Connecting with Doulas: Come Meet Us at DONA 11 and Online

Doulas are best known for their ability to reduce interventions and improve maternal satisfaction in birth. But doulas play other important roles, too, such as educating women about their birth options, including midwifery care. Doulas also tend be very active in their local birth communities, helping with local and statewide efforts to improve maternal health. Where appropriate, doulas help mothers transform their birth experiences, gently guiding women to activism.

This is why Citizens for Midwifery is so excited to attend the Doulas of North America (DONA) International conference in Boston, MA this week. We’ll be in exhibitors area, sharing information about Citizens for Midwifery and meeting doulas from across the nation.

At the conference, we’ll also be holding Citizens for Midwifery’s first ever friendraiser, creating as many “virtual” friends as possible! We’ll be reaching out to doulas with two goals.

• For those already using social media, we hope to build and connect our virtual networks. Together, we can significantly increase our reach, educating more mothers with evidence-based information about birth and key policy issues.
  
• For those not yet active with social media, or just learning the ropes, we’ll have our laptops fired up, ready to show you how to get signed on!

Why a friendraiser? Because all of the impactful things that a doula does face-to-face - educating families, empowering mothers, connecting women to critical policy issues - can and are being done on social media. Doulas have been among the first birth professionals to embrace these new tools. We want to connect our communities, share tools, and make healthy birth - and midwifery care - go viral!

Three ways to participate in the CfM friendraiser:

1. Share this post on your networks and encourage your family and friends to like us on facebook, follow us on twitter and sign up for our free email list. (Make sure you're connected up too!)
   
2. If you're at DONA this weekend tweet make sure you're signed up for Twitter and tweet under the #DONA11 hashtag. Follow us and give us a shout out by mentioning @cfmidwifery and we'll make sure to retweet and follow you back. Similarly, mention us in a facebook status or post on our facebook page. Watch for conference give-aways and come introduce yourself.
   
3. If you are not attending DONA help spread the amazing information that will be coming out of the conference by following the #DONA11 hashtag on twitter. Come swing by our facebook page--we'll be posting pics and updates throughout the week.

Bonus! If you share this post on your facebook page tag us and we'll head over to like your page AND post your birth page on our wall. This way we can all grow our networks!

When we make these powerful connections--online and in-person-- we're helping to promote the Midwives Model of Care and organizing for future legislative pushes.

Your participation is important and greatly appreciated.

A big thanks to YourDoulaBag.com, Mama Pear Designs and Jillian's Drawers for donating items for us to give-away to friendraiser and conference participants.

Guest Post: The World Needs Midwives – Now More Than Ever

This post is republished from the blog of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:

The World Needs Midwives – Now More Than Ever

It was 1980 in a nomadic community in Mauritania that I first attended a woman during birth. There, I experienced with her the fragile balance of life and death and the sweet joy of a mother embracing her healthy newborn daughter.

Midwife. In the olde English it meant “with woman.” It’s why I became a midwife – to be with women through skilled care and support before, during and after pregnancy and childbirth, so that all women and families everywhere experience the joy and celebration of safe motherhood.

Today is the International Day of the Midwife. But today, like every day, nearly 1000 women will die giving life; and many of their babies will not survive beyond the first hours and days after birth. That’s more than 350,000 women and 5 million infants every year whose lives are lost as a result of preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

And while 99 percent of these deaths happen in developing countries, the United States is not exempt. Thousands of American families suffer the tragedy of maternal and newborn mortality every year.

No mother should have to risk her life or that of her unborn baby going through childbirth without expert care. Yet, globally, one in three women gives birth without a skilled birth attendant. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 3.5 million more health workers – including a million midwives – are needed by 2015. Without them, millions of mothers and children have no one to diagnose and treat illnesses, dispense treatment, or provide immunizations and advice on how to stay healthy and prevent disease.

The International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) has embraced this in their campaign – The World Needs Midwives Now More than Ever and with a commitment to march in honor of women. The theme for this year’s march is The Road to Durban: Midwives Walking for the Women of the World.

Today, around the world, women will walk “for the women of the world.” It’s a journey that starts on the “Road to Durban,” and culminates on the 18th of June at the ICM Congress in South Africa. At the Congress, more than 3,000 midwives will meet to share their knowledge and skills about better quality care and strategies to intensify the fight against maternal and newborn mortality. There too will be the release of the long awaited State of the World’s Midwifery Report and the powerful, poignant Stories of Midwives.

We join with tens of thousands of midwives, today, in walks across the globe to demonstrate our shared commitment to safe motherhood. We walk to show zero tolerance for needless deaths of mothers and newborns. We walk to publicize the urgent need for investments in maternal and newborn health. We walk on this Road to Durban so that one day pregnancy and birth will not mean the road to death for mothers and their babies.

To borrow from the American College of Nurse-Midwives, let’s show the world that together we are “With women, for a lifetime.”

Theresa Shaver is the President and Executive Director of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. Safeguarding the health of mothers and young children is one of the world’s most urgent priorities and a core focus of the foundation’s work; especially in the developing world.

Happy Father's Day!

For in the child lies the future of the world. Mother must hold the baby close so that he knows that it is his world. Father must take him to the highest hill to see what his world is like.

This quote came from the end of the touching Father's Day Flashmob in Denver video organized by Dads Adventure. Make sure to check out the associated article The Dignity of Being a Dad and read about the new brotherhood of dads initiative.

Here are some previous father-specific posts from the CfM blog:

• Book Review: Breastfeeding Facts for Father
• Book Review: Fathers-To-Be Handbook
• Book Review: The Father's Home Birth Handbook
• Happy Father's Day!
• Film Review: Homebirth Dads
• More about Fathers at Birth
• Fathers at Birth
• Father's Day post from 2008
• Review of Pregnant in America DVD.
  

Fatherhood challenges us, but it also enlarges us and reshapes our perception of what is important in the world around us. As we take stock of this new world, we find that doing our job as a dad is inherently honorable and respectful, and brings to us the dignity that goes with the territory. Far from being emasculating, being a dad makes us men in the finest sense of the term. --Dads Adventure

--
Molly
CfM Blogger

GRN: Home Birth Rate Up 20% in Four Years

Hello Friends,

Mothers are clearly calling for a variety of birth options: According to newly released data from the CDC, home birth rates have risen 20% in a four year period (2004-2008). This substantial increase has caught the interest of health care practitioners and policy makers, as well as the mainstream media.

MSNBC and USA Today covered the news and Today Moms, the online parenting network of The Today Show, featured an article called "Why Women Shouldn't Fear Home Birth" by celebrity, Mayim Bialik, who birthed at home.

We are very happy to see this conversation reaching a wider audience and as always, we will continue to work towards ensuring women have access to well-trained midwives in the setting of their choice. You can help by using the CfM Tool Kit: Stand Up for Healthy Birth and Home Birth in your own local community. Please share your efforts with us and the Citizens for Midwifery community on our facebook page.

This clear demand for midwives in various settings is yet another reason why the federal legislation -- "Access to Certified Professional Midwives Act of 2011" (HR 1054) -- is an integral part of creating optimal health outcomes for mothers by securing better access to the high quality care of well-trained midwives.

If you have not already please join the MAMA campaign.


Sincerely,

Hillary Boucher, CfM

P.S. Citizens for Midwifery relies on your generous donations. Please consider supporting us--Click Here to Donate Today!

Book Review: Arms Wide Open: A Midwife’s Journey

Book Review: Arms Wide Open: A Midwife’s Journey

By Patricia Harman
Beacon Press, 2011
ISBN: 978-0807001387
324 pages, paperback, $16.47 (Amazon)
http://www.beacon.org

Reviewed by Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE, CCCE
http://talkbirth.wordpress.com

I very much enjoyed Patricia Harman’s first book, The Blue Cotton Gown, and was delighted to learn about her new memoir, Arms Wide Open which is, in a sense, both a prequel and sequel to her first memoir. The first half of Arms Wide Open chronicles Patsy’s experiences with homesteading and communal living as a young hippie mother in the 1970’s. It also explores her thoughts and experiences with peace activism and her passion for an eco-friendly life. During this time, she attends her first birth and dives into her midwifery journey and eventually becomes a CNM practicing with her hippie-farmer-turned-OB/GYN husband in West Virginia. Her experiences with their years in a joint women’s health practice are described in The Blue Cotton Gown. Readers who, like me, wondered what happened where The Blue Cotton Gown left off, can find out in the second half of Arms Wide Open, which is a narrative of Patsy’s ongoing work with women through 2009 and includes her emotional painful moments in her marriage, as her husband struggles with fears of another lawsuit as well as with chronic pelvic pain patients who abuse his trust (chronic pelvic pain is a specialty of their practice).

I did feel as if there was a large chunk of story missing as the book somewhat abruptly skips from 1978 to 2008. We miss learning about any of Patsy’s experiences in nurse-midwifery school, nor do we learn much about her practice when she was a CNM attending births. The book transitions from her years as a self-taught midwife considering going to school to become a CNM, straight to her present-day years as a CNM in a private women’s health practice.

Harman’s writing style is lyrical and engaging as well as candid. The book is based on personal journals and reading it feels like eavesdropping on someone’s very private thoughts and feelings. The book is much more of a look at a woman’s feelings about her life, than it is a “manifesto” about birth or about the practice of midwifery. In this manner, I feel like you receive a much more complete picture of a midwife’s life and journey, rather than reading a sequence of birth stories. Patsy has a lot of life in addition to birth. While definitely not a “feel good” book, Arms Wide Open is a deeply touching and very honest exploration of one woman’s personal journey in life, love, motherhood, and midwifery.

--

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

Multimedia Review: A Book for Midwives

Multimedia Review: A Book for Midwives
Hesperian Foundation
CD-Rom, 2011
544 page pdf book in English and Spanish
by Susan Klein, Suellen Miller, and Fiona Thomson
ISBN13: 978-0942364-24-8, $16.00
www.hesperian.org

Reviewed by Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE
http://talkbirth.wordpress.com

As a child, I was fascinated by my father’s copy of the book, Where There is No Doctor. Fast forward twenty or so years and imagine my glee when as a birth activist adult, I then discovered A Book for Midwives, also published by the Hesperian Foundation. Hesperian's goal “is to promote health and self-determination in poor communities throughout the world by making health information accessible. [They] work toward that goal by producing books and other educational resources for community-based health.” In keeping with this goal, A Book for Midwives is available for FREE download on the Hesperian site. (Personally, I appreciate the professionally printed version of the book I purchased, because I think it would cost more same in ink to print it myself, but without the nice cover!).

A Book for Midwives is excellent; a true community resource. It is also a very sobering look at the reality of women's health and health care in other countries. It contains reminders such as "do not hit or slap a woman in labor," and other things that can make you cringe. A Book for Midwives is basically a textbook for midwives, health care workers, or educators working in developing countries and/or with very limited resources. I appreciate how it makes information available that is sometimes "hidden" in other books--i.e. explicitly technical content and “how to’s” that are normally reserved only for "professional" people. It is simply written and extremely blunt. There is no fluff and nothing romanticized about pregnancy, labor, and birth. In a way, it was hard to read a book that makes it so very clear how very, very difficult things are for midwives and women in impoverished areas (living in the US, I am used to the "normal, healthy pregnant women" approach to midwifery care). The book covers a wide range of information from preventing infection, treating obstetrical emergencies, doing pelvic exams, and breastfeeding to HIV/AIDS, testing for STDs and cervical cancer, and IUD insertion. There is also a section in the back of the book about medications, medication administration, giving injections, and other topics. It is an extremely comprehensive resource. (Just a side note, in the section on contraceptives, the book is heavily in favor of hormonal methods such as pills as well as very positive about IUDs and sterilization.)

Recently, Hesperian made A Book for Midwives available for purchase on CD. The CD includes the 544 page book as a pdf file in both English and Spanish. Both high resolution and low resolution versions of the book (in both languages) are included on the disk. This format makes it easy for the book to travel with you via laptop for trainings or presentations. I was particularly excited to convert it for my Kindle, making it readily available for travel and reference.

--
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of the CD for review purposes.

Celebrating Midwives & Mothers!

Hello Friends,

This is an exciting week here at CfM because two of our favorite things--midwives and mothers--are being celebrated!

Today, May 5th, is International Day of the Midwife. We are so grateful for the amazing work that midwives do to keep women healthy and safe all over the world. To learn more about the International Day of the Midwife visit the International Confederation of Midwives. You can also participate in the Virtual International Day of the Midwife (VIDM)--an online conference happening all day today.

One way we can thank our midwives and ensure that women have better access to midwives is to support the important federal legislation HR 1054, the "Access to Certified Professional Midwives Act of 2011". We're proud to be working with Midwives & Mothers in Action (M.A.M.A.) to increase women’s access to midwives and to quality, affordable maternity care by securing federal recognition of Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs).

The MAMA Campaign, is a partnership between the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM), Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), Citizens for Midwifery (CfM), International Center for Traditional Childbearing (ICTC), North American Registry of Midwives (NARM), and the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council (MEAC).

Sunday, May 8th, is Mother's Day and we want to honor the amazing ways that mothers care for their families, their communities and for the world. Mother's Day is particularly special to us because CfM was founded by mothers and we work to ensure that all mothers have access to the Midwives Model of Care. We are honored to work alongside you and thank you for being an amazing mother and ally in this work to ensure access to midwives.

This Mother's Day weekend take some time to check out the Every Mother Counts campaign. Getting informed and taking action is an outstanding way to honor ourselves as mothers, the mothers in our lives and mothers all over the world.

Have a great Midwives & Mother's Day!

Warmly,

Hillary Boucher, CfM

International Day of the Midwife

International Day of the Midwife is approaching on May 5th and I encourage you to check out the free online conference offering a day-long roster of speakers and events around this year's theme, The World Needs Midwives Today More Than Ever!

This is so incredibly true. I listened to a birth story yesterday that really made me think about the irreplaceable value of skilled midwifery care. Truly, there is no substitute for it---while, yes, some women also need OB care, I really think all women deserve midwifery care (so, even those high-women who need to see OBs or who need to have cesareans, they still deserve a midwife too!)

On a related note, an online friend/colleague of mine, Kelli Haywood, just wrote a great article about the closing of rural maternity wards and made a clear case for why we need more midwives (now more than ever!).

--
Molly
CfM Blogger

Book Review: Home/Birth: a poemic

Book Review: Home/Birth: a poemic
By Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker
1913 Press, 2011
ISBN 978-0-9779351-7-8
208 pages, softcover, $11
http://www.1913press.org

http://www.facebook.com/pages/HomeBirth-A-Poemic/

Reviewed by Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE, CCCE
http://talkbirth.wordpress.com

Co-authored by a pair of long-time friends, the “poemic” book Home/Birth reads as if you are eavesdropping on a lengthy, juicy, engaging, thought-provoking conversation about homebirth, birth in America, maternity care, and feminism. The book has a lyric, narrative, stream of consciousness format linked together with segments of poetry.

The text does not differentiate between the two speakers/writers, though through the “call and response,” back-and-forth exchange between the two authors, you quickly begin to recognize two distinct voices (as well as other fragments from birth books, bumper stickers, midwives, etc.).

The book was written during Arielle’s second pregnancy, which ends in the stillbirth of her baby boy. Arielle had one prior homebirth and one subsequent homebirth. Rachel had two hospital births and a homebirth prior to the writing of the book.

While the style in which it is written takes some time to get used to, once you tune in to its rhythm, Home/Birth is a unique and fascinating journey. Because it is so distinctive, I find it difficult to describe in writing—you need to make sure to read it for yourself!

--

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.