IMAGINE a movie by Carla Hartley Click here to view it Carla Hartley is the founder of the Trust Birth Initiative as well as Ancient Art Midwifery Institute. I am so excited to be part of such a wonderful program! Carla’s theories on birth and being a midwife resonate with me perfectly. She has a great blog located HERE. Here are some of my favorite excerpts: |
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My Slant on Midwifery Education |
Becoming a midwife is really a process of becoming MORE of what you probably already are: a server, a nurturer, an encourager. My feeling is that the most important work of a midwife is to help her clients learn more about birth and help them assume the responsibility and ownership for their birth.
So that means a LOT of what we do in Advanced Midwifery Studies is dedicated to client education.
It is my firm belief that people can only assume responsibility for what they know or know about. I see the one of the midwife’s primary functions is that of increasing what people take responsibility for by bumping out the parameters of what they know or know about. Most of the time spent with clients should be spent talking about all the issues surrounding birth and making references and referrals to more information. The enormous potential that midwives have to make a difference in the world is not by how many babies they catch, but by how many women they encourage to trust birth and embrace their rights and responsibilities as birthing women with confidence and joy.
Too much of midwifery education rhetoric these days has the same flavor as those who fear birth.....the focus seems to be on how to help women and babies survive it....as if birth is terribly dangerous. I happen to believe that birth is inherently safe and that we often do more harm |
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Test: Do you REALLY Trust Birth? |
Support of a woman’s right to choose to have her baby alone is a litmus test of sorts for acceptance of Trust Birth Facilitators for this reason: a Trust Birth facilitator must be an extreme birth truster. She has to be sure in her heart that she really trusts "unqualified" birth.....that she believes in the intrinsic safety of birth, itself. Trusting birth with a qualifier (if she has a trained attendant, if she is educated, etc.) negates the whole premise. If birth is only safe with a birth attendant....then which attendant really makes birth safe: Obstetricians would say only obstetricians, but what about CNMs? CPMs? midwives with no official credentials?
And we are back to the same erroneous assumption that birth needs someone or something ELSE to be safe; that birth is not to be trusted WITHOUT an attendant. That premise supports the erroneous assumption that interference is necessary.....
In my opinion, trusting birth, means that you simply trust birth! |
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Transitioning to TRUST BIRTH MIDWIFERY |
Many midwives are operating from a level of fear, even after many years of practice: Fear of not knowing how to handle complications, fear of making mistakes, fear of criticism, fear of litigation, fear of going to jail. These are all legitimate concerns, perhaps, but it is inconsistent with the idea of "with woman" midwifery to practice under a cloud of fear.
I think there is a cure for at least some of those fears. Your fear as a midwife will decrease as you internalize the reality that your role as a midwife is not one of authority but assistance....and that is a life-changing paradigm shift.
Once you think of yourself as a paid consultant and NOT the holder of bottom line responsibility and certainly not the woman's authority, everything is different.
When you think of your role this way, you will realize that most of your work is done long before your client goes into labor. Your role will be to encourage, motivate, and believe in your client. Your work involves helping her recover her own sense of ownership, authority and confidence in her ability to assist her body in doing the job it knows how to do.
Once you LIVE as if you believe that birth is safe and interference is what is risky, and once you realize that the responsibility and authority for what happens to a woman during her birth is her own, and not yours....I think you will find many fears dissipate. |
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TRUST BIRTH Info
