Re: [ozmidwifery] ctg stuff

[Justine Caines]

Title: Re: [ozmidwifery] ctg stuff

Dear Sue and all

What an amazing thread!!

Choice is the key.  The choices that are respected and funded are those that prop up the medical monopoly of the big business of birth.

So all you wonderful midwives out there, start/keep saying it.  There are no rules or protocols for women, there is evidence and advice and a duty of care for midwives but at the end of the day a woman must be making the decision.  It is not until we have a full complement of choice from homebirth to elec c/s can we say that women are really making a choice.  Now it is choice within a vacuum of medical dominance.

I heard an interesting thing re ADHD on the radio the other day.  The researcher said “if we only ask Drs we will only ever get a medical response”.  Nothing new but nicely put.  By continuing to defer to medicos when the majority of us have no medical condition we will never make lasting change.

I believe some midwifery stars were recently at a conference espousing the benefits of managed 3rd stage and justified by saying physiological could only ever be considered when things were totally natural so there was no real point etc.  Whilst I understand the pragmatics of that comment and the reality of the current system.  I find this a real sell-out and on par with the CTG argument and many others.

Just because something is the majority does not mean it is right.  Sometimes all the fools are simply on the same side, rich and very powerful ones I know.  

Recently I was told midwives greeted my news of twins at home with reasonable upset saying it was one thing to do it but I should have done it quietly!!  Oh dear.  It would have been so much nicer to have prem babies with respiratory distress (saved by Obstetrics) or a “vaginal birth” in lithotomy with a forceps for twin 2.

Lets get real.  Innocent until proven guilty and  Healthy until proven sick!!

They key to change is in the unity.  If enough midwives and women said No more it would change very quickly.

When we disagree and are challenged let’s ask ourselves where the woman’s rights are in our anger, upset et etc and let’s continue to shout it loudly to Obs ‘cause they have no argument.


JC