a few months after my first baby was
born I became obsessed with a subject of
childbirth put myself through doula and
child childbirth educator training
midwifery apprenticeships countless
hours of self educating research and
over 20 years since then as my kids were
growing up they would say it’s become
embarrassingly easy for me to talk about
reproduction
childbirth is not an illness unhealthy
things happen during pregnancy and birth
but reading childbirth as an illness has
made maternal health care unhealthy
there are two perspectives to maternal
care there’s midwifery and there’s
obstetrics with it hadn’t been referee
there’s a concept that some like to call
the mama baby unit where the mom and the
baby are an inseparable unit when you
treat one you impact the other in
obstetrics mom and baby are considered
two separate medical individuals labor
is considered a timetable with
predictable results and when labor
starts to become more unpredictable
medical intervention is applied in
midwifery patients is not just a virtue
it’s a medical necessity midwifery
understands that rushing labor actually
can lead to causing a complication but
in obstetrics complications are not as
much of a concern because they have a
whole facility full of health care
professionals medical treatments their
whole job is to save lives but in
midwifery a key focus is in preventing
problems before they become
complications if you keep mama baby
healthy
you keep mom and baby healthy no matter
how unpredictable labor becomes in the
1960s college graduate ina may Gaskin
traveled with her husband on his lecture
tour westward from California months
later on a
growing bus Caravan they landed in a
property in summer town Tennessee they
named the farm along the way babies were
born in turn that birthed the farm
midwifery center
unlike hospitals the center has been
very open with their statistics between
1970 and 2010 over 2,800 births
ninety-five percent of those women gave
birth safely without a hospital with a
two percent c-section rate and vaginal
birth after c-section called B Bex
successfully completed at 96% not a
single mom died stellar statistics this
kind of model of maternal care is used
extensively in various places throughout
Europe since the majority of births are
healthy midwives can easily manage
healthy birth they’re experts at it
complicated cases are managed by
obstetricians often in a hospital but in
the United States the relationship
between midwifery and obstetrics has not
been a healthy relationship there has
been conflict almost from the beginning
midwifery practice and education has
been going on for many many hundreds of
years obstetrics in the United States is
a relatively comparatively new field
starting about 200 years ago
schools had to be started by upper-class
benefactors students were primarily
white males in degree programs lasting
only two years consisting only of books
and practicing on mannequins and
cadavers meanwhile midwives spent years
in hands-on apprenticeship often with an
aunt or a grandmother
doctors ploughed on
as they became established they began to
convince politicians to regulate or
restrict midwifery or home birth a
practice that still exists today by the
turn of the 20th century doctors and
their nurses took advantage of the
anti-immigrant sentiment of the time
using a print ad campaign in magazines
and newspapers displaying midwives as
unsanitary and and uneducated they have
their own complications in the 1980’s
the US society had become a very
invested in lawsuits medical malpractice
insurance companies became an industry
obstetricians were forced to participate
in these insurance policies as a legal
protection against lawsuits when
outcomes didn’t go well but the results
did not turn out well
sources such as the CDC
w-h-o and World Bank ranked the United
States as worst in maternal mortality
ratios among developed countries and
some underdeveloped countries
this model accelerating starting in the
2000s mimics a pattern of a decrease in
v-max and an increase in c-section also
mimics the increase of the medication
use of pitocin cytotec and cervidil this
is not the results that obstetrics
intended there is so much we can and
should do there are plenty of options
thanks to the advent of the internet a
midwife is a search engine away you can
find a midwife in just about every major
city in the United States there might
even be some here midwives are not the
only option
midwives do home birth they do birth
centers there’s two here in Tulsa that I
know of
there are midwives that work in
hospitals but there’s also birth doulas
postpartum dualists sibling doulas grief
dual is if a mom experiences a pregnancy
loss
there’s also prenatal yoga classes
there’s samples and questionnaires to
help you come up with a birth plan the
options are available we just have to
investigate them we need to spend some
time just like we do when we buy a new
house a new car upgrade on our new cell
phone our health care is that important
our current health care especially as
women will drive the rest of our life
and it will drive the life of the future
generation to come it is dangerous for
us to keep maternal health care silenced
as a footnote in u.s. conversation we
are not too civilized to talk about the
most common health event in human life thank you
born I became obsessed with a subject of
childbirth put myself through doula and
child childbirth educator training
midwifery apprenticeships countless
hours of self educating research and
over 20 years since then as my kids were
growing up they would say it’s become
embarrassingly easy for me to talk about
reproduction
childbirth is not an illness unhealthy
things happen during pregnancy and birth
but reading childbirth as an illness has
made maternal health care unhealthy
there are two perspectives to maternal
care there’s midwifery and there’s
obstetrics with it hadn’t been referee
there’s a concept that some like to call
the mama baby unit where the mom and the
baby are an inseparable unit when you
treat one you impact the other in
obstetrics mom and baby are considered
two separate medical individuals labor
is considered a timetable with
predictable results and when labor
starts to become more unpredictable
medical intervention is applied in
midwifery patients is not just a virtue
it’s a medical necessity midwifery
understands that rushing labor actually
can lead to causing a complication but
in obstetrics complications are not as
much of a concern because they have a
whole facility full of health care
professionals medical treatments their
whole job is to save lives but in
midwifery a key focus is in preventing
problems before they become
complications if you keep mama baby
healthy
you keep mom and baby healthy no matter
how unpredictable labor becomes in the
1960s college graduate ina may Gaskin
traveled with her husband on his lecture
tour westward from California months
later on a
growing bus Caravan they landed in a
property in summer town Tennessee they
named the farm along the way babies were
born in turn that birthed the farm
midwifery center
unlike hospitals the center has been
very open with their statistics between
1970 and 2010 over 2,800 births
ninety-five percent of those women gave
birth safely without a hospital with a
two percent c-section rate and vaginal
birth after c-section called B Bex
successfully completed at 96% not a
single mom died stellar statistics this
kind of model of maternal care is used
extensively in various places throughout
Europe since the majority of births are
healthy midwives can easily manage
healthy birth they’re experts at it
complicated cases are managed by
obstetricians often in a hospital but in
the United States the relationship
between midwifery and obstetrics has not
been a healthy relationship there has
been conflict almost from the beginning
midwifery practice and education has
been going on for many many hundreds of
years obstetrics in the United States is
a relatively comparatively new field
starting about 200 years ago
schools had to be started by upper-class
benefactors students were primarily
white males in degree programs lasting
only two years consisting only of books
and practicing on mannequins and
cadavers meanwhile midwives spent years
in hands-on apprenticeship often with an
aunt or a grandmother
doctors ploughed on
as they became established they began to
convince politicians to regulate or
restrict midwifery or home birth a
practice that still exists today by the
turn of the 20th century doctors and
their nurses took advantage of the
anti-immigrant sentiment of the time
using a print ad campaign in magazines
and newspapers displaying midwives as
unsanitary and and uneducated they have
their own complications in the 1980’s
the US society had become a very
invested in lawsuits medical malpractice
insurance companies became an industry
obstetricians were forced to participate
in these insurance policies as a legal
protection against lawsuits when
outcomes didn’t go well but the results
did not turn out well
sources such as the CDC
w-h-o and World Bank ranked the United
States as worst in maternal mortality
ratios among developed countries and
some underdeveloped countries
this model accelerating starting in the
2000s mimics a pattern of a decrease in
v-max and an increase in c-section also
mimics the increase of the medication
use of pitocin cytotec and cervidil this
is not the results that obstetrics
intended there is so much we can and
should do there are plenty of options
thanks to the advent of the internet a
midwife is a search engine away you can
find a midwife in just about every major
city in the United States there might
even be some here midwives are not the
only option
midwives do home birth they do birth
centers there’s two here in Tulsa that I
know of
there are midwives that work in
hospitals but there’s also birth doulas
postpartum dualists sibling doulas grief
dual is if a mom experiences a pregnancy
loss
there’s also prenatal yoga classes
there’s samples and questionnaires to
help you come up with a birth plan the
options are available we just have to
investigate them we need to spend some
time just like we do when we buy a new
house a new car upgrade on our new cell
phone our health care is that important
our current health care especially as
women will drive the rest of our life
and it will drive the life of the future
generation to come it is dangerous for
us to keep maternal health care silenced
as a footnote in u.s. conversation we
are not too civilized to talk about the
most common health event in human life thank you
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