Midwifery Fitness

What does midwifery have to do with fitness? Hours and hours of squatting or sitting in strange positions. The ability to bear part of someone's body weight without injury. Hours without eating and little sleep. All of this is easier on you if you are fit.

What is fitness?

We tell women that they need to be fit, eat right and take care of themselves. We are examples and in place to practice what we preach. If we won't do it how can we ask them to?

We have many excuses for physical lack of fitness. It's too hot, it's too cold, I have to study/work or plain I am too busy.  That Mama She's Fit

We have excuses for not keeping mentally fit. Taking a class, learning something new or becoming better at something we know well. I am too busy, I am too tired or again I am too busy. (Gloria's classes)

We are a time of crisis in midwifery where midwives are angry at each other for the stances that they are taking on many issues. To keep emotionally fit in order to serve women, all women, we must learn to think from other points of view, to really examine another and see where they are right and how we can inform and encourage or we will all lose. Again the same excuses apply.   Australian Midwives in Trouble

Our spiritual health is what feeds ourselves, our families and our relationships. If we lose this to our excuses we very well may not have anything to offer those that we love or those that we serve.  My Faith

The interesting thing about fitness in all these areas is that as you put effort in you get more energy. As you find a way to exercise and eat right daily you will have more energy.  You recover quicker from long sleepless nights and stress is released.

When you challenge yourself to learn new things , thinking becomes easier and you stay sharp.

When you challenge yourself to know the issues that other midwives are facing and are willing to learn from each other and have relationships it strengthens our purpose as a whole.

Finally when you take time to practice your faith it will be strong when you need to depend on it. it will help others find the way to peace and hope and it will dis-spell fear.  Trust Birth

 I know that we can all make excuses to not take care of ourselves. if we choose the way of self-martyrdom and do not keep ourselves fit we become unhappy, discontent and often burnt out. Please take some time to examine what you can do to stay "holistically fit".

You may not fill in the blanks the same as I do but do fill them in. Become a fit person.

Skijoring

Right to privacy

 As a culture we have been trained to let the professionals  tell us what is best for us. They interpret the data and summarize it for us. We trust that their own bias will not get in the way of that interpretation. We have been led to believe that they will not follow the $$. This idea has been schooled into us. This idea is not serving us well as birthing women.

So it is with midwifery. People want to see the government give authority to midwives so that woman can have  woman centered care or birth somewhere besides a hospital. This sounds all well and good until you take it apart.

We have a right to be in our bodies. We didn't need to get any permission from anybody on this planet to get here. We do not have to get permission to remain in our bodies. If a person does not know that they have this as a right or are too weak to claim this right  (controlling)  people may try to take this away.

Pregnancy and birth happen inside a woman's body that she has a right to be in. Where to give birth is an issue of rights. Not for midwives as a group or profession but for women as pregnant and birthing women."

With rights come responsibilities. If a group of people gives up their responsibility they give up there rights along with it. Responsibility can be a scary thing. It requires us to make decisions and accept the consequences of them.

Control and fear. Have you ever watched George Orwells 1984 or read it? It shows a society where people are kept in constant fear in order that the government can control them. Everything is uncertain and free thought is a crime. Whenever anyone tries to make you afraid  it is to gain control of you. To have you turn over that right to your body to them. To give them responsibility for you.

There are certain times in life where we have to give over this right. Before the age of maturity and when we are very sick in some way that we are not able to use the part of the body (brain) that guides in out decisions.

Pregnancy and birth are not sickness. If you give into this thinking what you are saying is that when, as a woman, I am pregnant or giving birth I am sick and unable to make decisions for myself I am giving up my rights to whomever. This has been imposed on women by laws. So what the law is saying is you are sick when you are in the "condition" of being pregnant or giving birth.

Are you getting mad yet. I did 20 some odd years ago. I don't think this was right and so exercised my right with whom I wanted when it was not legal. My body and my brain function just fine while I am pregnant and while I am giving birth. I choose to have people around me that when "in the moment"when I am less than strong my support ,that I have chosen, to have around me will help uphold that right. If in fact I am in danger I choose to let these people who love me make a decision for me.

"Birth is a human rights issue" is something I have seen around recently. It is true. It is. Women this is your issue. As women we have to be understand that in this country at this time you have rights. It is being taken away in other countries and in some it doesn't exist. Do you know that if you do not claim rights in our country that it is assumed that you have waived them. And do you understand that as a group that if we continue to waive out rights at some point they are forgotten?

 "I believe there is clearly a privacy issue involved in the right to offer and receive one's choice of services in health care, education, psychology and legal matters." Legal Guidelines for Unlicensed Practitioners. " Dr. Lawrence Wilson.

 Use it or lose it. We have to understand as moms and birthing parents that there is not anyone who has the right to make decisions for us unless we give them that privilege. We have the right to choose where and with whom we have our babies. We must use that right in order that we and others do not lose this right. This means on every procedure that is offered to us. We have the right of acceptance and refusal.

Our right to our person is too important to let slip away by slowly letting people we pay to take over our responsibility to choose what we will do with our  own body. We have a grassroot movement of women that are not afraid to take the responsibility and birth free of legislation.

A shout out to you women , those that have come before, those yet to come and the men that love ans support them. Let's keep pressing forward.

Woman to woman relationships

Having a baby is one of those times when we really need other women. We need their support, love,  kindness and courage. What we don't need is their shame, guilt, worry and criticisms. In my faith it is said that the older women should teach younger women. This is the reachable ideal.

But for a few times in life my own  experience with women in my life has been anything but good and rarely kind. Frankly women still are a bit frightening and I am pushing 50. My mother and I were rivals and not close until I had my own children. My sister and I have spend years not speaking until we have gotten older and maybe wiser. I have had friends that when I made mistakes or changed we were no longer friends. This has all been painful and often I have wanted to build a strong wall of defense so it would never happen again.

Inspite of this I have an wonderful relationships with my daughters and are embarking on one with a grand daughter. I have the privilege of helping many women in that most open of places in a woman's life, pregnancy and birth.  I have had to evaluate and change myself at every step of the way in order for this to happen.

The woman that served in my births drove hours to get to my house in an illegal atmosphere and charged very little to sit with me through pre-labors and hours of labor. She didn't complain when she had to go home when the labor stopped and came whenever I called. She was a woman there for me in my time of need. There were things in my labors, knowing what I know now, maybe I would change and leave alone but I hesitate to bring them up because I was not left alone.

There are many reasons that women help women. Not all of them are nobel, kind or wanted. There are those that control, abuse, take over, stifle growth and all sorts of nastiness in the name of help.  There is a kind of woman that helps a woman to death. Takes over decisions, hovers and treats one like a fool. There is a kind of women that shares, encourages, empowers and loves to help other women with a desire to see a woman grow beyond her help.

Midwifery and motherhood holds a kind of power to bring women into right relationship with each other. It also has the ability to stifle growth and hurt women so badly that it can take them years, if ever, to recover and be able to reach out again.

Our bonds of being women with women have been almost thread bare in the lives of many of us. Many have given up and don't even try anymore. We are wary of each other often with good reason as we have been attacked when we were most vulnerable we needed the hands of those other strong women and it wasn't there.

How we are is how we are. If we are not kind we are not kind. If we help we help. We cannot pick and choose the who of it only the what. What this means is that if we are not kind to that woman, any woman, we aren't going to have the ability to be truly kind to the woman in labor. It is not going to happen. We aren't tigers one day and bunnies the next.

Back to the ideal. Women being there for each other in order that we can teach, learn, share, cry, birth, yell, have a fit, love without shame in front of each other in all walks of our lives.

Relationships with women is not going to be easy we are seasonal creatures and we change often through the month, the seasons and our lives. This is beautiful. There can be stability in change. The strong spirit that was put within us, this is the nurturer that is needed for life.

Women nurturing each other in pregnancy

The other day I had an amazing thing happen. I was driving with another midwife and I received a call that a dear friend had died. I was in shock. This friend reached out a touched my arm and told me how sorry she was.  I was undone. In that moment I realized how little of that I have received in my life and how much I needed it. A few days before I was at a birth and had helped a mom reposition, her hip was killing her. You know the spot if you have had a baby. I began rubbing it as she sighed in relief. Then she looked at me and said "how did you know where to rub, that was just the right spot" a few minutes later she let me catch her baby. I touched a woman in her need and I needed that too.