setting the record straight. or curvy...

i guess the last couple blogs that i have posted have been pretty critical of homebirth midwifery.

i've gotten a couple of comments that have been very anti-homebirth, and although i didn't expect them, i'm not very surprised. i don't agree with their positions.

i feel the (probably purely vain) need to clarify my positions.

my beliefs

i passionately believe in homebirth.

i had a homebirth. i would have another and would consider having an unassisted birth if i could find a place to have it that was close to a compassionate hospital with an OB dept.

i believe it is a woman's right to choose where and with whom she gives birth.

i believe homebirth is the best option for any healthy woman who believes in the power of her body and trusts the power of birth.

i believe that the state of homebirth midwifery in this area is unfortunate. i have hope that things are changing, but as of when i had a homebirth with my son 2 years ago, my choices were slim and my family and i were disappointed with the care i received. i believe it is directly related to the criminalization of homebirth midwifery in this state.

worst of the worst

i was just reading navelgazing midwife's blog about post-partum hemorrhage and thinking about home birth.

i never really thought about the possiblity of there being a problem with both baby and mom when i had my home birth. wow. what an ignorant mama i was.

thankfully i had a great outcome - as most mamas do. but what if i hadn't? what would my midwife have done? she had no birth assistant with her, no apprentice, no partner, no doula, no nurse, no midwife's assistant.

who would she have saved?

i live at least 50 minutes away from a hospital with an OB dept or an OR.

in my opinion, this is what the criminalization of midwifery is forcing us into.

illegal = less midwives = overworked = territorial and competitive = unsafe.

the midwives around here really need to start

1. taking care of themselves
2. working together
3. preparing for the worst

on the other hand, i think of wanting to have an unassisted birth and where that would leave my partner if something terrible happened.

i think i just won't have any more babies. it's too complicated.

healing community

i want to offer some hopes, prayers, blessings, and ideas for making things better in our midwifery community:

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.

granny midwife

this job has got me thinking about getting high..-er education.

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):

1. they think they're soo cool
2. they say stuff like, "if i couldn't get that baby out..."
3. they fight amongst eachother way too much
4. they don't clip their fingernails and leave scars on (my) baby's head
5. they don't respect patient confidentiality
6. 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.