I would like to draw your attention to the NMC circular on homebirth which backs up the woman’s right and the Care providers responsibility to provide care.

Now without breaking the all important cone of silence surrounding the college would like to talk about the Australian College of Midwives. I am at the moment the vice president of the SA branch. On the one hand I would like to encourage all midwives to become members to have a voice in midwifery and on the other I feel like a square peg in a round hole. For a long time I held off being a member due to the fact that the referral guidelines which are at the moment under review don’t really protect me as a midwife working with women at all. I wrote an article on this which appeared in Birth matters. I decided that maybe it was better to join and have a voice but I feel totally frustrated with the whole thing.

The college is rather bound up in red tape, like every other birth related group in Australia it is full of policy procedure rhetoric and midwives doing their best to “do the right thing”. Why don’t I care about all this crap? I want to be with women at birth, fight for their right to birth the best and safest way which is at home and I just don’t have the foggiest why every midwife doesn’t feel the same way. Why cant we just cut through the crap and get on doing the most important thing which is being with women throughout their birth journey.

Our meeting went on for 4 hours and we barely mentioned anything that was important to birth. It is midwifery focused which being the college is obvious but in my opinion very little is women focused. We spend so much time caught up in bureaucracy that by the time a midwifery issue arises nobody is listening.

There is the homebirth policy. A big issue in SA since it is on the perinatal guideline website for SA but has been vetoed by every public hospital. Now although the policy itself is pretty crappy it should at least be offered to women. Where are the midwives demanding this, where is the college pushing for this?. The small amount of midwives from the group practice who are on the committee are trying to bring it to the forefront but it is not a focus for the college. Bah Humbug.

International midwives day is an important event for midwifery, who will turn up? I will be very interested to see.

have tried to make it to as much stuff as possible regarding moving forward on our plans but I have missed lots of things by attending births. Fancy that, actually being with women. Is this not secondary to pushing forward the midwifery cause?

It is enough to make me cry. our membership is pitiful and we are now being centralised which is in my opinion one step away from being cornered out of the market so it will be a national college with no state input. National already control lots of things and where are the innovators crusaders of birth, radical voices? There are none.

One great thing we are offering though is a student counselling session. They are being held at the college offices in Norwood and are the 2nd Monday of the month 10am to 12 mid day and 4th Monday of the month 6pm to 8 pm. You don’t have to be a member to attend. This is going to be a great thing. Any students out there can always ring me personally to debrief chat moan complain bitch or just ask questions. It’s confidential always. However if it’s something to share with a group I would encourage you to go.

Just to cheer everyone up, and because I think pictures say a thousand words. Here is one of my favs of a beautiful homebirthing woman prior to her birth. There has to be hope out there somewhere.

Related posts:

1. Australian College of Midwives Draft Homebirth Plan
2. College Of Midwives
3. The College of Midwives
4. Guidelines For Australian Midwives.
5. Guidelines For Australian Midwives