Natural Attachment

So, this is about midwifery and the madness surrounding education, professionalism and the usual list of complaints.

I left this comment over at Sage Femme after reading Midwifery Education and these two other posts:

“I’ve taken the time to read the two blogs and their posts…I feel sad that there is so much talk about money, insurance and ‘needing’ something (education, credential, otherwise) to prove ‘we’ are something that ‘we’ are not. I am not here to be a nurse, a doctor or any other ‘professional’ — I am here to educate, stimulate, empower and guide. I am not here to be paid…though I usually do

I want knowledge, as knowledge carries with it power. However, I don’t want to be forced to ‘do’ something just because I know how. There is, as I see it, an underlying fact, which many never see or talk about and that is: Doctors want us to be and act more like doctors if we are going to be around and Homebirthers want us to be and act less or nothing like doctors if we are going to be around. it can not have it both ways and becoming a CNM is not the ‘middle ground’ or the bandaide.

I also take offense to all the ‘hippie-dippy’ comments. As if those who are less Earth-minded or spiritual are somehow more professional and able to do their jobs.

I don’t want the recognition that comes with being a nurse, because that’s not what I need. I need healthy, happy and honored birthing families.”

As some of you might have figured out from reading things of mine from archives on the old blog, I am not certified or licensed by anyone — I don’t want to be. Once I ‘hand over’ myself to an organization or institution I have to do things their way. I am not even a certified doula, because I couldn’t figure out how to ‘wear two hats’ as a midwife and a doula — DONA is VERY restrictive in what you can and can not say to clients…as a midwife, the knowledge that I have and the advice that I can pass on are not allowed when dealing with a client who is only a doula client and not a midwifery client. So, since I don’t like being limited by artificial means, I chose not to be christened a certified doula or a certified/licensed midwife.

The fact of the matter is, if those around you that you are in the service of think that you are not a competent midwife, that you are dangerous, irresponsible, not ‘professional’ enough, etc., you will know it and you will not be doing much in the way of midwifery for very long. If you don’t like how someone is treating you, you tend to call them out or at the very least avoid them — and more importantly, you usually tell someone else about it. Why do you think there is always that one midwife who ‘everyone’ loves and they tell all their friends about her?

But it’s more than that. If you know you are not capable of doing something, you won’t keep trying to fool others or yourself for that matter for very long. It’s not like midwives are making enough money to risk harm to a mother or her babe — most doctors are. I’m not saying that midwives would act so carelessly, but it is something to think about…money can be fucking scary.

I guess what’s even more important for me and why I can’t relate to the urge for the creation of and the medical establishment’s recognition of University educated midwives is that I don’t want to be a midwife. I don’t want there to be midwives. I want women to be their own midwives. Birth is as safe as life gets. Women used to know how their bodies worked, women used to know how to give birth and what to do if, ‘the cords wrapped around the neck’, ‘I feel faint’, ‘I’m bleeding more than I should be’. We used to have the knowledge of who we are and what we are capable of…we used to know what to do when things got messy. Sometimes mothers die and sometimes babies die and that’s the way it is, but that is for another conversation altogether. We can know these things again and do these things again if there are women (and men!) out there to pass on that knowledge and rekindle the flame of self-preservation within each and everyone of us. We used to have community, tribes and villages - all full of women who knew what the hell was going on. We don’t have that and that is exactly what we NEED. More women should be educated in women. Plain and simple. We need more guardians of birth, less midwives and more doctors who realize the reason they don’t see natural spontaneous births is because they don’t want to sit on their hands and wait around for them to happen.

America is ranked so low on almost every aspect of medical care in the world (there are 41 other countries with better infant mortality rates than us), but we are one of the most technologically and medically advanced nations in the world. We have more toys and techno tricks than we know what to do with. I’m not saying that there are never times when something outside the usual birthing mother’s house should be implemented during labor, but rarely should labor start out with hooks, tubes, monitors and drugs.

I am not done with this, I could go on for ever, I think, but I have to stop somewhere. Please let me know how you feel.