----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 10:38
PM
Subject: [ozmidwifery] Do you think she
will ever 'get' it?
My Response.........................
Dear Miranda,
Prof Tracey is not an impartial observer, she is
however, an expert in her
field. Very few studies are conducted by
impartial observers. They may, like
you, review some of the studies that
may make it in to the popular media,
and make broad, biased statements
based on hearsay from people such as
anaesthetists.
Your statements
indicate that you wish to reduce women's choices of place of
birth and
mistakenly state that a woman can have a drug free natural birth
where
there are specialists hanging in the corridors, or more accurately
sticking their heads, uninvited, into a birthing woman's room and openly
offering an epidural before he leaves the unit!! (Yes, this is true!!). Or
the obstetrician who invites himself into the room and wants to know why
she
isn't progressing at the "right" rate, while policy and protocol has
kept
her immobilised on a bed by a monitor, an intravenous drip and other
interventions which interfere with the woman's natural birthing
hormones.
Dr Tracey's research was about proving the safety of small
birthing units.
Outcomes for low risk women were compared according to
size (number of
births per annum) of the birthing unit. The study found
that women who
birthed in small units had significantly less medical
intervention, fewer
caesareans and fewer neonatal problems than women
birthing within a large
unit. Miranda, this study compares low risk with
low risk in a variety of
settings, and the smaller units win hands down to
the larger ones.
Keeping places like Ryde, Wyong and Belmont open, for
those who are suited
to these services, avoids unnecessary wasting of
resources in our
over-stretched health system. Would you take your child
to a paediatrician
for a cut knee or a sore throat?? It is most likely you
would utilise your
general practitioner, not the specialist.
I
would also like to discuss your comment on being primarily concerned for
the health of mother and baby with little concern for the woman's lived
experience in childbirth. Any student nurse can tell you that the notion
of
health encompasses far more than the physical aspect of the body. The
consequences of traumatic birth experiences can be profound for the woman,
baby, her family and the wider community. Post traumatic stress disorder
is
not uncommon, post natal depression is very common and puerperal
psychosis
can be triggered as well. The cost on the health system of birth
related
mental health disorders is enormous and the literature clearly
describes the
effects on the children and families of women with these
problems.
Breastfeeding difficulties are also far more common when women
have had
intervention in birth and in the early postpartum period. This
equates to
further unnecessary costs to the health system, as it is well
documented
that breastfed babies are far less likely to experience various
health
disorders (too many to list).
You have acknowledged that the
ideal situation is a woman having a natural
"delivery" (pizza anyone???),
with a midwife. This would mean, according to
research, that the woman is
far less likely to experience any such
complications, and that such
complications, if they did occur, would be
recognised and appropriately
managed in a timely and proficient manner. It
would also mean that a woman
is far less likely to be desperate for pain
relief, as under the care and
education provided by her midwife throughout
her pregnancy, she would have
few fears and trust in the process of birth,
hence not embarking upon the
fear/tension/pain cycle that has become
epidemic since the medicalisation
of childbirth.
Miranda, you may well have had noble intentions when
writing your article,
if the government was your target why demonise
midwifery and smaller
birthing units? But no matter how many machines that
go "ping" and experts
to decipher them exist in the birth place, some
babies will still die and
occasionally a mother too. Sometimes heroic
measures to save a baby, lead to
catastrophe as well, despite the outcome
of a 'live' baby and mother. There
is a far bigger picture here. Much more
than can be expressed in your tiny
column in a Sunday paper. If you really
care about women and babies, talk to
women, see what they value and hear
the stories of horror and birth rape of
some who have been irrevocably
damaged by the 'management' of birth. It
takes more than reading and
writing about a subject for ten years to fully
understand it. Women do
have a choice to birth where the 'best' doctors can
care for them, what
many women dont have, is a choice to birth where it is
'best' for
them.
Regards
Diane
