Quotes for Midwives

My last meeting with the lovely midwifery students I've been working with in Papua New Guinea is this morning.

 Pacific Adventist University Midwifery Students PNG

I've been surfing the net, looking for quotes that relate to midwifery, women and birth that I thought would inspire them.   I've come across the following and thought I'd share them with you.

"You are a midwife, assisting at someone else’s birth. Do good without show or fuss. Facilitate what is happening rather than what you think ought to be happening. If you must take the lead, lead so that the mother is helped, yet still free and in charge. When the baby is born, the mother will rightly say: “We did it ourselves!”  - From The Tao Te Ching

Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of our greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don’t only give your care, but give your heart as well. ~ Mother Teresa

Ask me for strength and I will lend not only my hand, but also my heart. ~ Unknown

If you lay down, the baby will never come out! ~ Native American saying

Offer hugs, not drugs ~ Adina Lebowitz

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man (sic) will have discovered fire. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Just as a woman's heart knows how and when to pump, her lungs to inhale, and her hand to pull back from fire, so she knows when and how to give birth. ~Virginia Di Orio

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

For God hath not give us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. ~2Timothy 1:7

If I had my life to live over, instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished ever moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle. ~Irma Bombeck

Making the decision to have a baby – it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

What's done to children, they will do to society. ~Karl Menninger

A woman
in harmony
with her spirit
is like
a river flowing.
She goes
where she will
without pretense
and arrives
at her destination,
prepared
to be herself
and only herself.
~Maya Angelou

King hit on the funny bone: Labia room

I love humour.
I love those people who have a great sense of humour. I'm always amazed when someone can come out with just the right response to a situation. I love it when something someone says is so funny, I laugh til tears roll down my face. Quirky, off beat, clever humour like that of the Monty Python team really appeals to me. I can watch their skits and movies over and over again.

However, unkind and derogatory put downs or sling offs aimed at those who are vulnerable I find rude, offensive and inappropriate, not funny.

I also love social media. I love the way the various forms of social media provide an easy and quick way to keep in touch and gain and share information. Twitter, for example, was invaluable to many as a tool of communication during the recent natural disasters. The ability to communicate over huge distances with a minumum of fuss has meant that social media is increasingly used as a tool for health promotion. With that ease of communication enabled by the various social media platforms has come concerns about privacy, online behaviour and confidentiality. A code of conduct for online behaviour, coined 'netiquette' has emerged.

Unfortunately for many, they think their conversations on social media are the same as in the tea room, pub or corridor.

They are not.

They are permanently recorded and therefore able to be read by anyone for all time. A good way to think about it is to consider that what you say on a social media platform is like writing it on the front page of a national newspaper. If you wouldn't want what you are going to say recorded in that way, then don't use social media for that conversation.

Many of us have written about the use of social media for health professionals. I wrote an article earlier this year for midwives in our college newsletter. Still I see indiscretion amongst my colleagues posts at times that I feel concerned about. I do wonder how those who use health care think about some of the comments that are made; how would prospective employers perceive such comments if they were to look.  My understanding is that human resource departments are using social media platforms to find out more about applicants.

So a blogpost about an interaction on twitter between male doctors by Ann Marie Cunningham, a GP and lecturer in Wales UK with an interest in social media caught my attention when she said:

"I came across a discussion between several male doctors on twitter which caused me to reflect on this very topic. The doctors were using slang, which I have not come across before, to refer to the wards in which they might have been working. The terms used were 'labia ward' and 'birthing sheds' to refer to the delivery suite where women give birth, and "cabbage patch" to refer to the intensive care ward where many patients are unconscious.

I was shocked at this and angry and did query the doctors about some of the other things they said, but I felt I couldn't challenge them directly at that time about this language. One of the doctors referred to midwifes as 'madwives'"

The blogpost "Social media, black humour and professionals" and the responses are well worth reading to get a sense of what the doctors themselves and the readers of Ann Marie's blog thinks about these remarks.  There are some very interesting comments on Ann Marie's blog itself, but by far the most fascinating reaction has come on Facebook on the The Medical Registrar's fanpage.

Alongside the link to Ann Marie's blog are the words:

The medical registrar " makes no comment, other than anyone who uses terms like "space" to describe a blog is a humourless old trout until proven otherwise"

The medical registrar didn't need to say anymore, because the readers have made up for it with 72 comments at the time of writing this post. These comments are also worth reading.

The attitudes and values of the people responding are clearly discernable. A former CEO of a large Boston hospital, Paul Levy, has discussed the response to Ann Marie's post on his blog.

Paul Levy wrote that he is 'left aghast' at the some of the comments and found the mindset of a few medical colleagues 'extremely upsetting'.

According to the good doctors however, using those terms "labia wards" and "birthing sheds" for rooms where women give birth and "cabbage patch" for ICU where people are unconscious is just good old fashioned humour, a way to let off steam in a stressful environment. Others, like me, find them offensive and degrading.

Is it purely a case of 'humorless old trouts'? or something else?

What do you think?

21 strategies to help keep birth normal

NSW Health has released a policy aimed to help with increasing the rates of normal birth and decreasing surgical births. Called Towards Normal Birth, the policy "provides direction to NSW maternity services regarding actions"  to achieve those aims.

At a recent conference with about 100 midwives looking at why and how to "keep birth normal' and what we as midwives need to do, a brainstorming session produced the following list.  These strategies run from the big ticket culture change items to the seemingly small, but profoundly effective 'watch our language' individual action.

The list:
1. Avert the medical 'gaze'
2. Be powerful and able to negotiate as equals to doctors
3.  Establish a "round table culture'
4. Dispel 'urban myths' about birth
5. Support women to choose upright positions in labour
6. Educate teenagers
7. Promote the use of positive images of birth
8. Look at system issues: promote and change to woman centred midwifery models
9. Discuss what normal birth means to us and ensure we are talking about the same things
10. Listen to women with respect - what does the woman want?
11. Encourage women in labour to stay home as long as possible
12. Establish and provide support structures to help women stay at home in early labour
13.Establish and provide support structures so women can choose to stay home to give birth if desired
14. Examine our own attitudes to 'being with woman' in pain and uncertainty
15. Seek to establish a relationship with each woman
16. Allay fear: let woman know what birth is really about
17. Address anxiety of support people and other health professionals
18. Pay attention to the language we use
19. Have confidence in women's ability to give birth
20. Pay attention to our body language as body language conveys meaning: what are we saying?
21. Set up birth space intentionally - find out what makes each woman feel safe and do that.

Each of these strategies could be a blog post on its own!  What do you think? What else can we do? How do we put these strategies into practice?