Tuesday, June 24, 2008

My Slant on Midwifery Education

Becoming a midwife is really a process of becoming MORE of what you probably already are: 
a server, a nurturer, an encourager. 
My feeling is that the most important work of a midwife is to help her clients learn more about birth and help them assume the responsibility and ownership for their birth.
So that means a LOT of what we do in Advanced Midwifery Studies is dedicated to client education.
It is my firm belief that people can only assume responsibility for what they know or know about. I see one of the midwife’s primary functions is that of increasing what people take responsibility for by bumping out the parameters of what they know or know about.  Most of the time spent with clients should be spent talking about all the issues surrounding birth and making references and referrals to more information. The enormous potential that midwives have to make a difference in the world is not by how many babies they catch, but by how many women they encourage to trust birth and embrace their rights and responsibilities as birthing women with confidence and joy.
Too much of midwifery education rhetoric these days has the same flavor as those who fear birth.....the focus seems to be on how to help women and babies survive it....as if birth is terribly dangerous. I happen to believe that birth is inherently safe and that we often do more harm than good by our interference, management or theft of ..... That is a whole ‘nother blog, eh?