.......or is it? should we continue to reinforce that hospital is the best place for healthy (low risk) women to give birth? should all healthy women birth at home? should they be given the choice? or not? is it realistic?....

__________________
J
StudentMidwife.NET Founder & Director

"You're braver than you believe. Stronger than you seem. And smarter than you think."
Christopher Robin in Pooh's Grand Adventure

Please help us raise funds for a bereavement room in Honey's memory by taking part in the SMNET Auction & Raffle here thanks x

I think that all 'healthy' low risk women should be enocouraged to give birth at home but with the ever-present midwife shortage it is unrealistic...
In my Bangor interiew I was asked where I thought women should give birth and my answer was that if they are deemed low risk then home birth should be encouraged. In a perfect world it would happen, women would trust their own bodies and not feel the need to be in hospital but the way that maternity services and care are at the moment, this is not possible.
Creature comforts and familiarity are a good way to reduce the fight/flight syndrome that seems to appear when people, not just pregnant women, are told they have to go to hospital.
Unfortunatly, until we, as women, learn to trust our own bodies and instincts, this will not happen.
I know that others will disagree with me on this one but it's just my opinon...

xx

__________________




Please help us raise funds for a bereavement room in Honey's memory by taking part in the SMNET Auction & Raffle here thanks x

I think they should be given the choice. However like you have said with the shortage of midwifes this wont always be possible, which is a shame really.
I think women do get that fear factor when going into hospital and dont trust there own bodies so think you got a valid point there, however some women would feel far to nervous and anxious having first child at home.

I think allot of women are happier with the idea of home birth after having their first child.

My thoughts anyway...

Very true Kezza but if women are given confidence in themselves then they may feel a lot better towards it. As it stands, I know a lot of mdiwives who scare women into give birth at hospital, which in my opinion, is just wrong. We were designed for this, we can do it and we should be allowed to choose for ourselves. Nerves and anxiety are expected and I think everyone experiences them to a certain point in pregnancy but if women are reassured and know that there people understand, will support them and answer all questions honestly then I think they wuold feel a whole lot better - cue the midwife...

I understand what you mean though Kezza and it is 100% the womans choice but I feel that if there was more help and information given regarding homebirths then the number of women chooisng it would increase and result in a lot of happier mums. When I say happier, I mean satisfied with the level of care recieved and more positive abut their birth experience as a whole... And we wouldn't hear haf the horror stories we do now...

All we can do is give the information and support and let women choose for themselves...

xx

__________________




Please help us raise funds for a bereavement room in Honey's memory by taking part in the SMNET Auction & Raffle here thanks x

I agree wholehearted with this. Yes, we ought to encourage women to have their babies at home, but also we need to ensure that the midwives themselves do not possess a fear of homebirth, are adequately trained and skilled to facilitate homebirth with an understanding that is it inappropriate to assume that one just transfer hospital practices into the home environment and also free of the conditioned reflex of just reaching the emergency buzzer because at a homebirth, the buck really stops with the midwife as far as emergencies go.

Which makes you then wonder that if we are to have midwives who trust the birthing process then do we have to look at what the selection criteria is for student midwives. Should we actually make a few courses pre-requisite to even applying for a student place? I would love to have been told I needed to do a course on physiology on childbirth and the historical role of midwives before In could have even applied for the course.

Yes, I agree that the midwives need to be confident enough in themselves to handle a homebirth as things can go wrong, they need to be able to deal with that, without the use of an emergency buzzer which I'm sure comes with practice and experience.

It's a good idea to have a prerequisite approved course but I honestly don't think that thats feasible and would put off people who have other commitments, ie; children etc... My personal opinion on this is to integrate these things somehow into the actual course so that they are studied alongside other subjects and are not stand-alone units. Having them as stand-alone courses could be slightly confusing if you don't have something to compare it to and are not able to put it into practice.
Another way to integrate these things is to have a specific access to midwifery course available in all colleges etc... as most colleges offer 'Access to Health' or 'Access to Nursing' which cover a wide range of subjects but are not specific in any one profession. 'Access to midwifery' could then be a university entry requirement.

I'm not trying to put down the current access courses as I myself am doing Access to Health Professions and it's very informative but as I've said, non-specific.

Oh, if only we could change the world hey... Maybe one day...

xx

__________________




Please help us raise funds for a bereavement room in Honey's memory by taking part in the SMNET Auction & Raffle here thanks x

I assumed when pregnant with my children, that hospital was the best place to be 'incase something goes wrong' unfortunately I was never offered any option other than hospital despite being low-risk, how many other women does this happen to? bonkers....

The default location for all women to give birth should be at home. Hospital should not be offered unless clinically necessary.

As far as students training goes, as I think we spend far too much time in CLU's instead of community settings and birth centres and see very little physiological labours and birth.

I know that right now my faith in women to birth their babies is beginning to waver, and that is simply because I have not seen it, only experienced it myself. I know they can do it, but why am I not getting a chance to witness and learn from it?

Other course I do no think are necessary at all, it is enough work getting to uni as it is right now, with a bleak future for us students and students to be, so that is not IMO the answer. Before university courses can change, maternity care needs to change and improve, we cannot learn and promote normality until it is commonplace enough to exist to teach us

__________________

For me my most active learning has been in the community at homebirths, I was lucky to work with a community midwife who advocated and loved homebirths. Because of my experience in community, when I first went into the hospital setting I had the exact same feeling as Peggy Vincent did in one of her Babycatcher stories. Women looked tied up to me, bound to the bed by the CTG and it didnt feel right (Im talking about women where there was no indication for either prolonged or even 20 min bursts of FH monitoring). It just didnt feel right, it wasnt what I had been witnessing, women moving freely in their own homes and birthing in the way that felt comfortable. Many birthed on their backs but it was different, they werent laying there for hours, they were moving about, writhing around, walking, making noises all the things youd expect but in hospital it was different.

I still think the answer is more contact with IM's... their status must be protected and we must get placements with them.

Thats my two penneth...

__________________
J
StudentMidwife.NET Founder & Director

"You're braver than you believe. Stronger than you seem. And smarter than you think."
Christopher Robin in Pooh's Grand Adventure

Please help us raise funds for a bereavement room in Honey's memory by taking part in the SMNET Auction & Raffle here thanks x

I believe that it is the midwives role to give the all options with their facts (good and bad) and to support the womens choice. Many women will feel more secure going into hospital to give birth because it is now the norm and perhaps they don't realise that a home birth is an option.

I remember at my 'booking in' visit with my midwife she asked me where I would like to give birth. To be honest I hadn't given it a great deal of thought and hadn't even spoken to my husband about it so I said I would prefer a hospital birth thinking that nearer time I would discuss it with my husband and we would make a decision together. Immediately after saying a hospital birth the midwife turned to me smiled and told me that I had made the best and safest decision which put me in a position where I felt I couldn't change my mind at a later point.

This attitude goes totally against what I think is the responsibility of each and every midwife which is to explain all options available and support all decisions that they make - each and every different decision - whether it is their own preference or not.

I think society's attitude to birthing as a whole needs to change before home birth will become the norm.

Once upon a time, women were worshipped as goddesses because of their ability to create life and birth was a celebration, a joyful event. Then society became male dominated and women were seen as sinners and evil temptresses and childbirth was supposed to be their punishment for being women and this great fear of childbirth developed, women had to go through it alone, unseen and removed from civilised society. Then came hospitalisation as just a more modern form of exercising patriarchal dominance.

Now women are seen as more equal, perhaps we will eventually lose the fear of childbirth and begin once again to see it as a normal, joyous occasion which (in the majority of cases) women are built for and totally capable of without the need for medical dominance.

Of course it's never easy or quick to change the attitude of society, but I hope it will happen some day.

__________________
Mum to two beautiful boys.
Student Midwife 2008!!
Student Midwife University Student Representative