“Midwives Lead the Way With Quality Care” is the theme for International Day of the Midwife, which is today, May 5th. International Day of the Midwife is celebrated every year on May 5th to acknowledge the importance of the work that midwives do every single day.
Midwives are highly educated, highly skilled health professionals that work collaboratively with women for the best possible outcome – a healthy baby and a healthy Mum. They are passionate advocates for women’s health, help women safely navigate pregnancy, birth and beyond and provide support, care and advice so women can make the best choices for their health, and the health of their babies.
Talk to any woman, who has given birth, about her experience with her midwife and there will always be something amazing to share. The midwife that looked after me with my first born had worked a double shift. She was 25 weeks pregnant with twins. My daughter was born about an hour after she left to go home and a couple of days later (on her day off) she came to the hospital to see me and meet my daughter because she’d missed her birth. I’ll never forget her and the special care she gave me.
“I often think back with gratitude – she was so lovely and showed compassion and interest in us as people, not as problems to be solved. After so much frustration of different breast feeding techniques she partnered with me to feed my boy. The ‘grid-iron manoeuvre’ was brilliant, my husband (who was also trying to help) got it immediately too, and we were on our way – confidence restored, and a little boy who became a passionate lover of all forms of footy.”
“My midwife guided me, was the advocate between my puzzled and scared self and the clinical system. She helped with feeding and managing the stress and expectations of that whilst sleep deprived and emotionally challenged. Months later she’d come and check up on how I recovered, give me tips and guidance on how to ease into motherhood and my new understanding of myself as a woman and partner. I’m still close with her (although I live on the other side of the world). She’s now 70 and has delivered 1000s of babies around the world and remembers them all.”
“Not just birth. After weeks and months of hyperemesis gravidarum (extreme morning sickness) vomiting day and night, I will never forget the kindness of midwives who held back my hair, rubbed my back, wiped my face, gently brushed away my tears, held my vomit bowl or stooped with me over the cold splattered toilet… as I retched and retched and vomited again and again. Their words of encouragement as I lay in the hospital bed , exhausted , depleted, spent… feeling like death. They reminded me that there was an end point, that I could do this, that my baby would be fine, that I was strong enough to endure. They reminded me that the baby I had lost, only a few months earlier, was not neccesarily going to be a story repeated. Without their soft gentle hands and kind hearts, those hours of hell would have been so very much harder. And when I did have my baby, in that same hospital, their words of YIPPEE and YOU DID IT were not hollow sentiment. We had been through it together! And then I did it again….for another baby.”
To all the Midwives out there, all over the world, thank you, we salute you.