The trouble is of course, that Midwifery is in crisis because maternity care Is insanely medicalised and there aren’t enough Midwives to manage the complexity & drama brought about by over-medicalisation of the natural process.
https://twitter.com/joseymw/status/1449140499076591620
Governments don’t care to provide the continuity of midwifery programs that we know lead to better outcomes – the evidence is in.For some hard to fathom reason, the number of women emerging from Maternity care traumatised and damaged is ignored
And of course Midwives seeing what’s going on and feeling powerless to stop it are experiencing vicarious trauma.
Those people raising the alarm & trying to change the system are assailed by claims that there are problems with birthing because women are older & fatter these days – the generalities are rubbish because we know all women fare better with continuity of midwifery care
What’s best for women and best for Midwives is relationship based care; Relationship based care is therapeutic!! Women’s reproductive physiology works best when they are listened to, cared about, respected & treated kindly.
The current system undermines women’s autonomy and sense of self; it destroys women’s belief in their ability to give birth without help and induces them to feel and believe that their bodies are defective
The pressure of the conveyor belt style of maternity care means that care becomes perfunctory with a ‘cookie cutter’ approach & women end up feeling unimportant & not listened to
With the conveyor belt style of maternity care, Midwives lose their autonomy and their capacity to individualise care to each woman, and because each woman is an individual, with individual needs wants and desires, Everyone is shortchanged in that deal
Humans have 3 core emotional needs according to John Heron. The 1st need is to love & be loved - to have someone care about you. The 2nd need is to understand & be understood and the 3rd need is to choose & be chosen. None of these needs are satisfied in fragmented care
Evidence is clear that informed decision making & choice is a foundational human right & yet how often does this truly happen in the fragmented maternity care system. It can only happen in relationship based care where there is time to explore the situation & the options
The patriarchal fragmented maternity care system has had its day. Women, their partners and Midwives are becoming more traumatised by what happens to women in that system. It’s time for a massive overhaul & a change to providing care that meets human emotional needs.
We need everyone involved in planning healthcare and government to pay attention and decide that the well-being of the community is worth that change to a better system based on appropriate relationship based care for childbearing women and that’s Midwifery continuity of care
There also needs to be seamless integration of services, so women who do need medical intervention can get it appropriately at the right time and in the right way. We need to change from “too much too soon and too little too late” which plagues the current model
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