Being in Labor: Get the Facts About Epidurals

Let’s jump right into the questions that many women have about labor epidurals.

Will an epidural slow the progress of my labor?

As of this writing, much of the evidence does not find this to be true. Epidurals have not been found to slow the progress of the first stage of labor. This is defined as the period of regular contractions and cervical dilation, that ends when the cervix is fully dilated. The second stage of labor has been found to be about 15 minutes longer in women with epidurals. This is the “pushing” stage that begins with full cervical dilation and ends with the delivery of the baby.

Will an epidural increase the chances of a forceps delivery or make me more likely to have to deliver via C/S?

The literature has also NOT found this to be true.

Epidurals have also been found to be the most effective method for pain relief during labor. This view is shared by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. With an epidural in place, the mother requires significantly less, or no, IV pain medicine. Babies tend to be born less drowsy in these cases.

How about any adverse effects?

Epidurals are associated with a slight temperature increase for the mother. It’s important to note that they are NOT associated with increased rates of infection, for the mom or the baby. There are several reasons why this temperature increase happens with an epidural, but this is not an infection.

Epidurals cause a sympathectomy, which can result in a drop in blood pressure. Your blood pressure will be monitored regularly once an epidural is placed, and your anesthesiologist will treat any unsafe decrease.

Epidurals can be associated with a specific kind of headache, called a post dural puncture headache. This occurs about 1% of the time. The headache worsens on standing and gets more tolerable when lying flat. Treatment includes hydration, caffeine, and an epidural blood patch.

Another great fear is that of nerve damage. Many women are afraid of becoming permanently paralyzed from the epidural. Data tells us that nerve injuries related to epidurals occur somewhere between 0.08% and 0.92% of the time. The symptoms usually last less than two months and there is complete recovery in almost all cases. While you can never say the risk is zero, it is extremely rare to have any permanent nerve damage from epidurals.

There is, unfortunately, also a chance that the epidural may not work as well as we’d like. Your anesthesiologist will troubleshoot the epidural and may offer to replace it. Some things that make epidural placement more difficult include: scoliosis, a history of lower back surgery, and obesity.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of labor epidurals. Your anesthesiologist will review your medical history and, if you are a candidate for an epidural, will talk to you about the risks, benefits, and alternatives.

Armed with this information, you will be able …

Strategies for Reducing Warehouse Costs

Over the past decade as labor rates have increased an average of $5.50 to $10.50 per direct labor hour and orders processed per full-time warehouse worker have remained flat, the dollars of sales processed per warehouse sq. ft. have declined and the $64,000 question on many business owners’ minds is how to boost warehouse productivity. Here are some tips to make your warehouse more productive.

Start with a warehouse audit to measure your current warehouse productivity and other patterns and trends. An audit enables you to do internal and external comparisons. With the data you gather from this comparison, you can devise an action plan for improvement. Some companies opt to contract with an independent third party to conduct an audit for an unbiased opinion. Use your audit to evaluate your operation against a set of internal expectations and external, industry recognized practices. Measuring labor, facilities, systems and workflow procedures allows you to see the current state of your warehouse so you can set realistic goals and the course of action you want to take to accomplish them.

The goal of any warehouse should be to boost the amount of products stored. Powered conveyor placement, multilevel order-picking, mezzanines and racking should be configured to increase your facility’s efficiency. Adequately utilizing your cubic space is crucial. Use a warehouse management system that supports the min-max and demand-replenishment concepts. There’s nothing more inefficient in a warehouse than an insufficient amount of product when a picker needs it. Maximize unit movement in pick slots by storing at least one week’s average unit movement in areas you designate as hot pick areas for products that move quickly. This will reduce a picker’s time spent walking around looking for products in the warehouse. Bar code technology is a tremendous help when it comes to tracking products and orders and verifying accuracy. By developing an ROI study, bar codes can help to show where potential savings can be gained.

A clean warehouse is an efficiently run warehouse. You can tell a lot about a warehouse from its overall organization and appearance. Warehouse facilities should be designed to maximize flexibility, being as scalable as possible. Everyday merchants change the product profiles they offer. Underestimating future inventory levels can impede operations. Be sure to allocate space for future expansions. A warehouse inventory system that tells you where products are stored in each location and how much of the product is available in each location is essential to warehouse efficiency. Investing in an efficient stock-locator system can save you time and money.

Successful warehouses have devised vendor-compliance programs that define any expectations or specifications they require of every vendor. When vendors fail to comply, shipalones may have to be repacked and result in an increase to your labor costs, vendor bar code labels may not be reusable or readable resulting in an increase to your labor costs or improperly packaged products could actually damage your warehouse. When metrics are used to measure your workers’ …

Why Pallet Flow Racking Solutions For Your Industrial Storage Will Help You

Pallet flow racking solutions for your industrial storage will help you a great deal. To understand this let us take a look at some things. We will first re-examine what a pallet is. We will then re-examine how they are moved and worked with around the warehouse. After we do that it serves as good point to display the major problem that is created by not using these solutions. As we reach closer to the close we will look at the advantages these systems offer. Things like load volume, accessibility and how effectively these systems maximize space utilization will all be covered more in-depth.

As a reader considering these solutions you should be reminded what a pallet is so you know exactly what we are trying to mass store. Believe it or not some people own warehouses and do not know this. Pallets are small square wooden bases that products are stacked onto and then wrapped for storage. Some companies paint pallets for identification purposes. The middle of the pallet is hollow so that different machines can move it.

Several machines are typical in a warehouse environment for moving pallets about. The first is a fork lift. These are usually only used when the pallet is stored above ground level. You will see how this come in handy with racking solutions soon. The pallet jack moves the pallet at ground level. It has wheels and can easily allow a pallet to be pulled around a location.

This is the part where you start to see how pallet flow racking solutions for your industrial storage will help you. Before them the warehouse was usually very crowded. Before the rack and shelving solutions pallets were just dumped at ground level. Since this was the only level at which they could be stored space typically went quick.

You might be wondering just what these types of storage solutions are. They simply provide a solution that lines the walls of the warehouse with row after row or large shelves and racks. They are designed to support the weight of pallets. The volume load can be quite high allowing an extremely large amount of pallets to be stored. The heaviest possible weight loads are typically supported.

The feature of providing easy access is typically provided by these types of storage units. The rows are designed and spaced so that fork lift operators tend to have to problem accessing the areas they need to access. If a unit is particularly tall, ramps can be designed for the forklift operator to simply drive onto in order to get what he needs.

The best possible space utilization is often achieved through these types of systems. Around the warehouse this is a great benefit. With the very tall units many pallets are stored in a very small amount of space. Very large amounts of ground space are then made free as a result. It then becomes very …

Why Natural Labor Induction? Facts That You Should Know

So you have been patiently waiting for forty long weeks to welcome your bundle of joy into the world; your estimated date of delivery came with anticipation – but so far, no baby has made an appearance.  You likely are beginning to wonder if you’ll be pregnant forever and likely worried that your OB will want to induce your labor – which you have heard is dangerous not only for you, but for your baby as well.

You do have options, however. There are natural labor induction methods that can help you bring on labor without invasive medical labor induction that can take away from the experience and possibly harm your baby.

Facts About Medical Labor Induction

Medical induction of labor may be necessary in some rare, emergency situations – but it is important to keep in mind that your body was designed to deliver the baby that you are carrying – and women have been having babies for thousands of years.  Medical induction wasn’t an option for women two hundred years ago – and none of us would be here today if our ancestors couldn’t give birth.  With that in mind, you must be confident in your body’s ability to do what it was designed to do during pregnancy – without the need for medical labor induction whenever possible.  Medical labor induction can be very dangerous. Let’s look first at the drugs that are used in labor induction, which are synthetic forms of hormones that occur naturally in the body.

Pitocin Used To Induce Labor

Pitocin is the most often used drug for inducing labor at the hospital and works by causing extremely intense and painful contractions. Pitocin is usually administered intravenously. The side effects of Pitocin including cramping, stomach pain, nausea, and vomiting.  Mothers whose labors are induced using Pitocin often report irregular heartbeats, dizziness, headache, blurred vision, and swelling.  Some women who are induced with Pitocin develop severe bleeding after childbirth.  The effects for the baby delivered after an induction with Pitocin include irregular heartbeat, bleeding in the eyes, jaundice of the eyes, and seizure.

Cervidil – Another Pharmaceutical Used For Inducing Labor at the Hospital

Cervidil, also known as dinoprostone or prostin E2 are synthetic forms of prostaglandins that come in suppository form.  Once Cervidil suppositories have been inserted, the mother must lay down for a minimum of two hours, which restricts the common movements that help speed along childbirth, like walking.  Many women report finding it difficult to breathe after being administered Cervidil, and complain of tightness in the chest, dizziness, fever, chills, lightheadedness, and diarrhea.

Natural Ways to Induce Labor

Many natural ways to induce labor work more effectively to start the process of childbirth, without the potential negative side effects that are oftentimes experienced with medical labor induction. One of the most popular natural labor inductions is a holistic method known as maternity acupressure.

Maternity acupressure relies on differing amounts of pressure applied to …

Things to Consider When Creating a Layout for a Warehouse Design

In each and every business, warehouses play an important part specifically in a wholesale business. If you’re drained of space, pricing is excessive, productivity is poor, processes aren’t working and you’ve got a disorganized warehouse you’ll be not able to make use of it effectively because mainly you aren’t fully taking advantage of its full space. Warehouses would be the facilities that are utilized to give a proper atmosphere and shelter with regards to storing goods and items in large quantities. Warehouses are made to accommodate the different types of materials, receiving and shipping procedures and connected trucking. Before creating a warehouse design, you need to follow some recommendations. You need to define objectives, collect information, analysis, create plan and lastly implement the plan.

When determining the warehouse design, you need to first have obvious objectives. You ought to determine the disadvantages and what enhancements do you want in the new warehouse. Then you definitely should collect authentic details about the suggested layout style of the warehouse after which do analysis on that. After carrying this out, an agenda ought to be adapted concerning the implementation from the project. The next thing is implementation itself.

The appearance of warehouse space ought to be planned to best accommodate wholesale business service needs and also the items to be handled. Whenever your warehouse capacity reaches its maximum capacity and charges are increasing while service levels aren’t being met, then it is quite natural that you’ll require a larger and better warehouse.

While creating a warehouse for wholesale business, current and future needs ought to be considered because warehouse creating cannot be repeated over and over again. The location of the warehouse should be appropriate for the type of business that one has. It should also be okay for expansion so that the business does not need to find another location it case it needs to expand its stocks and supplies.

And lastly, the warehouse ought to be durable and functional. It should be able to accommodate lots of supplies so that it will be able to help the business in storing their stocks and items. The cost of the production of the warehouse should not be too high. The business owner should make sure that the prices will not be too high. Supervision and management of the business owner is very much needed especially when it comes to spending and procurement.

A warehouse is a vital part of a business that deals with stocks and supplies. If the warehouse is a failure, it will also affect the entire procedures of the business making it possible to fail. This is what a business owner would like to avoid especially if the business is just new. As much as possible, profits are what the business is after and not too much expenses. The right design and layout of the warehouse is needed to achieve smooth operations for the business. If the perfect warehouse …

Keeping the Edge Over Time: Outsourcing and Offshoring

Outsourcing simply means coming in agreement with another specialized group to do the work for your company. If we make it simpler, it’s like deciding for a food delivery for lunch instead of cooking it yourself for your family. Taking it to a wider context means companies in US, for example, outsources people outside from their company to attend to their customers’ feedbacks and problems like call centers answering our complains for the product we bought. With this, reduction of labor cost is the main benefit of outsourcing. The essence of the business and the product quality is maintained since it no longer focuses much on software that is needed for the business, a task being specialized by other groups. It means that for example, if a foodchain’s aim is to provide best breakfast experience to its clients, it will focus more on the food and the service they provide rather than the software needed to register payments and orders. They can outsource a company of software programmers with that expertise. Thus, being able to keep up with their business goal to their clients and gives the business a more competitive edge. Since outsourcing is time-bounded as stated in contract, the company does not concern itself with labor concerns such as termination of employees or behavior of people doing the job.

Offshoring, on the other hand, means getting people outside of the country to do the job for you. Nike, one of the biggest companies on sports apparel, hires people from Asia to make the shoes for them. Companies seek people overseas who proved to be doing the same job at a lesser labor cost making them reach their target sales given a period of time. It has the same benefits to outsourcing, only that, wages for offshore work are much lower.

Although similar in most context, outsourcing and offshoring are two different strategies. The failure of outsourcing is not being able to familiarize much expertise of the specialized group while offshoring fails when the company is unaware of the internal political or economical issues that might affect them. It is not necessary to outsource before offshoring though it is possible to offshore outsource.

The aim to reduce labor cost and increase production has then the trigger for these 2 strategies. The Philippines has been one of the most sought offshoring countries with its high literacy rate among the people and a very good foundation in the English language. Technology is used in its maximum potential to make sure that the strategy is very effective and beneficial for the company.

Offshoring has proved to more humanitarian and beneficial although, there are also issues brought up as business processes evolve constantly over time. “They took away our jobs!” is the most familiar cry since labor is now being offshored elsewhere. But to look at it at a more positive way, offshoring has recognized the skills of other countries. It has generated stable employment …

How to Introduce a Successful Workplace Productivity Improvement Program

Introducing a change like this requires quite a lot of serious thought. There is a perception that increased productivity is achieved at the expense of the workers. In some ways, productivity improvement has got a bad name because of the way previous programs have been introduced. Knowing this in advance is a great advantage. This means that you can preempt problems before they arise.

Introducing the program is probably the hardest part of the whole project, yet it is an essential part of the process. There is no point in plowing ahead without winning the hearts and minds of your staff. The program will only work when the staff support it. Without their support, it will fail dismally. This means that the first part of the productivity improvement program is to win the support of your staff.

One of the ways to introduce productivity improvement is to never use the words productivity improvement. I have found that introducing the concept as a way of working smarter not harder is normally accepted more easily. If you know who carries influence in your workplace, you can start off by having informal discussions with them about making the work easier. This means that when you come to talk to the whole group, you already have the people with the influence on your side.

Too often, productivity improvement programs have been installed as a prescription for work practices by autocratic management techniques. Predictably, these methods failed miserably. This has left an unpleasant legacy which has made it more difficult to introduce productivity improvements at a later date.

It helps if you are in the habit of holding briefing meetings with your staff on a regular basis. This is an excellent forum for introducing ways of working smarter once you have sown the seeds with the influential people. Regular meetings like this also enable you to introduce such things as what sort of feedback is appropriate and the frequency.

These sorts of regular meetings can be used for setting targets, milestones and methods of celebration when they are reached. There are many other benefits from holding regular meetings which include, better communication, less resistance to change, improve teamwork, more innovation, the free exchange of ideas and improved morale.

It also makes sense to use these meetings to remind staff of deadlines, quality issues, safety and external influences on the business such as competition.…