thoughts on international day of the midwife 2010

This past Wednesday we celebrated International Day of The Midwife 2010. http://internationaldayofthemidwife.wikispaces.com/International+Day+of+the+Midwife+2010

I took the day off work so as to attend as many online discussions/presentations as possible. As an aspiring midwife it was a tremendous opportunity to hear perspectives from midwives who've been at it far longer than I.

I caught a discussion regarding midwives perceptions of working in a birth center. While it wasn't terribly relevant to me now it did reinforce my notion that the hospital birth culture is not currently woman center-ed.

I'm not sure how I feel about having that notion reinforced though. I do feel that midwives are needed as much or more for hospital birth as for home birth. I feel strongly that every woman deserves midwifery model care http://cfmidwifery.org/mmoc/define.aspx

The Midwives Model of Care is
based on the fact that pregnancy and birth are normal life processes.


The Midwives Model of Care includes:

Monitoring the physical, psychological, and social well-being of the
mother throughout the childbearing cycle

Providing the mother with individualized education, counseling, and
prenatal care, continuous hands-on assistance during labor and delivery, and
postpartum support

Minimizing technological interventions

Identifying and referring women who require obstetrical attention

The application of this woman-centered model of care has been proven to
reduce the incidence of birth injury, trauma, and cesarean section.


Copyright (c) 1996-2008, Midwifery Task Force, Inc., All Rights
Reserved

I can't see how I can take the many years of schooling required to become a CNM (certified nurse-midwife) just to be able to attend hospital births, though. Taking the direct entry route to midwifery and then providing out of hospital birth AND in hospital doula services, childbirth education or other non-medical forms of support for women who prefer to birth in a hospital would allow me to work towards changing hospital birth culture. But it would be quicker and a lot less expensive. I also think i could work "with woman" as a labour and delivery nurse.

So who knows what i'll end up doing?

After that i watched a presentation entitled "Cesarean Delivery on Maternal Request" http://www.slideshare.net/VirtualIDM/cesarean-delivery-on-maternal-request while I listened to The Feminist Breeder's http://thefeministbreeder.com/ podcast interview w/ Amy Romano, Mary Murray and Amie Newman and simultaneously joined the twitterfest @ #idm2010. The feminist breeder's show was dedicated to midwives online presence and tied in nicely to the next presentation "Online Presence for Midwives".


Next up was a session from Gloria Lemay on "Nutrition for Two". Iloved simply Gloria presented the task of eating healthfully. In fact I'm trying to incorporate some of her suggestions into my own eating even though i'm not pregnant.

The presentation on "Fetal Monitoring for Low-Risk Women" went a little over my head at some points but was fascinating nonetheless. I think the important thing I took away was how inportant it is for midwives to learn "high touch/low tech" means of monitoring the mama-baby dyad. These skills are being lost and its up to midwives not to let that happen. If skills like ascultation, palpation, and simple observation are lost what will happen to women when the power goes out? or women who have unplanned out of hospital births?

The drop in sessions for student midwives was a bust but i did enjoy the story telling that took place in its stead.

One session that I missed that I really wanted to participate in was the one about midwifery in South Carolina. That's so close to my location!


Even though these session were mostly targeted towards midwives I came out feeling highly motivationed to get back out in the birth related relms of the internet. (Look, ma! I'm Blogging again!) I'm not a midwife yet but that doesn't mean I don't have a voice to contribute. I have a desire to share what I know and to learn MORE MORE MORE.... and then pass that on.

Additionally I feel motivated to take a few baby steps towards midwifery . I've earned one credential that relates to my midwfery aspirations. Last year I earned my CLC (certified lactation counselor) which I see being really beneficial in postpartum doula work and in childbirth education. Next on my list is to earn my CPR certification and my NRP certification. Beyond that I plan to take advantage of some local networking opportunities. I'm involved in a local Healthy Start group http://www.heartofgeorgiahealthystart.org/ http://www.healthystartassoc.org/ so I want to become more active in that group and make inroads into other groups as well.

cleaning out the ol inbox

heres some coverage i found on the net re international day of the midwife

this is from new zealand http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU0905/S00054.htm

heres a little woo for you....pre-birth communication. http://lovefrombaby.com/ not being closed minded by calling it woo btw. i'm into the idea. i'm not too much of a talker when it comes to the little one in the belly, so the idea of communicating in some other way is definately appealing to me. heres the article http://lovefrombaby.com/pre-birth-communication.html

i don't go into abortion too much in this blog but heres a bill that hits close to home being one state over http://www.goupstate.com/article/20090503/NEWS/905019935/1132/OPINION?Title=Abortion-waiting-period-Bill-hits-women-below-the-belt

national women's health week in may 10-16th. i'll have to remember to post on that then. but heres a quick link http://www.womenshealth.gov/whw/ included in the week is national women's check-up day...maybe a good day to schedule my dental cleaning....and heres something from webmd to go along with http://women.webmd.com/womens-top-5-health-concerns-6/default.htm and one more article re women's health today http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Women-live-longer--not-better--largely-because-of-obesity-and-arthritis-44460-1/ , this study found that women are not necessarily leading better lives, just longer ones

heres an interstingblog post that ties meeting the healthy people 2010 goals http://www.healthypeople.gov/ well, the breastfeeding goals anyway http://www.healthypeople.gov/document/html/objectives/16-19.htm with the homebirth rate in various states http://www.puremothers.com/?p=903

quick quote from the blog

" The specific breastfeeding goals for 2000 and 2010 are to get
75% of new mothers to initiate breast feeding, for 50% to still be breastfeeding
at six months, and 25% at one year. The US did not meet the goal back in
2000 and, just twelve states met some of the criteria. Now, what is interesting
to me is that of the eight states achieving all three of the criteria, seven are
on the west coast and the other is Vermont. Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho,
California, Utah and Hawaii all achieved success. "

" In 2006, 9 states had home birth rates that were at least double the national
average. Not surprising, Vermont had the highest at 2.4%, Alaska at 1.9%, Idaho
at 1.5%, Utah had 1.3%. These were the rural states listed. In
addition, some non-rural states had homebirth rates at least double the US
national average also. Included were Oregon at 1.6% and Washington with
1.4%! So six of the nine states that had better homebirth rates were in
our eight! (I want to mention that Montana was 2.3%, Wisconsin was 1.4%
and Pennsylvania was 1.6% with Lancaster County - Amish country - having the
highest rate at 14%). So, California and Hawaii didn’t make this
list. But, I think I’m on to something. Women who have successful
homebirths have less difficulty with breast feeding. They don’t experience
separation from their baby once it is born and most homebirth babies are born
full term - another indicator of a successful nursing relationship.
Homebirth moms usually get some initial lactation support from their midwives or
are referred to certified lactation consultants for on-going support."

she looks at breastfeeding legislation and vaccine exemption provisions as well

i may have already linked to this from peggy omara re breastfeeding and the case against, but she has some good info in here and this is what spurred the post i just linked to so here it is

http://www.mothering.com/guest_editors/quiet_place/quiet_place.html

and i'm linking to this so i can remember to research it further. http://www.wctv.tv/medicalminute/headlines/44184362.html it seems like 1 in 100 is an awefully hight rate of shoulder dystocia....
well this is a long post already and i am a strving preggo so i'll stop and eat and perhaps return later