Midwifery is catching

I called a friend Emma yesterday who, at 5 months, is a candidate for being my first follow-through*. She said that she had my name Emma in her diary and had been meaning to call me but due to placenta brain, she had forgotten. She was very open and supportive to the idea of having me Emma as her student Emma even though she Emma sounds like she’s having a huge number of people at her Emma birth, and I was so delighted to hear that she Emma was excited about it!

Then she said hang on - which Emma is this? I said it’s Emma Someone, girlfriend of Osk and friend of Matt and she said oh I thought you were midwifeEmma. I said yes, I was a student midwife and I wasn’t just being vouyeristic about her birth… but she said ah you’re the third year student I saw a while ago. Erm nope, first year…

Turns out, another Emma was the one she was thinking about as her student midwife Emma. She hadn’t heard from her for a while though, and I certainly don’t want to catch her babes if she’s in third year and needing to make catches to finish, so if that studentmidwifeEmma gets back to pregnantEmma then this studentmidwifeEmma won’t be involved but she pregnantEmma was delighted to offer to pimp me out around her child-overrun workplace anyway, so I may yet get someone!

*Follow-through = women whom I follow through ante-natal, interpartum and post-natal to gain my qualifications. I need 30 over 3 years, which mean 5 this semester. As it’s nearly April, that’s 5 I need to recruit in 2 months. Feck. So if anyone knows anyone in Adelaide pregnant at the moment, please let me know! 

There is something burbling around my head at the moment that I want to get out. Something about wanting to be the kind of midwife I imagine and being kicked in the guts to realise that this may not yet happen. Something about wanting to be more of a doula than a midwife (I think that’s the way I think anyway). Something about wanting women to give me a chance to be with them and yet not knowing how to ask. Something about being frustrated that people who aren’t prepared for hardwork, aren’t committed to hardwork and aren’t doing the hardwork are hanging around me in my tutes and classes and generally getting in the way. Something also about me being a generous soul and thinking that it’ll bite me in the arse.

This is all complicated by feelings of being completely overwhelmed, and also having to deal with the real world. Yesterday was a shit of a day involving me having my car written off and ending up in hospital after being in a car accident. It was an accident in the true sense of the word and I counted my toes this morning in the shower to ensure that yes I really did have them still. The accident could have been so much more worse but instead I walked away from it and am only shaken and a lot sore. No idea whether I’ll get my car fixed or paid out as yet, and I’m carless for a while which is a challenge! I’m also really distracted from important things like assessments and group work.

Did I mention how much I detest group work? I hate it with a passion. People don’t play nice in teams and the teams are completely arbitrary, not to mention too big at 7 people. You have people who take over and exclude others, and then whinge that those others don’t contribute. Frustrations at things like assessments that have questions with no right answer available, and unclear instructions on lots of things, and lack of access to resources, and the money, always the money involved in textbooks and travel and conferences and uniforms and such and yet knowing this is wk 4 of 3 years, at least.

Independent midwifery in the UK may have less than a year to live.

All independent midwives have been sent a letter by the Chief Nurse, with the information that the British Government is intending to pass legislation to make professional indemnity insurance (PII) a prerequisite for registration. This is not because of huge claims against independent midwives -the issue actually arose because of 2 claims against uninsured dentists! Although the initial impetus for this legislation arose because of uninsured members of other professions, it will have a far bigger impact on midwives, because there is no PII available to independent midwives here in UK.  This legislation will therefore impose a condition on our practice that it will be impossible to fulfil.  Independent midwives will no longer be able to register as midwives and they will be committing a criminal offence if they continue to offer care to pregnant and birthing mothers.

Up until 1994, all midwives were covered by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) indemnity scheme, regardless of their area of work. However, in 1994 the RCM withdrew insurance cover from independent midwives amidst much controversy, and although there were one or two insurers willing to offer cover at first, the premiums rose to £15,000 per midwife per year and the number of providers fell over the next few years until 5 years ago, the last provider withdrew from this market and since then there has been no insurance available since then. Every midwife practising without insurance therefore has an obligation to make the implications of the situation clear to every client we book. Independent midwives are not happy to be forced to practise without insurance but have had to accept it as the only way to be able to continue to practise.  The Independent Midwives Association (IMA) has continued to campaign publicly and negotiate privately with innumerable insurance providers over the years, all to no avail.

The IMA has also thrown much passion and energy into drafting the NHS Community Midwifery Model, www.onemotheronemidwife.org.uk a case-loading model which provides for one-to-one midwifery care for NHS clients and would provide an ideal framework within which the NHS indemnity scheme could be extended to independent midwives. However, proposals to explore the development of the scheme have so far been rejected by the Government.

The IMA has launched a campaign to fight for the survival of independent midwifery. We are lobbying for the Government either to ensure that affordable indemnity insurance is made available to all midwives, regardless of their area of work, as has been done in other countries, or to exempt independent midwives from the requirement to have PII.  We are seeking to bring the situation to the attention of all midwives, as this will have an impact on every midwife, not just those who currently practise independently or those who practice in the UK as this may ultimately impact across the international midwifery community as insurance cover becomes more costly and unavailable across the world.

If you would like to support the UK independent midwives there are several things you could do

1. Visit www.saveindependentmidwifery.org  and  www.independentmidwives.org.uk for further info.

2. Write letters to NZCOM / ACMI  to ask them to put pressure on the their sister organisation, the RCM, to support the independent midwives and to ask them to once again to look for affordable insurance through their membership (so far the RCM have been deathly quiet and our letters have not prompted any visible action)

3. View, and if you are a UK citizen, sign our petition or ask any friends /family you have in UK to sign it http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/midwives/

On behalf of the independent midwives in UK I thank you for reading this email and we would appreciate any help that you could give us

Louise Wilby
Independent Midwife

Progress at uni will probably be judged by my knitting output. This week, I’ve knit a few balls of a wrap (ideal for the iceboxes lecture theatres) and a tea cozy:

Now I can study with hot tea, rather than the insipid stuff I’ve been forced to drink with a naked tea pot. Funnies this week include having a fellow IBMW student use several words for vagina other than vagina and blush when prompted to use the proper word for it (gina, gine, snatch, box and a few others came up!), and rumour having it that we have to learn Pap smears on each other… I’m yet to get any confirmation of that and while I’m not troubled by it myself as I see the value in learning and would actually prefer to learn on someone who knew what they were in for, rather than women for whom Informed Consent would be a grey area, it’d be nice to have confirmation rather than rumour.

Hoooooo boy is there a LOT of reading in this course. My tute reading the other day - 3 hours solid. Very interesting to read across feminist theory, Aboriginal progress, men in the profession, horizontal violence and such but wow that’s a lot of reading!

I have assignments and placements already which is exciting!!! And I’ve organised some extra things to hopefully get some women to follow-through as soon as we’re able to. It would have been nice to have a meet-and-greet for the mid students during induction last week, and it would be nice to not feel like a lone duck in all of my labs and tutes and such as I’ve managed to organise a rather individual timetable for this semester, but with only 16 contact hours a week spread out over 5 FRICKING DAYS, I can’t really expect it all to be roses, right? Until week 3, I’m only at uni 3 days a week and I have a lot of time to do other things. Like hate the Clipsal car race, dye wool, sweat a lot and spend time with my sweetie.