One mother, one midwife campaign

[hunkermunker]

Not sure if this has been highlighted before now, but think it's very important!

snafu, doesn't an independent MW build a 'retainer' into her fee to account for the fact that she has to turn away people who's babies are due around the same time as yours in case they clash?

Wouldn't it be pretty difficult (despite it being a very lovely idea) to justify spending NHS funds on this, unless those MWs were somehow filling up those weeks when your baby is due, but not arrived yet, looking after antenatal or postnatal women?

Mears, do you have any thoughts on this?

I would like to work in this way and provide complete antenatal, intraprtum and post natal care. It is such a radical shift in thinking that I do not think it will get off the ground here TBH. There isn't a recruitment and retention problem in Scotland of midwives. Wish I could afford to take the risk to be a IM but I need the security of regular wage. Would love to see this new way of working as midwives take off.

mears: can you imagine the queue at your door from one 'Independent Midwife Available - goes by the name of 'mears' advert on MN ?

And when MNers tell their friends ?

PMSL - you, oh learned and kind person, would be as busy as a bee !!!!!!!!!

Really.

Now, I don't know what kind of fee you might be comfortable setting, and how tight your 'birthing window' would need to be to accommodate an adequate number of clients in a given month to equal your earnings, but surely it could be made to add up ?

(Or am I missing something) ?

Not sure the demand is here Hub. We provide one-to-one care in labout as it is. IM cannot afford insurance and I don't think I would like to work without it.

I agree the insurance is a necessary component, and I am completely unaware of how much it would cost. Perhaps a group of IMs within one practice might be feasible ?

One-to-one care in labour is, of course, but one isolated component of pre=conception / early weeks / regular antenatal / birth / bf & baby care / sleep routines etc. etc. etc.

Maybe the situation is much better in Scotland than, for example, in London... but, if it is your dream to work in that fashion, then maybe time will show you a way to make it happen !

i had independent midwives for my birth which is, i believe directly related to the fact that i had an amazingly positive (if long) experience...

i've signed up and support this movement wholeheartedly.

mears, trust me, you'd make a fortune!

my midwives just told me 'no insurance, and birth has no guarantees. then gave me the stats (in years and years of working their centre had lost one baby due to mother not taking their advice)...i accepted that.

i do think it is absolutely awful that you can only get continuity of care (guaranteed) in huge swathes of the UK if you pay a lot of money....

I agree, Sophable. It's possible (and has worked well in other countries), therefore it should be more widely available in this one.

It works here in NZ and is completely fab. The doctors (GPs) never seem to stop moaning about it though, but I think that's possibly because it was a nice little earner for them.

Part of my decision to not have another child is because neither my midwife or back up midwife are currently working in this area.

I lived in a rural area and there was 2 community midwives through my pregnancy. My midwife was sick throughout my pregnancy and I saw her once. The rest of the time was temps. I am convinced I had depression during the pregnancy and when I spoke to the Doctor and midwife they told me it was normal to feel the way I did. I didn't feel that way with my 1st. Part of what convinces me that I had depression is when DS was born I was diagnosed with severe postnatal depression but I actually felt BETTER than I had done throughout my pregnancy. I am angry because I did ask for help and was directly told I was wrong. I think if I had had one person throughout the pregnancy they would have seen the huge change in my and maybe offered me more support.

yes snafu, that's what i meant, sorry it wasn't v clear.

Presumably you then just have to put up with having your antenatal/postnatal care rearranged at short notice if one of your MW's other patients goes into labour?

I guess the whole point is that you build a proper relationship with your midwife. The assumption is therefore that each party is able to have an on-going dialogue and arrangements may be able to be more 'casual' and flexible than they would under the traditional model of set hospital appts etc. Of course if you hire an IM at the moment, you do so on the understanding that she/he also has other clients for whom she/he is the primary contact. Maybe someone who has had care from an IM could expand on what happens if you are meant to be seeing your midwife and she is called out to an emergency?

As I said, the idea is that this model would run alongside the current NHS system, so I guess ultimately if you would feel unhappy about the possibility of having an appointment cancelled at short notice because another of your midwife's clients has gone into labour, perhaps this option wouldn't be the best one for you?

no, i think it's fantastic, just trying to get it clear in my head cos I'm thinking of writing to the minister responsible about it and want to have some idea what i'm talking about.

thanks for the explanation snafu

am very of all those who got one-to-one care btw (especially mears's patients!) - for the first 6 hours of active labour, I got the postnatal ward MWs poking their heads in from time to time and that was it .

Ha - me too! Hospital postnatal care was utter rubbish and one-to-one care would have made the world of difference to me... I'd love to see a move towards this new way of working - maybe by the time I qualify it will be an option for me

(Oh, and I didn't mean 'you' as in 'you, CarolinaMoon' btw, I meant 'you' as in 'one', iyswim. Badly written!)

I was dinosaur - were you? crap wasn't it (if so)

Yeah, I was too. It was awful

yes, continuity of care would have been nice postnatally, as opposed to:

MW: 'ooh, this baby looks a bit jaundiced'

me: 'yes, that's why he's been under a phototherapy lamp for the last two days'

bloody hell, if 2004 was better I dread to think what it must have been like before.

my dad thought the ward I was on looked like the aftermath of some disaster, with beds and cots and visitors crammed in to every available space.

The pn ward midwives had a nice line in breastfeeding tuition. The tried and tested 'grab mum's boob, shove in baby's mouth, leave'. Never fails.

And I particularly warmed to the MCA who flung back the curtains, slammed down a jug of water and demanded to know why I hadn't 'got it [bfing] sorted yet', three hours after the birth.

doens't really cover it.

What is WRONG with these people who are meant to be caring for us?! WHY are they doing the job in the piddling first place?!

My community midwife didn't have any kind of liking or respect for women or babies - she was on the slide into retirement, but that's no excuse for treating people like poo!

Ooh, my T-shirt for DS from the One Mother, One Midwife campaign arrived today - it's lovely!