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Workshop feedback

I had some lovely feedback today. When I arrived into the office after my trip to Spain, there was a letter waiting for me from a midwife who was at the Burton Active Birth workshop last week. She wrote:

”Just a quick note to say thank you for such an enjoyable weekend. I learnt such a lot and it was great to meet other midwives and share experiences.

I went to work Sunday night, so enthusiastic, and cared for a woman who had the most wonderful birth “drug free”. I felt so proud of us all - mum, dad, baby and me. The following shift, armed with my new lease of life, I cared for a woman who wanted to get on the bed. I worked so hard to keep her off the bed and didn’t rush to do an internal (much to my colleague’s dismay). She did all the things we talked about on your course, all went well. She pushed spontaneously, in a darkened quiet room with “no doubt” a rush of endorphins (me and her!) Until I looked down and saw - not only her bottom, but the baby’s!! She was on all fours, and sadly a very senior person put her in lithotomy. Nevertheless, she had a wonderful birth, she was delighted, as was the dad. Unfortunately I was greeted with a variety of comments from my colleagues “I’d have examined her on admission”, “I’d have had her on a CTG” (would that have told us it was a breech?, I asked). Still it was a great experience and although I have been a bit tense about other people’s views, my care was woman centred and she was delighted (said she was turned over because she said it only got painful then!) but what a miracle she had a vaginal birth. If she’d have had an internal she’d have had a section and it was a huge 8 ½ lb baby. Goes to show you!”

As you can imagine I was thrilled that this midwife had taken the plunge and tried some of the ideas we explored during the workshop. It can be hard to ignore the comments of doubting colleagues, but in the end it is the woman having the baby who counts.

I hope that other midwives will take heart from this feedback. I am always thrilled to know that my work is proving useful and even more excited to hear of midwives really embracing their role and discovering the pleasures for themselves and parents of enabling natural births to occur. Congratulations to this midwife and thank you for the wonderful birth story.

Posted by andrea at June 25, 2004 02:01 AM

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