Midwifery around the world

Today we have Rachel from Faro sharing her experiences with midwifery in Germany.

"I am a Canadian but my husband is in the British military and we were posted in Germany. I had a midwife until I gave birth and then under German law they had to send me to the hospital to deliver.

My first midwife was Dave (the "wife" part of midwife refers to the pregnant woman). He was great and I felt very comfortable with him. He had delivered about 400 babies before working for the British Military. My second midwife was Alison who had even more experience than Dave. She was great also.

I would have loved to have had a home birth like my brother-in-law's partner in the UK but now we live in the Yukon so I am not sure I can. I do think the care I got was better than what a lot of my friends got here.

However, I will point out that the breastfeeding rate in the UK was around 60% that attempted, and most women breastfed for a short time. I was also horrified that the recommendation for drinking alcohol when pregnant was no more than 3 drinks a week and I was one of the few who abstained from drinking alcohol during my pregnancy. Alison, my midwife, said that most of the Canadian women she knew abstained. No one talks about FAS.

That is my experience.

Rachel"

It's too bad about being required to give birth at a hospital. That's one of the things we would like to avoid as we move forward with regulating midwifery in Yukon; we believe that a woman should be able to choose where to give birth, whether she is most comfortable at home, in a hospital, or in a birthing centre.

Thanks for sharing your story, Rachel. And just so you know, with midwifery unregulated in the Yukon, almost anything goes at this point. You can have a home birth, if you choose to do so, and if you and your midwife decide that's best. However, right now it's much more difficult for a woman to have a midwife and give birth at the hospital; hospital policies don't allow for that to happen.

There is currently no practicing midwife in Faro, but I know that there have been some families who have had midwives come up from the south to attend their births (so you won't get your prenatal care from a midwife); or perhaps you might work something out with one of the midwives in Whitehorse. One of the wonderful things about midwifery is how flexible it can be!

YFFM activity update

Today Asheya and I met again with the Policy Analyst for Health and Social Services (H&SS) to get an update on the regulation process. Unfortunately, things have not moved as far as we would have liked, but it was still a great meeting with some very interesting exchange of ideas.

We learned that besides H&SS, the department of Community Services has to be involved in the process because they are the ones who are responsible for administering the Yukon Health Professions Act. Since midwifery is going to be the first health profession to go through the entire regulation process under the Health Professions Act, input is needed from Community Services to determine what that process is going to look like.

At the moment, though, Community Services is going through a lot of change (with managers moving around and new folks coming in), and they are also dealing with a few major policy reviews. Diane hasn't even had a chance to meet with anyone at Community Services to agree on a work plan. However, it looks like that meeting might happen in the next two weeks, so we're keeping our fingers crossed that they like the plan that she has drafted up.

So we're still in "Phase I" of the regulation process (a.k.a. the "designation" process) which is to provide Cabinet with enough relevant information that they can answer the question, "Should midwifery be regulated?" Or put another way, "Is it in the public interest to regulate midwifery?" If you had heard the discussion we had in that meeting room, you might be surprised at all the different questions that need to be asked just to answer that one! The major challenge is to separate the issues of whether it should be regulated with the issues of how it would be regulated.

I've never been particularly interested in policy development, but having had a glimpse, I can see how one could get caught up in the excitement of investigating all the facets of a given issue. On the other hand, if the issue were something other than midwifery, I wonder how long it would stay exciting...

Stories from blog readers

Today we have a few words from Jamie, a friend who lives in St. Catherines. This is an excerpt from a blog posting she made a few months ago.

"I had midwives for both my kids and have nothing but good things to say about them. My first birth ended in a C-section, at which point my midwife turned into my advocate and advisor, a very valuable resource when you are scared about your baby's safety. I think that midwifery should be the standard for birth, with OBs being available for when they are needed in high-risk pregnancies. I definitely think that OBs can be great as well, I just think that their expertise can be better spent working soley with women that need them.

I was at the doctor the other day with Derek. We arrived at 11:50 for our 12 o'clock appointment. When we arrived there was one baby that was a week old, one baby that was 5 weeks old, one that was 2 months old, 2 that were 4 months old, one that was 6 months old and 2 children (including Derek) that were there because they were sick. I cannot figure out why a pediatician needs to weigh all these babies. Most of them would have been there for simple check-ups, routine stuff that their expertise is being wasted on.

My sister-in-law lives in England and there everyone has a midwife unless they are high risk. Another thing they have there is something called a Health Visitor. According to her this is a nurse that visits your home after you have a baby and will weigh your baby and make sure that they are reaching the necessary milestones. They continue this way for about a year (I think). I think this is a wonderful system (though I am sure that there are flaws in it like there are with everything). It would save the doctors time so that when a sick baby (like poor Derek) comes in he doesn't have to wait for an hour to see the doctor, and more importantly, all those healthy newborn babies arn't being exposed to germs from sick kids."

Thanks for letting us use your post on our blog, Jamie!

Now, if you have some thoughts or a story to share, e-mail us at yukonmidwifery@gmail.com.