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The diversity of birth

The Effective Pre-natal Education workshop is proving most enjoyable. With such a diversity of people in the group, there is lots to discover and share, quite apart from the useful work we are doing on how to organise and present dynamic education programs for expectant parents.

We have two from New Zealand, for example, both midwives. They were surprised to discover that in Australia, women don’t have a known midwife for their pregnancy and birth. Here, women will meet the midwife usually when they arrive at hospital in labour, and they have to take pot luck that this midwife will follow their wishes. In New Zealand, every woman must choose her own caregiver once she is pregnant, and so she has that wonderful continuity that everyone else around the world strives for.

The educator from Finland described how one hospital there (and perhaps more) have fitted each labour room with a bank of monitors that enables the midwife to keep track of the CTG trace coming from all the woman in labour ward at the time. She said that the fathers often watch this bank of monitors: “Look how well the labour is going in Room X. You’re not doing much by comparison”. We were all horrified at this breach of patient confidentiality, apart from the concept of spying on women in this way. I’ve never heard of such a system anywhere else, but perhaps it exists. What away to reduce the intimacy of giving birth to a minimalist set of data! And voyeuristic too - a bit like a camera being set up in the foyer of a brothel so guests could check on progress being made in the various rooms of the establishment.....

The difference between country and city hospitals in Australia has also become apparent from various anecdotes and personal experiences shared by some of the Australian group members. There is no doubt that in country maternity units, largely as a result of the lack of obstetricians or GPs willing to offer maternity care, women have a better chance of receiving midwifery care. Sometimes this can backfire if the midwives are unwilling to try “new” ideas such as waterbirth, or giving birth on a mat on the floor, but generally midwives are flexible and willing to help.

Today we will be tackling program planning and I will be encouraging the group to think outside the traditional models of parent education to explore other program structures that might better meet the needs of parents.

Posted by andrea at November 23, 2005 06:15 AM