August 18, 2002

A new edition for The "Midwife Companion"

Today I’ve been giving some thought to a new edition of The Midwife Companion - the art of support during birth. I’ve been spurred into action because of a comment made to me by Elaine Dietsch, one of the faculty on our Graduate Diploma in Childbirth Education. One of Elaine’s “hats” involves her in midwifery education at the University in Wagga Wagga, where she lives. We had dinner recently when I was in Wagga Wagga to present a workshop and she mentioned that my book, although highly valued by students, was nevertheless on the “ Of historical Interest” list rather than “Required reading list” for their midwifery course. Apparently it is considered “dated” because of a University policy that anything over 3 years old is “out of date”, even though it may contain material that is timeless. I was horrified, especially as students frequently tell me it is their “bible”(of course the Bible would never be on a required reading list at a University either, for the same reasons as my book!).

Protesting to Elaine that I thought this was a rather “elitist” attitude to adopt as a general principle (although I could see its merits for texts based on hard research, for example) she said that the solution was simple - prepare a second edition.

Since we are almost out of stock and a reprint will be necessary before the end of the year, the opportunity is there to write a new edition. That of course, raises the question - what would I change/expand/add/revise? Some answers are obvious, such as changing the resources lists and contact details. However, there is little to change in the text itself, although I may well expand it. Birth balls, for example were not really much in use when I wrote the book and they have become very popular, especially when the hygiene aspects of bean bags started to be questioned by the occupational health and safety “police”. Perhaps I will seek suggestions from my ozmidwifery list colleagues on what they would like included.

I originally wrote the book for British midwives who seemed to have few ideas about how to make women comfortable in labour beyond giving them Entonox or pethidine and I drew on all the ideas that I had used myself when supporting women during labour as my starting point. It seems however, that midwives everywhere have taken the ideas on board and I have had thank-you's from midwives from all over the world who have found the suggestions helpful. I am always amazed that these ideas, simple in nature and to me, very much common sense, need to be spelled out in detail in this way.

But then, .common sense is such a rare commodity these days!

Posted by andrea at August 18, 2002 04:17 PM

Comments

Congratulations Andrea on your new website layout, and this weblog is a great initiative! It will be helpful to a bunch of us expectant mums all across the world!
I'll make sure to be a frequent flyer here!
Indeed the birth balls are a useful novelty, and even after birth they are often used for post natal exercises, so it is worth having one :)

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