There is confusing post on HJHOP about evil midwives. What? What? I’ve never before met anyone with a bad word to say about midwives. (They would be the Mother Teresas of the health services, if you just count the public admiration and ignore all the actually unplesant things about Mother Teresa)

I assume it’s a spoof. I realise it isn’t. I read it to try to understand what anyone could have against midwives. He’s even turned off comments, hence this post. Then I see it’s another of those transatlantic definition issues.

Obviously US and UK midwives are so different that we are referring to completely different jobs when we think of “midwives”. UK midwives are the experts in childbirth. Some work in hospitals or ante-natal units, some provide home care. They can basically do pretty well anything at a birth except the really surgical stuff. They are much more skilled and qualified at delivering babies than most doctors.

There are both male and female midwives. It’s not a “girl power” thing, ffs, HJ. (That’d be like the obstetric equivalent of dental nurses having to be tooth-fairy worshippers.)

It’s a medical specialty. For the benefit of you former-tea-tax dodgers 🙂 Americans, English midwives must spend years in professional and practical training. In fact I think (possibly wrongly) that they can’t even start to train in their specialty until they’ve trained and practised as nurses. They don’t operate out of the backs of trailers.

Yes, a fair number of midwives actively favour minimising unnecessary medical intervention (the complete lack of success of which perspective is shown by the ever-rising numbers of caesarian births) but any of them would be in pretty deep dogdoo if they failed to get a dangerous case properly treated.

And, blow me down with a gas and air canister, they do have access to heart monitors, anaesthesia, scanners, medicines and the full range of hi-tech birth requisites.

It looks as if midwives are completely different in the USA. HJHop talks about them offering “empowering experiences” and “bringing woolly hats”. The sort of people HJHop is talking about sound like alternative health practitioners – at best, birth coaches, at worst charlatans.

But then, there is no mileage in amateurs charging people for inexpert birth-help in a country where you can get the real thing free from teams that always consist of doctors AND midwives. *smug smirk of person who has access to free healthcare*