#1 Midwives have no rights apart from serving parents. Nobody wants to hear it, but it is true.
#2 Authentic midwifery is about serving mothers, not saving mothers or babies, from birth.
#3 Midwifery that incorporates, or is based on THE lie, is not authentic midwifery. I am interested in honoring and saving authentic midwifery because it serves parents WITHOUT adding risk or diminishing safety. (THE lie is that birth is a medical event. It rarely is. When it is, thank God we have medical facilities and medical personnel.)
#4 Midwives who believe that their presence, or drugs or gadgets make birth safe don't believe the same things that I do about birth. My beliefs are grounded in science and wholesale trust in the physiology of birth. So, when we talk about midwifery, we are often talking about something different.
#5 I believe that if you are going to call yourself a midwife, that you need to invest in a comprehensive education that includes the history of midwifery, nutrition, anatomy, physiology, terminology, normal labor and birth, the newborn, counseling and communication skills, some basic biology and microbiology, complementary studies, possible complications and how to prevent them, possible emergencies and how to recognize and respond appropriately. Of course there are many other things included in my curriculum. However, I do not believe that midwifery students need algebra, composition, chemistry, pharmacology.
