"We heard from midwives who hide their name badges or uniforms in public or lie about their jobs when meeting people outside of work." What an incredibly sad thing for midwives to be reporting! Midwifery should be a profession to be proud of, this speaks to the impact of public discourse on staff.
Midwifery continuity of carer should be universally accessible to every woman. It improves outcomes, reduces intervention rates and significantly improves women's experience of maternity care. Every single woman can and would benefit, what are we waiting for?
When are we going to realise that the system, as it is, does not work? When will we start listening to women? When are we going to introduce evidence based structures which actually improve care?
If the only to come out of this, yet again, is a long list of recommendations with no consideration of research evidence and the things that women want and value, there will continue to be no change. Women will suffer, staff will burn out, and no improvements to care will be made.
This is nothing new. The same issues that have been present for the last 2 decades+ and nothing has changed. The system is not working for women, babies or staff.
Meanwhile, women are turning to self interested “influencers” who are profiting from fear and potentially compounding the harm initiated by maternity services. It is women and babies who are losing while there are no consequences for those complicit.
Providing individualised care promotes safety. When women are pushed out of services we expose them to greater risk. Maternity services must prioritise treating women with respect and recognising diverse and nuanced needs.
National and international guidelines as well as NMC and GMC codes emphasise that women should be treated as individuals, with respect for their own wishes and needs. And yet this is not happening in practice; guidelines are used as a tool to coerce women into submission.
It’s good to see an acknowledgement at least that it is, in part, systemic issues which prevent women from receiving individualised care and support for “out of guidelines” births that can push them toward #Freebirth.
Praying on women’s trauma, making money off them, deceiving them and leading them down a path that has the potential to cause significant harm to them or their babies is unconscionable, but there is a huge amount of blame here to be shared by the maternity system we have created.
Though most of the time birth works very well if we just leave it alone, there are some true emergencies where having a midwife there is lifesaving. I have seen those situations; I have been that midwife. It’s not common, but it happens.
We know that women generally choose the type of birth that feels best and safest to them. So we should really be looking inwards and asking why women do not feel safe to birth within a system that is (supposed to be) designed to support them through pregnancy and birth.
Sadly we know that many women who choose free birth do so because they cannot find respectful care in the system. This is a problem that has in part been created through over medicalisation, lack of choice and a failure to treat people as individuals.
Free birth is a valid option and one I would defend any woman’s right to have; but they do come with a higher risk of adverse outcomes than births attended by a midwife or other qualified health professional.
www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...
I was really shocked to see that more than 50% of pre-term births are iatrogenic. That feels incredibly worrying to me.
Why, in the face of this information, are we concerned about so called "normal birth ideology"? These outcomes suggest to me that quite the opposite is true; the "ideology" maternity services are facing is highly medicalised, technocratic and ultimately short sighted.
1/3 of women are being induced and more than 50% of pre-term births are iatrogenic. What are the long term impacts caused to these babies by being born before they are ready? The effects on their microbiome, their future health and development and the epigenetic effects we know little about?
Almost 50% of women are birthing via caesarean section and there is no consideration of long term outcomes for those women and babies. How many future babies are lost to miscarriage or ectopic pregnancies? How many more women have pelvic organ damage and long term pain?
We should be really concerned about what is happening in maternity care in the UK. While we have seen a reduction in perinatal death in the last decade, it has come at the expense of sky rocketing interventions and a rise in maternal death.
Just to be absolutely clear: midwifery and obstetrics are a team. Our goal should always be to provide respectful, safe and individualised care for women and families. Midwifery is not safe without Obstetrics in some cases, and Obstetrics could quite literally not function without midwives.
A great explanation of whats going on in UK midwifery right now and the “midwives vs doctors / physiology vs medicine” narrative being pushed by the media. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
An apt time for this study to have been published. Midwives thoughts on the Ockenden review, its impact and what it means for midwifery and maternity care in the UK. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Hands up who thinks that only 44% of women are able to give birth spontaneously? The system is fucked. digital.nhs.uk/data-and-inf...
“Post dates” inductions are one of the many contributors to the rising induction rate in the UK, which is well above 30% in many units now. A great episode if you’d like to understand what going “overdue” really means podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
A 2.5 year old at one of my antenatal appointments today demonstrated a knowledge of female genitalia beyond most adult men when he proclaimed “if she’s a sister she’ll have a vulva!!”