When the woman who was my preceptor for my clinical experience in
nurse-midwifery school was a student 14 years ago, she had to put up with
the anesthesiologists coming around when her client would be 4 -6 cm or
so and telling them "you don't have to suffer anymore. We can take away
this pain". Of course, they never bothered to mention the down side of
their interventions..... (BTW, in her area of rural Oregon, she was also
accused of being a "witch". Sound familiar, fellow "cultists"?)

We have a new (in the area one year) OB in town whose big selling point
is the intrathecal he offers. I have no idea what he says in his office.
He has a nurse who is also a nurse-midwifery student (but who looks to me
to be tending toward the junior-doc model of midwifery -- gag) who
"tries" to tell women about natural childbirth in her birth classes but
somehom the message the women get is how wonderful intrathecals are.
Hummm....

One of the things to keep in mind is that it is easy to sabotage a woman
giving birth by 1)conveying doubt about her ability to give birth 2)
making the process unnecessarily painful but keeping her attached to
constant fetal monitors, in bed, hooking her up to IV's, denying food
(and sometimes anything by mouth) and 4)by converying the attitude that
birth is pathology! And this goes on daily, ad nauseum, in the average
hospital.

I believe that helping women to breastfeed is very empowering, but that
the way birth is treated and the way that breastfeeding is treated and
the choices this "management" entails are inextricably linked. Birth,
like breastfeeding, is often primarily a confidence game!  Women in this
culture are not having confidence built in any aspect of their normal
bodily functions. Look at all the debate over "treating" things like
menopause.  Think of the huge market our there in "treating" female
complaints.  It isn't that these modalities are not appropriate and
reasonable sometimes, it is the treatment of almost every normal feminine
function as potential pathology.  Seems like a very subtle but effective
way to excercise power over women to me.

Well, off my soap box for the moment. Thank you everyone who sent me
congrats on my recent certification as a CNM.  To followup on the job
offer I mentioned, I did accept the job with the rural doc though it
means a long commute. My plans for a local practice have been temporarily
derailed by local politics but I am very excited about the opportunity I
do have.  My job will include lactation consulting and well baby care of
newborns up to the first 6 weeks at least. If anyone has some good
newborn followup exam forms they would like to share, please email me
privately.

Ione Sims, CNM, MSN, IBCLC (who has also been blessed with 3 inches of
powdery snow this AM)
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