well family care
home birth midwifery in my area is pretty much for clients that are white, upper-middle-class, straight, and of child-bearing age.
this ain't right.
traditional midwives didn't just deliver babies. they engaged in the healing work of entire communities. men, women, children, babies, elders. as women, we have always held the knowledge and power of healing within ourselves, passing it down for generations from wise-woman to wise-woman.
when we compartmentalize women's health into a very exclusive, child-bearing clique, we do most of our community a disservice. when we almost exclusively provide home-based, herbal, DIY, radical, supportive health care to bougie white women, we betray our roots, sever our bond with the wise-women of our ancestry, and exclude the vast majority of our community.
i believe that childbirth is under the attack of a white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy. so is women's health. so is men's health. so is children's health. so is the process of dying.
i loved "the business of being born" film. i would also love to see "the business of dying," "the business of having HIV or AIDS," "the business of eating," etc.
what i'm trying to say is that the process of childbearing cannot be separated from the rest of the process of being human. when it is, we leave a lot of people out.
if as wise-women and potentially as midwives, we focused at least on the whole woman to start out with:
- menarche celebration
- pre-conception counseling
- nutritional counseling
- lesbian/trans-gender/bisexual-friendly health
- STI screenings and treatment
- herbal therapy
- self-healing (a.k.a."DIY")
- infertility counseling and treatment
- herbal abortion and/or menstrual extraction
- menopausal celebration, counseling, and treatment
- palliative care
maybe we could start here and then move out to heal the world. what do you think?
a radical community of midwives
one person cannot fulfill all of these needs. therefore, to make these things happen, we have to come together and help where we can, learn from each other, and encourage safe space, compassion, and respect.
in our midwifery community there is a lot of shit-talking. some of it is for very good reasons. but it is our responsibility, in order to provide quality care for our whole community, to use consensual processes to deal with grievances together as wise-women.
imagine a community of midwives working together:
women of different backgrounds, experience levels, philosophies, ages, and truths all working toward the common goal of providing quality well-woman and well-family care to our community.
holding each other accountable for our words and actions.
our integrity will grow with every birth, death, joy, mistake, love, laugh, and tear.
4 comments:
Would you mind if I passed this on to some local people in our birth commuity?
white, upper-middle-class, straight, and of child-bearing age????
i dont buy the upper middle class part. am i upper middle class? what about you, amy, joanna, pixie, saadya, jamie, mary hoffmann, jessica? are any of us anywhere near upper middle class? most of the upper middle class people i talk to about birth are all about a doctor. to a lot of older people, having a baby at home, just like nursing, is a sign of being poor. it used to be that going to a hospital meant that you had enough money to afford it. if you nursed, it wasnt a sign of you wanting to feed you child the best, but that you were too poor to buy formula.
i know for many of the above mentioned ladies, we didnt have health insurance, and if we did, we would have had to pay over $3000 for our hospital care. the relatively low price of local midwifery services was a big perk for us. and, since most of us couldnt afford health insurance and would have had to rely upon medical cards, which greatly increases the odds of having a c-section.
i have known two lesbian couples, (both of the lesbian couples i know who have had babies) in the past year who have used a midwife.
you, me, mary, joanna were all about twenty when we were pregnant. bluegrass high risk obstetrics considers you high risk if you are 20 or younger or 40 or older. what is child bearing age to them?
there are some things that need to improve about the midwifery care in lexington. but there are a LOT of good outcomes, very limited bad outcomes (meaning health, not hurt feelings) and lots of women being able to birth their way in lexington.
i think that is a good thing.
as far as hurt feeling go, i think so many women are hurt without ever telling their caregiver why they are hurt or angry. i think this gets in the way of good midwifery care as much as any of the other factors.
all of the women i know who have had babies at home were white, at least came from upper middle class homes, straight and between the ages of 20 and 40. of course that doesn't mean all women that give birth at home are any or all of these things.
but homebirth midwifery is absolutely more accessible to these women. especially in appalachia.
homebirth midwives can't accept medicaid here unless they are a CNM. that cuts out a lot of people who can't even afford $1200.
i absolutely believe everything i wrote in this blog. a healing community of diverse healthcare providers is necessary in order to save healthcare from white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and the way we can facilitate this is starting as wise-women going out of our ways to care for all people, offering services on a sliding scale, using consensus-based decision making, working together, and most of all, taking care of ourselves.
in the vein of 'taking care of ourselves', i totally agree that people need to talk to their healthcare providers about the problems they have with them or the care they have given. i wish we had a respectful forum for women tto feel supported to do this in. have you heard of the 'red tent' project? i would love to do that in our area. i'll try to look for some info on this.
I don't think I could agree more...but I am not one you have to 'win over' with this one. I am fighting the same fight with you.
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