Happy National Midwifery Week! Have You Thanked Your Midwife Yet?

It’s National Midwifery Week 2010! To help you celebrate, we’ll be posting more frequently this week. Check back often and don’t forget to take advantage of our National Midwifery Week resources.

Birth, Trust, and Cultural Divides
by Lorene Gilliksen, CNM

As I celebrate my daughter’s 26th birthday, I’d like to acknowledge the help I received during my pregnancy from Mei Ka Chin, my midwife. Emily is my only child, so I suppose I am 26 years postpartum.

When I was pregnant, I worked at North Central Bronx (NCB) Hospital as a staff midwife. Mei Ka was a lead midwife there, and my friend and neighbor. As a patient, I felt confident and well-cared for because I knew that I had Mei Ka’s complete attention.

We are all thankful for midwives who listen to women and extend the values of midwifery into communities worldwide. Mei Ka is special because she listens beyond and across cultural infrastructures. She puts the dislocated, fretful, and disenfranchised at ease. Only later, as I worked at a hospital that served immigrants to the Midwest, did I think about Mei Ka’s special skills. As I attended the births of women from several continents, I thought about the courage required to give birth in a foreign city, without one’s mother, and without one’s mother tongue.

As current research on pitocin and trust reminds us, a woman needs to feel safe in order to labor. Childbirth generates a ripple effect of trust. These ripples of trust are a woman’s confidence in her body’s ability to do the work, the relationship she has with her partner, the web of immediate family support, and wide social networks. Midwives facilitate the effectiveness of these relationships. Mei Ka recognizes how each ripple contributes to a woman’s sense of safety.

Mei Ka has devoted her life to being present with women. (The word midwife means “with woman.”) She is now in Shanghai bringing new life into one of the world’s biggest cities. Mei Ka Chin wears a cell phone around her neck. She’s on call all the time. She was on call 26 years ago. She is on call now. Thanks, Mei Ka!

ACNM Members: Read the full version of Lorene's essay in the upcoming fall issue of Quickening.

Woman to Broadcast Birth on Internet with a CNM

by Melissa Garvey, ACNM Writer and Editor

Lynsee is a 23-year-old who is pregnant with her first child and one of more than 4 million women who will give birth this year. But there’s something different about this teacher who lives with her husband in Minnesota. She plans to broadcast her labor and birth live on the Internet.

The couple’s choice is sparking a wide range of reactions, from fascination to curiosity to, as one Boston.com reader commented, “Eeeuw! Disgusting....”

Lynsee’s decision isn’t for everyone, but it is her decision. And it may actually have a positive influence on public perception of birth. For starters, Lynsee’s care provider is a certified nurse-midwife (CNM), which is an option not enough women know they can choose. Now more than 1,500 readers of the Watch Lynsee Grow discussion group on Momslikeme.com know about their options thanks to this telling Q&A:

Question: Lynsee, will you use a midwife? I did not, yet have always wondered what it would have been like to have the attention and care of a midwife.

Answer: Yes I am using a midwife! She is amazing!! She takes the time to talk with me about my concerns in the appointments and is supportive of my decision to try to go as natural as possible with the birth! She also is not afraid to tell me that things will not always go as planned and that she may not be able to meet all my needs. There are many doctors in her office, and I will be seeing some of these doctors in case I end up needing one of them for the delivery. But my midwife is wonderful!! She even takes time out of her daily life to call me just to 'check in.' Never heard about that from a regular doctor!!

Lynsee’s upcoming birth (she's due on November 19) is at the height of a trend toward more transparency in labor, birth, and care decisions. With more than 3 million birth videos on YouTube, the Internet is exposing the reality of birth—and that’s something many women are hungry for.

Whether Lynsee has the natural birth she prefers, an emergency cesarean section, or something in between, I have to agree with the Boston.com reader who commented: “Don't want to see it? Don't watch. There are plenty of people who do want to know how this all works.”

Mad Men and Birth, Sixties Style

Sunday night’s episode of Mad Men brought 60s-style birth to prime time TV. The moment that mother/wife Betty matter-of-factly proclaimed “It’s time,” birth activists across America probably sat poised on the edge of their couches anxious to see how the show would portray this birth. Contrary to typical television births, Betty and father/husband Don calmly proceeded to the hospital—no rush, no alarm, no emergency mode. In fact, most of what followed matched the reality of what it was like to give birth in the 1960s.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Don retired to the waiting room. Betty was “prepared for delivery” with a shave and a dose of twilight sleep (morphine and scopolamine). As the effects of sedation set in, Betty became a belligerent, sweaty, laboring woman hovering somewhere between painful reality and a drug-induced dream world. Hours later, she woke up with a baby in her arms and Don by her side.

Set in the early 1960s, Mad Men is littered with unfair treatment of women in the home and in the workplace. Watching this series has caused many female viewers to closely examine ways that they may be mistreated as women in today’s society—ways that they simply accept as part of the way things are. Maybe Sunday night’s episode of Mad Men will cause women to question the routine parts of modern birth and to wonder if we could (still) be doing better.

SOGC Says No More Automatic Cesareans for Breech Babies

Whether you’re aiming for a hospital, birth center, or home delivery, if you get the news that your baby is in the breech position, chances are you’ll be advised to have a cesarean section. But on Wednesday, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) released new guidelines for health professionals that turn the breech issue upside down. They state that health professionals should not automatically recommend cesarean sections for women carrying breech babies.

After a comprehensive review of research, SOGC concluded that vaginal breech birth is a safe option in some cases:

“The evidence is clear that attempting a vaginal delivery is a legitimate option in some breech pregnancies,” said Dr. André Lalonde, Executive Vice-President of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada. “The onus is now on us as a profession to ensure that Canadian obstetricians have the necessary training to offer women the choice to deliver vaginally when possible.”

Why Midwives Need to be on YouTube

According to this morning’s New York Times, there’s a new childbirth educator on the loose—YouTube. On the same Web site that broadcasts cute kittens, teenage pranks, and music videos, women are perusing for footage of real, unedited birth experiences.

In the article, professor Eugene Declercq of Boston University gives an interesting explanation as to what may be behind this emerging trend. He says that women used to regularly see sisters and neighbors give birth, but ever since birth moved into the hospital in the late 19th century, views of real birth are not so accessible.

So, is there a downside to unfettered access to birth videos online? In the article, ACNM Senior Practice Advisor Eileen Ehudin Beard, CNM, cautions that while it’s advantageous for women to be well informed as they prepare to experience childbirth, videos of complicated or difficult births could lead to an unhealthy fear of giving birth.

What do you think? Join the conversation about this post by clicking on “comments.”

South Coast Midwifery is on YouTube

A two-part YouTube series from South Coast Midwifery presents a modern account of natural childbirth and chronicles the experiences of ten mothers. Give the videos a five-star rating on YouTube to help South Coast Midwifery win the Birth Matters video contest.