What to think about this.

I've been really busy lately as my older son has been really, really sick (yup might have to start a Lyme Disease blog too!)


I had a moment to stop by my blog here and I was surprised to see a jump in the number of visitors.


When I looked into the source I found that a certain somewhat infamous "Dr.A" added my blog to her blog list.  I imagine this is because of my last post, which did express some dissatisfaction with my midwifery care.    Still how could a attachment parenting, non-vacinating, ICAN leader, home birth believing person, such as myself, end up being linked to by a blogger who I feel no common ground? A blogger who has been discredited by people I respect, and has a real hate on for bloggers I love, such as The Feminist Breeder.


Yes,  I wished that the day of the midwife was not the day before my son's birthday but I guess I should have been more clear that the problem I had was not with midwifery in general, but with the fact that I felt uninformed that registered midwives here are required to "tow the party line" and are in fact much more involved in medical style birth then I had understood.


I didn't realize that the info I was given by one of my midwives: that being 42 weeks pregnant was dangerous for the baby, and that cervidil's prostaglandin was the same as my own hormones and the risks of it's use were that it wouldn't work, were very much hospital dogma and not evidence based.


I didn't understand that in order to keep their hospital privileges, and be allowed to catch babies they must fall in line with the head of obstetrics, and classic OB protocols.   


I also feel that the chance of me experiencing an intervention based birth was not clearly articulated to me.  While we spent at least 10-15 minutes discussing the triple screen test, a test that give indication of relatively rare disorders we spent NO TIME discussing the fact that the hospital I was going to give birth at has more then a 30% cesarean rate, and the fact that my attending midwifes cesarean rate was 17%.  


Since entering the birth advocacy world I have heard so many stories of these types of problems, people thinking that Registered Midwife, means something other then what it does.  I think that a term like Nurse Midwife would be much more forthcoming of the type of care they are able to provide.  


Now all this might seem like complaints against midwives but that 


IS NOT WHAT I'M SAYING!


I believe that many big hearted, women centred, truly caring women become registered midwives.  I think that they are forced in to a position that is difficult to navigate, keep their hospital privileges and help women make choices that will lead them to happy births. Some appear to have become hardened by years of trying to lead women to empowering births against a massive medical/pharmacutical system.   I think back to the little comments my midwives made suggesting home birth, doulas, avoiding induction and now I realize that these little comments were their attempt to give me good information, but when it came mixed with the standard hospital "you could harm your baby" info I missed the good stuff.


I totally support midwives, both registered and not, I just think we are still a ways off from finding truely informed