Articles by Month: July 2005

The International Confederation of Midwives Congress

The International Confederation of Midwives Congress in Brisbane has been an incredible event. It wraps up this afternoon at the Brisbane Convention Centre, after four packed days of presentations on almost any topic you can think of that has relevance to midwifery. The 2,000 delegates have come from 70 countries and it was wonderful to see many in the national costumes on the opening afternoon last Sunday.

I have been staffing the Birth International stand, talking to people, selling products and catching up with old friends. Many of those who stopped by have been midwives I have met on my travels overseas, and it has been heartening to have them report back that the workshops they attended have borne fruit and they are working to implement the changes we explored together. I’ve become re-acquainted with educators I haven’t seen since their training days with me 20 years ago and they’ve told me of their current jobs and continuing passion for the work. It was a little strange to see these people on my turf when I am so used to meeting them in their countries, and I hope they have a wonderful time in Australia as many continue on to short holiday breaks around the country before heading home.

On Monday night I attended the Investiture of Fellows for the Australian College of Midwives that was held at the nearby Mater Hospital. This event, held every year, celebrates the achievements of individual midwives through their acceptance into the Fellowship of the College. I was very pleased to be present for the investiture of Lois Wattis, a midwife from Perth in WA, for whom I had provided a reference. It was lovely to see her take her place amongst the distinguished company of Fellows.

The contingent of 39 midwives from Indonesia were also guests at the ceremony. A fund raising effort by the midwives in Australia enabled the President of ACMI, Marg Phelan, to present their President with a cheque for $5,000 to be used towards tsunami relief, especially as it affected midwives in Indonesia, many of who died themselves or lost children and members of their families. It was a special moment as their President accepted the gift in her halting English, with her broad smile and gentle grace. We were all very moved by the occasion.

We’ve been having some fun on the stand as well. To create some interest and attract attention, we hired a stilt walker to hand out chocolates to everyone during the lunch break on two days. Noel, our stilt walker, was a hoot, commenting wryly from his elevated height of 9 feet that “his had been a terrible birth - a very arduous breech extraction that had affected his legs”. All good fun and something to entertain during the buffet lunch.

The energy that is palpable in these events was very evident. Midwives were forming new alliances and networks, making new friends, catching up with old ones and learning of all the new developments in their profession at the same time. I am already planning for the next event to be held in Glasgow in three years time. I am sure it will be just as wonderful and worthwhile. Perhaps I will see some of you there?

Posted by andrea at 08:25 AM

Birth in North Korea

I have had quite an “International” week. Enquiries have come, via email, from a number of locations: a PhD student in Iran seeking help with her thesis on pain in labour; news from an Israeli psychotherapist regarding the changes she’s making to her classes following the workshop of mine she attended a few weeks ago; and a request from Trinidad for copyright permission to use some of the illustrations in my book Preparing for Birth: Mothers in a new website being developed for the first Birth Centre in Trinidad.

This makes a fine prelude to the International Confederation of Midwives Congress in Brisbane, when I expect to catch up with lots of overseas colleagues who will be attending.

Our website is also fully updated - this process often takes a little while, given the complexity and extensiveness of its content. I am delighted that you will now be able to read all about birth in North Korea, courtesy of Jill Moloney, an Australian midwife currently completing an aid project there. Jill provides a fascinating insight into birth in DPRK, and I encourage you to read it.

Click here to learn all about it.

All the products are in place and there are lots of new titles, especially in the book section. Happy browsing!

Posted by andrea at 04:44 PM

Mary Nolan to visit Australia

Next February, from Friday 24 to Sunday 26, Birth International will be hosting the major event for childbirth and parenting educators in Australia in 2006 - a Conference at Sydney University. The program is being finalised at the present time and the full details will be on the website in a few weeks, but I am delighted to announce that Mary Nolan will be one of the key overseas speakers.

Mary is a senior tutor for the National Childbirth Trust in the UK, the author of a number of books on the subject of parenting education and a well known speaker in the UK and Europe. She will be presenting several workshop sessions during te Conference , where participants will be able to hone their skills and try out various teaching strategies.

The whole program is being geared towards the practical and away from the “talk fests” that so often characterise conferences these days. Working with parents in ways that will enable them to increased their skills requires educators who can model the skills themselves as part of a program that is interactive and experiential. This Conference will offer the chance to explore ways of tackling those topics that are often difficult to present well, such as pain in labour; unexpected outcomes; obstetric complications; informed choice; involving dads and sexuality. Special sessions will look at the needs of teenage parents; women wanting a VBAC, and program planning for special needs groups.

This will be the flagship event for those involved in childbirth education around the country, so make a diary entry now. More details soon - watch this space!

Posted by andrea at 12:00 PM

A new agent for ACE Graphics products

Birth International has appointed a new agent to handle our products in Japan. Yumi Osako is a very well known childbirth educator in Japan, who regularly appears in magazines, on television and in the mainstream press. I first met her many years ago when I presented a training program for Japanese Childbirth Educators in Tokyo, and then again at the Birth Without Borders Conference in Chaing Mai in Thailand (1997). Yumi was also responsible for having my book Empowering Women translated into Japanese - this has become a best seller amongst the general population.

The addition of this new agency expands our local suppliers across several continents. ACE Graphics products can now be obtained locally from suppliers in New Zealand, Canada, the USA, South Africa and now Japan. The full list of their contact details is in our paper catalogue.

Readers in Japan may like to contact Yumi through her company - they have a whole range of interesting and useful information, products and services available:

Birth Sense Institute Co. Ltd

504# 1-9-16 Tomigaya Shibuya-ku

Tokyo

Japan 151-0063

TEL 813-5454-8232

FAX 813-5454-8212

Posted by andrea at 11:52 AM

July 09, 2005

Reflections on another tour of duty

It is time for me to head home again after a hectic five weeks in the UK and Israel. The terrible bombings here in London on Thursday were a shock to everyone and the images on the news broadcasts and in the papers have been haunting and harrowing. I was in Dublin when the news came through and it brought the workshop to a standstill, as everyone re-lived memories of living through the unpredictability of bombings that were a part of daily life in Ireland for many years, and thought of friends and family that might have been affected in London.

Getting back to London that evening was surprisingly easy. The mainline trains were running by the evening and with the closure of the Tube stations, the main railway stations were almost empty, except for the many police keeping watch. The city was like a ghost town - people feel the need to be safe at home with family when events like occur.

The past five weeks have offered the usual mix of experiences. The same themes emerged as they have before: shortages of midwives; the encroachment of the medical model of care; the changing attitudes of women towards “quick fixes”in labour; the insidious messages of the drug and technology companies; the undermining of confidence and trust in normal birth and women’s abilities to give birth safely without help; the emphasis on trying to avoid “risk” at all costs.

It is hard to know where childbirth is headed. Sometimes I think that women and their aspirations have changed o much that it will take a whole generation for the results of birth interventions to be acknowledged and understood, both from a personal and a societal perspective. Just as there was a generation ( or two) of women who adopted bottle feeding of babies as being safe, easier and more scientific, only to discover the ramifications and consequences of this decision for the health of their children, maybe it will take a generation or two of highly medicalised births for the same message to be realised about birth. Breastfeeding is now universally accepted as best for the baby, so perhaps in time, natural birth will be seen in the same light.

I feel sure that the wheel will turn again and that the importance of undisturbed, drug free births on the future physical and emotional well being of women and babies will be “re-discovered”. I just hope that I am around to see it - it would make all the hard slog of travelling and facilitating workshops worthwhile.

As soon as I get back to Australia, it will be a mad rush to get everything ready for Birth International’s participation in the big midwifery event of the year - the International Confederation of Midwives Conference, to be held in Brisbane, starting on July 24. This will be wonderful opportunity to catch up with lots of midwifery colleagues and friends from around the world. I am looking forward to it!

Posted by andrea at 09:39 PM

July 08, 2005

Who should facilitate parent parent education programs?

Several times during the workshop in Dublin I was approached by group members asking about using a team approach for the presentation of pre-natal education programs. There are pluses and minuses about using a number of facilitators for a group and I explained what these were. In general however, from an educational standpoint and to promote continuity of care and information, having the one presenter facilitate the entire program works best. This approach presumes, of course, that the facilitator is competent to cover all the possible topics in a pre-natal program. As for the question of which professionals should be involved, I have always maintained that the background of the presenter should not be an issue, providing they are skilled, competent and knowledgeable.

I have been forced to have a major re-think of these beliefs in light of my experience in Dublin. It was clear from the start that most of the group were public health nurses, well used to telling parents how to manage the post-natal period, but most were very unfamiliar with the needs of pregnant parents and the hospital system. I was astounded that no-one in the group could tell me any of the disadvantages for the baby of epidurals, for example, beyond the possibility of a forceps birth. The physiology of pain, or indeed that pain is a normal part of the birth process, was news to most as well. An exercise that explored their own beliefs regarding labour revealed that most saw it is a negative, painful experience that could best be managed with drugs.

At another point, I was roundly challenged by several group members who proclaimed that they would never allow their personal feelings to colour the information they gave to prospective parents, yet at other times they cited their own experience as the basis for the advice they gave. The language they used (“patients”, “delivery”, “fetus” etc) displayed a lack of awareness of the impact of their words and some were very sceptical of encouraging parents to “join in” so that better learning could occur. One person loudly stated that a lecture followed by a question time was, in her experience, very well received by parents, yet when challenged as to how she would evaluate whether any actual learning had occurred she had no ideas, other than that they “would ask questions”.

I came to the conclusion that public health nurses may not be the next people to work with pregnant parents, unless they had recent and on-going contact with hospital maternity units, found ways of getting feedback from parents (for example, through organising a group reunion) and spent time in the hospital rooms with labouring women. It is very easy to get out of touch unless a conscious effort is made to keep current with the research, the services and the birth process itself. It is not good enough to rely on one’s professional education of some years ago, or one’s own personal birth and parenting experiences, as a basis informing expectant parents. This is especially so when so many of those personal experiences have been negative or even traumatic.

I have to admit that if a pregnant woman asked me if she should attend the classes run by some of these educators I would have to express doubts as to their worth. It could be that these parents would not be fully informed, may receive out of date information and be subjected to subtle messages that reflected the presenters attitudes and beliefs. I think that sometimes pregnant parents are better off with no education than poor quality education.

There were some educators in this group who clearly had a good grasp of the complexities of pre-natal education, did make an effort to provide learner centred programs, and were flexible in their attitudes and general approach. I just wish there had been more of them, for the sake of pregnant Irish women

Posted by andrea at 11:00 PM

July 07, 2005

A new style of prenatal education for Ireland

I have had a very interesting day today, facilitating a workshop for those involved in parent education throughout Ireland. Many in the group are public health nurses, most are midwives and there are a sprinkling of others, including physiotherapists.

The suggestions I have made, primarily to switch from lecture style classes to facilitated, interactive programs that encourage skills development through participation and practise, have been largely welcomed as different and innovative. Not everyone has agreed - there are always those that see change as threatening and difficult, and who prefer to lecture to parents. Some of the interactions in the group have been lively and instructive for those wanting to know how to manage the group process. One group member was a midwife I met years ago in a workshop in London. She had been inspired by the content of those programs (she had attended both the Active Birth and the Teaching Skills workshop) and had used the information for the births of her children. The first was the standard “active management”, the second was a domino birth with a midwife and the last was a home birth, all in Ireland. It is always very humbling to know that your work has been of practical use to someone and I was thrilled she had found my books so useful too (she said she had read The Midwife Companion about 10 times!).

More importantly, she told me that her midwife didn’t quite make it to the home birth, missing it by about 3 minutes. She had been beating herself up about this for months - perhaps she should have called her midwife sooner, perhaps she should have better recognised the transitional stage of labour and been more aware of where she was up to, etc. I pointed out to her that the late arrival of her midwife could be seen in another way - that she really didn’t need the midwife to be there for the birth, that she was quite capable of giving birth herself, without assistance. If there had been a delay, her midwife would have made it and been on hand to help. This midwife has learned a lot about birth and herself through the births of her babies and this final lesson may be the one she needed to cement her belief in women’s abilities to birth safely and joyfully.

Life has a way of unfolding that gives us many opportunities to learn more about ourselves. As childbirth educators, we have to be aware of the enormous potential we have to support and encourage parents to take that journey of self discovery - and no amount of lecturing them will achieve this.

Posted by andrea at 05:29 PM

July 05, 2005

An innovative website on pregnancy issues

I’ve been taking a few days of leave with some friends in Bournemouth. While I was there, I was reminded of meeting Jo Alexander, a midwifery lecturer at Bournemouth University. We were both on the program for the Conference at Ormskirk a few weeks ago.

During her presentation, Jo revealed a new website that is well worth adding to your list of favourites. It is the DIPEx site, where personal stories of health and illness can be found, together with evidence based information about the conditions being discussed. There are video clips from patients that describe their feelings, their condition (including signs and symptoms, the treatments they have undergone and their reactions and how their condition has affected heir everyday life. Written transcripts are also available, as well as question and answers, and an area where contributions from the pubic can be added.

It is an innovative site, sponsored by an Oxford-based charity and it has won an award for its outstanding presentation and content. For those who want access to information “out of hours” or to hear what others have experienced, this is a useful starting place.

Personal experiences currently included cover cancers, screening tests, heart disease, neurological conditions, mental health, sexual health and chronic illness. There also sections on pregnancy and women’s health.

Posted by andrea at 11:36 PM