birth in this country sucks. with the second highest infant mortality rate and not much better maternal mortality rate in a "developed" country, birthing women need all the help they can get.
but...
reasons i hate (the) midwives (in my area):
- they think they're soo cool
- they say stuff like, "if i couldn't get that baby out..."
- they fight amongst eachother way too much
- they don't clip their fingernails and leave scars on (my) baby's head
- they don't respect patient confidentiality
- they totally wrap their egoes up in the whole "babycatcher" thing
i have talked to some people in my community about how i think that the model of midwifery - the young, hip thing who makes her living doing home births, is very competitive, and totally worn/burnt out - just doesn't work.
it seems there are reasons why traditional midwives, meaning the organically grown, evolved and ancient variety developed the way they did. women that grew up seeing natural childbirth among their sisters, mothers, cousins, aunts, friends, helped when they could, and had years and years of experience were the real midwives.
they knew a lot of what could go wrong, how to prevent those things, how to help and how not to help, and more than anything had the experience and the courage to deal with emergency and non-emergency situations with the same level of calm and skill.
midwifery these days seems to be forced. it seems like it's fashionable to be a midwife (in certain social spheres).
to think that a woman can be a midwife in 2 to 4 years is absurd. it takes years and years of experience to develop the cool-headed confidence and skill necessary to be responsible for the lives of two or more souls. it takes seeing it go wrong and not freaking out many times to develop the involuntary, automatic, but absolutely precise skill necessary to stay controlled in an uncontrollable situation.
to think that a woman can be a midwife and also a full time mom and partner is absurd. the commitment is total. the schedule is relentless.
to think you can make a living wage as a midwife is also absurd. to take as many clients as you would need to and without charging a class-exclusive sum, you would burn yourself out in the first 5 years. throw a couple kids and a partner into the mix and you'll be burnt out in the first year and a half.
yeah, i think about being a midwife...when i'm 65. or 70.
3 comments:
midwives have a lot on their shoulders. i think we expect our midwives to be these super-extraordinary creatures that balance family and spouse and are always friendly and treat everyone the way they have planned out in their head how an perfect birth should be. i think our expectations are impossible for them to live up to and when they dont, we feel let down. i have found that we are most dissapointed in the people we hold up the highest.
i also have a new found respect for some midwives around here who are tackling these problems face to face with the women who arent happy with their midwifery relationship. kudos to them. im glad i am not one.
i can dig it, but there certainly need to be some basic ground rules of professionalism that must be adhered to, which are not.
1. client confidentiality
2. bedside manner
3. client safety
with midwifery being illegal in this area and therefore unregulated, it is impossible to enforce, well, anything. and the care of birthing women suffers because of this.
the current midwifery model, like the medical model, like the current paradigm, is not SUSTAINABLE.
i definetely feel ya on the client confidentiality. I don't think a midwife should ever violate that.
Also, can you send me something about the u.s. being the 2nd leading in infant mortality?
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