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I asked Gail to comment on this question. Below is her
reply.
> All I'm asking is is there anything I can do or
say? I will just feel so
> bad if she has a horrendous time which
possibly could have been avoided.
> What can we learn from all
these horror stories to help other women? Claire Saxby
I would answer something like:
Obstetrics starts from a position of fear and pathology;
midwifery from a position of faith in normality. So you decide what you
want from your birth, and what you want for your baby.
The mum in question needs someone to help her to see birth as
an ordinary event. Kind of like my ex husband, when I told him I was having a
homebirth with my third (not his) baby: "What if the same thing happens that
happened to Jesse?" Jesse was my second: undiagnosed breech, labouring at home
for a long while and then in hospital - and very nicely thankyou. Got
to second stage, and then they felt a bottom instead of a head and whisked
me off to theatre. I was pushing, I felt I could have sat up and pushed him out
at the time, but all I heard was 'Don't push, Mrs Fletcher', so I tried with all
my might not to push and prayed for the blackout that the impending GA would
bring so I didn't need to try so hard anymore.
So I told my ex that it wouldn't happen again, and it
didn't. I'm not proud of my blind faith, but am a bit sad for the woman I was
at that time, and even more sad that I didn't have the support that would help
me find the blind faith I needed in my own body - this is the beauty of
the independent midwife.
I can't help wondering what it would have been like in the
quiet of my own home with a midwife who knew me and trusted in birth.
Absolutely, he may have been a footling breech, am told that's a problem, but
I suspect he was frank - they felt a bottom, must have because they could tell
me he was a boy before he was born. I've had no luck getting hold of my notes
so I can't tell with any certainty. But I do know that if I was at home, and
if he was footling breech and I really DID need a ceasar, the hospital was
close enough that I could have made it so my baby would be safe. And I also
know that had I been at home with a midwife, she would probably have 'twigged'
that he was breech long before I was in second stage labour - long before I
was even in labour. There would have been time to talk over my options, decide
on what I was to do. Even if I'd needed a caesar, it wouldn't have been such
an abruption from my lovely labour - it wouldn't have been an
'emergency'.
On the face of it, there doesn't seem to be much difference
between midwifery or obstetrical care, but perhaps we can think of it in terms
of 'time to talk' (no time to talk to the ob, he's much too busy and
important), and 'faith in the process' (he has no faith, he sees it purely in
terms of pathology and risk). Even if we need to go to hospital, even if we
need a caesarean, how much better would that experience be if we knew what was
happening to us, and felt all our options were covered? Midwives can do this,
and much more.
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