Back before Christmas, I wrote about a meeting that was held wherein consumers, birth advocates and birth workers met to discuss the state of the birthing and midwifery community of Ottawa. Arguably, we didn't get as much done in that meeting as we had intended. We didn't do a lot of troubleshooting or brainstorming of ideas as to how to right this situation, or what sort of actions might need to be taken to effect change. But we did generate a healthy and lengthy discussion of the issues, one which was at times emotional, at times heated (not argumentative, just very passionate) and at times very objective.
That previous post was linked to by a number of people interested in this issue, people who feel strongly about or are connected to birth work in Ottawa. That post got more hits in the space of three days than the rest of this blog put together. But apparently it struck a wrong chord with at least one party. I have since heard that one person felt that it was too "emotionally and personally written" and she refused to forward on the link to other interested people.
I heard about this last night, and I have been bothered ever since. There are two reasons why, one silly and unimportant and the other far more significant and with wider reaching implications.
The first reason I am bothered is totally personal. I never intended that post to be an objective news source. It was merely my reflection on the meeting and my own thoughts inspired by that discussion. I am by no means an expert in birth work or midwifery care: I am simply a woman, a feminist, and a mother, one who feels strongly about the sanctity of birth, the sanctity of choice, the sanctity of bodily autonomy and individual rights, and who advocates for these things as best I can. That other people found the post interesting or edifying is flattering and encouraging, but I think also speaks highly of the subject matter and not just the author or the copy itself.
The second and far more significant reason I am bothered is this: birth is emotional. It is an emotional subject. I - and many other people like me - feel strongly that birth is supposed to be an emotional topic. It must be if it is to be the experience we so fiercely believe it ought to be. But I've been hearing a lot of arguments for an increasingly 'business-like' approach to effecting change within the state of birth.
Consider that term: business-like. Business.
Birth should never be a business. It is an intimate, personal experience. It is a rite of passage, in so many ways, and it is sacred. We cannot - must not! - must fight against making the sacred into merely a business.
We can argue that we must find a way to work within the existing framework, the existing model of care, to effect the change we desire. Midwifery in Ontario has achieved just that and has become fairly mainstream, and is now entirely covered by Ontario Health Insurance, allowing every mother, regardless of income, to have a midwife-attended birth either in hospital or in a home. Well done, we can say, and pat ourselves on the back for such an achievement.
But we must also be honest with ourselves. We must admit that there are some serious flaws with this model, that the midwives and mothers are suffering from this overly business-like model of care, that by fitting that round peg of holistic care into the square hole of allopathic obstetric care, we had to make concessions. And those concessions, those necessary compromises, are starting to cause problems.
At our last meeting, we who were concerned about the current state of birth in Ottawa were told by someone who has been an advocate for midwifery care for decades that we have "a very fortunate problem". That we are lucky to be in a position where we can complain about some of the actions taken by some midwives, because 15 years ago, the fight was simply to have midwifery licensed and made legal. We are lucky, we were told. At least there are midwives for us to complain about.
And I said, "For now. But if our midwives are leaving the region, leaving the province, leaving the profession entirely because they are so disheartened, so unhappy, so fed up or just so scared that they cannot practice, then we are still back where you [the midwifery advocates] started; there won't be any midwives for us, or there won't be enough for the number of birthing women who want midwifery care."
I think perhaps the time for compromising is past. Perhaps it's time to stop playing the obstetric game, and force the establishment to play ours. After all, these are our bodies, our babies, our births. Ours, and ours alone.
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