I had an appointment with my midwife this afternoon, and after all the usual checks, she thought we should talk about my expectations for the delivery, telling me that a new procedure they’re following at the hospital is the Dublin model of active management of labor. Now is it just me, or do those words, “active management of labor,” have an ominous ring to them? Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I don’t need my labor “managed” by anyone.
I talked a little about my own approach with the midwife, and she made some notes in my file to the effect that I want a natural childbirth, without unnecessary monitoring and interventions, but the appointment didn’t exactly leave me feeling confident about what awaits me in the delivery room. For one thing, a peculiarity of the Swedish system is that there’s a sharp division of pre-natal midwives and childbirth midwives, which means that the woman I’ve been seeing for the past several months will have nothing whatsoever to do with my labor and delivery. For another, the term “midwife” is rather a bad, if universal, translation from the Swedish, and these health care professionals are really nothing of the sort. Instead, they’re obstetrical nurses, and past experience has taught me to view them as a fairly intervention-happy lot even before this whole “Dublin model” business.
Up until now, I had been looking forward to a relatively calm and tension-free delivery, but now I can’t help feeling — again — that I’m going to have to fight to have things the way I want them. I want to keep a positive outlook, but at the moment the most upbeat description I can give my feelings about the whole affair is “resigned.”
With my first, I had a midwife assisted home birth (considered ‘weird’ and hippy in this part of Canada). I saw the same midwives prenatally that helped me deliver. It was a fantastic experience and one I had hoped to duplicate with my second.
Alas, the govt. got their hands in the mix and changed the ‘rules’ about how the midwives in these areas could practice. Days before my labour my blood pressure rose beyond the allowable limits and I was forced to deliver in a hospital. Luckily my midwife was able to come with me and the nurse I had was the best. Can’t say I liked the OB very much – she didn’t like my hands-and-knees position, she barely caught my son and she tried to rush the placenta delivery. Hospital deliveries make me very nervous (Ricki Lake has a documentary out [ala Michael Moore] dealing with these issues]. I’m not sure when labour and delivery became something to be ‘managed’ like an illness. As you can tell, it’s still a hot button issue for me.
Wow, you don’t hear of very many first-time moms having homebirths — very cool that you had one. I have to admit, I’d never considered it myself until after Tage was born (terrible hospital birth experience, ugh). When I was pregnant with Petra, I looked into the possibility quite a bit, but found that it’s not so easy to do up here in the far reaches of Sweden, due to all sorts of rules and regulations. I’ve got to confess, though, there’s a part of me that’s thought about just staying home a bit too long when the time comes, then having an “oops” sort of homebirth!
I hadn’t heard of the Ricki Lake documentary before, but I did a little searching, and it looks like something I’d like to see. Of course, I’ll probably just come away from it angrier and more frustrated, but I suppose that’s part of the point.