Midwifery is catching

Tonight was the first night of the independent midwifery workshops that I am attending. While they have been organised by a student I know, they are being workshoppped by a a total of five independant midwives. There were 16 attendees tonight I think and it was a mix of students (lots of students actually - from both universities as well as across first, second and third year) and midwives who were practising in a number of hospitals here in Adelaide.

Points to come out of tonight:

• Firstly, I am not just a midwife. I am a woman. I am a lot of things. I am not defined by what I do and shouldn’t be. That needs to carry over into my life and so, as of tonight, I am going to be more open about who I am on here beyond being a student and midwife, and also I am going to consolidate the two blogs that I have (see, I bet you didn’t even know I have another blog) and marry the two of them up. I’ll post a big "who am I" post immediately after this one, that will publish in a few days.
• That midwives are not the adjudicators of birth. They are the facilitators and cannot, should not, must not hold judgement over births. I wrote recently:
  
  My experience on placement was that I have a strong belief in this aspect of woman-centred care which as a student I did not feel confident in sharing in a group situation but which I felt able to carry through my care of women. I did observe a number of situations where a woman, on making an informed decision about the care of herself during pregnancy, or the care of her new baby, was not respected for this decision and the impression given was that, because she was not agreeing with the advice given, she was not making the “right” decision despite it being an informed one.

  I sought guidance from a midwife about how I could handle this in my own professional practice, and was advised to briefly document the discussion, and the decision the woman made, and move on without revisiting the issue. This, the midwife suggested and I agree, would foster mutual respect and trust between any midwife and her client, rather than implying that because the woman did not agree with the midwife’s position she had made the “wrong” decision.

  Which is what I truly believe, and it was a comment made tonight, along the lines of, if a woman makes a decision in the face of evidence, that you believe is not the best one, will you still support it? That goes both ways - in the system, and in homebirth.

• The universe really does make a path for you, if you’re meant to do something. I am yet to miss a birth because I am working, for example. The one birth I have missed, I wasn’t called for a very quick labour and birth but was told the next day. So I need to sit back and let each day come as it will. It’s very easy to get caught up in my diary and freak out at how I am going to juggle everything when women are due to birth. But - and this is me hitting second year I think - each day comes as it will, the curves in the path of life can’t be predicted, and if I miss a birth the world won’t end. It would break my heart to miss a birth for a woman that I am close to, but it’s not the end of the world if I try everything I can to be there for her. But in the end, I need to put food on the table and a roof over my head and fuel in my car, and not be Just a Student Midwife, which it is possible to when you have the luxury of being supported by a partner or family and don’t have to work.
• You don’t, despite what some people seem to believe and say either openly or in backhanded ways, have to have given birth to get birth, and to be with woman. Maybe that’s my opinion solely from the point of view of not having had children, and maybe that’d change once I have some of my own. And look - that’s me also having an opinion and putting it out there which is also new and exciting and scary. That was discussed tonight as well - the "having an opinion and not always qualifying it" thing…

I met some really cool people today, and was happy that I knew 2/3rds of the people in the room, and knew of several more of them. I put that down to spending far too much of my first 18 months of study, mixing with the wrong crowd at meetings and committees and conferences and training courses when I got the chance. This comes back to the final point that I can make tonight - that you learn so much more than just midwifery during your journey to becoming one, and how you do it is your own personal journey.