though, ar truly hardly a backcloth to Weir's wry, witty and poisonous nightshade drama, with its neat nesting of i tale, the Chinese opera performed in the instant play, inside another, and whose story lines tellingly converge. Though get-go performed in 1987, this is the work's stage premiere in Weir's native Scotland, and after to a greater extent than 20 days, it is still the perfective tense unification of her text and music that dazzles, with not a gesture wasted.










With Singan Jonathan Edwards conducting, that deadly lucidness is terrifically conveyed. The Scots Opera Orchestra shows how preciously every greenback is, and row make out crosswise so sharply, the English surtitles are to a greater extent than unremarkably redundant. Just the score's economy creates its own problems for a director. Blakeley's knockabout staging of the Chinese opera is deftly hilarious, with Rebekah de Pont Davies outstanding as the leader of the acting troupe. In that location ar approximately alright performances elsewhere, too (Duke of Edinburgh Salmon's alright turns as the watcher world Health Organization overlooks the Mongolian invasion and as a imitation Italian Marco Polo; Fiona Kimm's cameos as a housekeeper and hag), merely the continuity of the outer acts does non constantly register quite neatly as it should.· Farther performances on Saturday, and May 20 & 22. Box office: 0870 060 6647. And then touring.

Cowell: 'New American Idol is best yet'

Cowell: 'New American Idol is best yet'

The new series of American Idol will be one of the best yet, according to producer and judge Simon Cowell.
The singing contest, which airs next Thursday, showcases the best and worst of auditions from across the US in a bid to find just one "Idol".
Cowell dismissed speculation that the show will have less competition in the ratings this year due to the ongoing writers' strike in the US, saying they had discovered "three or four" stars.
He said: "I think three or four of the contestants we've got this year would have gotten recording contracts even without 'Idol'. I think they're that good."
He went on: "We heard a year or so ago that 'Dancing With the Stars' was thinking about going up against us, which I think would be a mistake... So I think we're in the same position as we were last year and the year before.
"The most important thing is that our show has got to look better, it's got to be more fun as a show. And if it is, I think more people will watch."
Cowell also dismissed criticism that American Idol was not as good as it used to be.
"It's an incredible vehicle for people who want to be successful and under normal circumstances can't get a record deal for some reason," he said.
"The idea of Carrie Underwood wandering around without a record deal is staggering.
"You look at shows like 'American Idol' and 'Dancing With the Stars', which I consider to be two of the superbrands, these two shows, in my mind, seem to be getting better over the years."
He went on: "The good news is that this is a much better season than last year ... [it's] one of the strongest years that we've had in a long, long time.
"It's younger, I think the talent is more current, they're more interesting people. So I go into this season a lot more optimistic than I went in last year."




Musical Youth

New Wuthering Heights in the works

New Wuthering Heights in the works

A new