midwife's muse

Back musing

For the past 3 days I have been hearing that childbirth is painful. Well, I wonder why that could be?

Could it be that -

1) Most women do require that the exit point for their baby just might require some degree of distention to allow something with a head diameter of approx. 35cms to exit? Okay, so nature could have provided us women with that, but he would then have had to provide our partners with a reproductive part capable of filling that apperture, unless they didn't mind that thet may just as well be exploring the empty inside of the average plant pot.

2) Supposing there was no pain associated with labour ( exertion of body, work hard, move with difficulty ). How would we know when little one was coming? Would we take it seriously? Women would be stopping mid-shop to produce junior, swimming-pools would be teeming with newly born infants. Pain is associated with childbirth, in any animal, to give them warning, and time to get to a place of safety.

I know that by now anyone reading will be thinking I'm trivialising a serious subject. To a degree I am. but having done it 3 times myself, and helped with hundreds of births I do feel that childbirth needs to be put into context. It is a normal, physiological function. Generally speaking it is one day out of your life. Until a few years ago babies were blessings, not commodities, if the baby was alive and well parents counted themselves lucky. They knew labour would be painful. Now the expectation is that it will be an amazing experience, and for many it is, but who is it that carries 'the blame' if it is worse than they expected. The midwife. I found an article today which very much sums up what the problem is, and that is the shortage of midwives. Most labour wards function on the very basic level of staffing, if it's a quiet night then most women having their babies will have felt well-supported, if it's busy or there are high-risk cases in then those women in 'normal labour' will be left alone far more, and may, at times, feel frightened. As a result the couple will feel they were abandoned, they may well take issue with the midwife, or her superior (and I don't condemn them for that) and that midwife will have not only had a stressful shift, but will then face a 'dressing-down' by her manager. If it happens often enough she will leave. We enter the profession wanting to fulfill the definition of 'Midwife' - to be with woman, not women. Can this developing crisis in maternity services be stopped - Yes, employ more Midwives. They are out there but they just don't want to practice within a deliberately understaffed profession, which incidentally now has the highest litigation rate in the NHS. Deliberately understaffed? Yes, all units employ the minimum number of midwives the Trust Board feels is necessary, not the Head of Midwifery, or the Local Supervising Authority but the executives dictate the number of midwives! If midwives go on maternity leave or long-term sick leave, they are not replaced as they are still part of 'establishment', so you end up in a situation where theoretically the unit is fully-staffed, but actually it is always understaffed. End of diatribe.

Today I went pushchair hunting with eldest daughter. Think she has decided on an all-terrain thingy, she does a lot of walking. Looked at all the baby clothes, wasn't allowed to buy any! Saw Rick Wakeman, he was grumbling, daughter had never heard of him.

Jack has 2 teeth now. He scuttles around the furniture, lets go, takes one step - and falls over. He sits on his potty, but doesn't produce anything, perhaps he's like his Grandad and needs to read for half an hour first. 

15.1.05 19:58