“To be able to assist women in their most vulnerable moments ... and then to observe the transition from woman to mother and man to father ... is the most beautiful thing to behold.” WhatItsLike
Yet, some argue that their importance in the health sector is overlooked and the profession is often neglected.
“Midwifery, where care includes proven interventions for maternal and newborn health as well as for family planning, could avert over 80% of all maternal deaths, stillbirths and neonatal deaths,” the World Health Organisation states in its 2020 campaign to honour nurses and midwives.“Midwifery is the core of maternal health.
According to Colleen Frost, a former midwife, one of the best parts of the job was the relationships she built with patients. But the drive towards medicalisation and interventions is slowly being tempered by the realisation “that all these shiny interventions are not good for us”. She says that unnecessary interventions can cause setbacks for the newborn, as some babies are born slightly prematurely, as well as difficulties with bonding between mother and child, breastfeeding and a longer recovery time.
“I remember feeling so dizzy,” she adds. “The smells and everything were completely foreign. I wanted to faint!”Losing a patient, whether it is the mother or the baby, can haunt a midwife. According to Frost, the patients that she remembers most are the ones who lost their babies.“When they lose their babies in the form of a stillbirth, they still have to go through the normal birth process. There’s no joy in that. That I remember quite vividly.
According to senior manager for education and training at the South African Nursing Council Suyekiye Nxumalo, the reason South Africa’s path to midwifery is different to that of some other countries like the Netherlands, which have a direct qualification for midwifery, is due to the demands of the public health sector.
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