"This is a crisis for everyone": How you can support midwives ahead of Sunday's March for Midwives

[JuliaMumsnet]

Hello - here's something from March for Midwives (scroll down for what you can do and tell us below if you're getting involved):

"Four weeks ago four doulas were lying in bed on a Sunday morning having a whatsapp conversation about how hopeless we all felt about the state of maternity care. A Royal College of Midwives (RCM) report last month revealed that 60% of UK midwives are considering leaving the profession, and sadly none of us were surprised. We all had stories to share of midwives in tears and birthing families neglected or coerced through their maternity journey.

One of us, Paula Cleary, who lives in March in Cambridgeshire, said that she was considering having a ‘March in March’ to protest against the understaffing in her local hospital. The rest of us all responded that this needed to be everywhere because this is a nationwide issue!

So March With Midwives was born that morning. Becki Scott set up a Facebook group and we all invited our birthworker friends. It grew rapidly, to over a 1000 people that first week.

We quickly realised this was tapping into the zeitgeist. Maternity workers and families were joining the group in droves, anxious to share their stories. The group became an emotional maelstrom as midwives and parents shared their trauma and sadness. We realised these voices needed to be captured so that the powers that be could really understand the depths of the crisis. So we set up an online form for service users and health professionals to write about how the staffing crisis has affected them, either anonymously or with their name.

We rapidly realised we needed help. The group was growing exponentially and we were inundated with people asking us for guidance on all number of things - are midwives allowed to attend? What is the RCM and NMC saying? How do we risk-assess a local demonstration? Do we need insurance and do we need to alert the police? (All questions we have answers to in the group now - just check our announcements and shared files).

We gathered a steering group around us of fellow doulas and midwives. We knew we needed a diverse group that represented parents, lay birth workers, NHS midwives and independent midwives. And, given the outrageous statistics on increased risk of maternal death for Black and Brown mothers and birthing people, we were also determined to include people from marginalised communities so that their voices could be amplified.

We realised we had an opportunity here to gather a diverse range of maternity voices under one banner, so we embarked on writing a manifesto summing up the issues and calling for some simple, emergency crisis management measures.

We also wrote a template letter for people to send to their MPs. We called for everyone to stand up around the country on the same day, at the same time, and called these gatherings vigils, to underscore the deep grief so many of us feel at the broken state of maternity services.

Meanwhile, the group grew. And grew. At the time of writing the facebook group contains nearly 20,000 people. Our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages are growing by the day. Our inboxes are flooded with people sharing their stories and wanting to help. A handful of distressed doulas has grown into a grassroots movement with real momentum.

So what exactly is up with the service? To cut a long story short, we quite simply do not have enough of anything - too few midwives, too few beds, not enough resources or time, which leads to not enough energy or compassion for the families needing support. The result? Parents that are damaged by either too much medical intervention or, conversely, falling through the cracks and not receiving the medical care they need. Those of us working with families in the postnatal period were not surprised when research found that up to a third of mothers/birthing people have symptoms of trauma.

As Elsie Gayle, experienced midwife, says, "The inevitability of the 'shoehorning' of maternity care into structures that continue to cause the systematic erasure of midwives, avoidable damage, deaths and long term trauma to families. It pains me to watch British maternity care diminish to its lowest point ever in the pursuit of the economies of scale."

Burned out midwives are abandoning the wrecked ship in droves; physical and mental health in tatters. Recent research found that midwives are increasingly suffering with PTSD. Urinary tract infections are common because they have no time to go to the toilet and they’re often not drinking on shift to reduce the urge to go. The pandemic has merely exposed an existing crisis in staffing and worsened staff retention. Meanwhile, students are also leaving their courses before graduation or shortly after qualifying, as the work conditions are so horrific. This means that the Government’s assurances that many new midwives are being trained is simply not the solution.

This isn’t a looming crisis. We have known about the staffing issues for years. The stuff has now well and truly hit the fan and we urgently need the voices of parents, midwives and doulas to be heard by the government. This is a crisis that affects everyone. We all have loved ones using this service and potentially carrying the ripple effects of trauma into the rest of their lives.

If you want to get involved, this is what you can do:

• Join the March With Midwives Facebook group
• Repost our Twitter and Instagram content
• Make a 30 second video about why you support the campaign and post it with the hashtag #MarchWithMidwives
• Write to your MP
• If you can, find your local vigil (there is a map in the announcements in the Facebook group) and come join us on Sunday 21st November at 2pm

Together, we can amplify the voice of those who are so often silenced."

@MaddieM - you say 'Women are not being erased when we use additive language" but we're telling you we FEEL erased, and you are not listening! You are diminishing our concerns and feelings as 'boring deflections' to your cause. Do you really not see how sad this is: You're calling for us to support you, but we feel unsupported by you in what we consider to be an important topic, but that you deem to be an 'unnecessary rant'. Women are expressing their opinions on this thread, and you act as though we are inconveniencing you.

The very first post on this thread queried why this topic wasn't gaining traction on Mumsnet, you've been given the answer over and over again. Listen.

So you think Fathers aren't damaged by birth trauma? Of course parents are damaged, whoever they are. This campaign is about everyone's voices being heard - and I would like to point out that, far from erasing women, I use the word more than once in a very short piece. The constant and I must say, very boring, deflection from this important issue into an unnecessary rant about gender politics is very disappointing. Women are not being erased when we use additive language - it takes just a little more ink to ensure that everyone feels included in our public utterances. I am sending you feminist solidarity - we really do not need to be at odds on this!

I've given birth twice. I've had birth trauma and been left with life-changing injuries. My husband was there and saw it all happen. I'm very aware of what fathers go through. As hard as it was for him, at the end of the day he isn't the one who had to have corrective surgery and deal with the daily physical consequences of a 4th degree tear.

As a feminist, I centre women and their experiences.

Also, I copied and pasted the OP onto a word document and did a search for the words 'woman' and 'women' and there were zero results for either. So I'm not sure what other short piece you're referring to?

The whole 'birthing people' thing is very off putting. Plus some of the rude replies too.

Oh for goodness sake. This group is not representative of the women I know, who care a lot more about the state of midwifery staffing than being angered by language that tries to be inclusive. People are turned off any discussion on feminist issues if they constantly devolve into this sort of nonsense, which is why you only hear a vocal few who hijacked the thread rather than the chance to build up support for an important issue that affects so many of us.

To the ones who think you're doing women a favour by harassing a poster for inclusive language - in my opinion, you're doing much more harm to women than good.

The language matters to a lot of women @PartridgeCoop. Which is why this initiative has gained so little traction on here.

Getting annoying with women - who are the very people midwives are supposed to help - who point this out is very counter productive. How can we possibly support a group of HCPs who won't listen to their patients? It's utterly bizarre.

And the word mother does indeed appear twice in the OP. I said women didn't feature and it doesn't.

@PartridgeCoop - This thread was up for over 2 days and was still on page 1 before anyone drew attention to 'birthing people'. There was ample opportunity for supporters to speak up; a mere handful did. So nothing was hijacked, and the 'vocal few' you mention, are just as entitled to express our opinion as everybody else, whether or not we are representative of the women you know.

@Clymene I'm a patient too, and I'm a woman, but I like inclusive language, even if it's clumsy and not going to be exactly right 100% of the time. I think it's indicative of a service that's trying to think about individuals and I like that. Maybe just a poll of the general public on language use would put this to bed? I am much more worried about staffing than language. Who knows who's more representative of women? I don't. But I was really nervous to post once it got into gender politics because I find it stressful on here, and I suspect a lot of women steered clear because of the responses it got, not the original language.

The language matters. The implications are too huge. We're already at the point where whole pieces of draft maternity legislation are being read in the House of Lords and the word 'woman' doesn't appear once.

If legally, 'any person' can be pregnant, then women lose the vital specific rights and remedies they once had protected in law.

This all happened by stealth. There was no consultation with women. If there wasn't a group of women who are monitoring this and ready to call out every single instance of women being erased from sex-specific discourse, then we could all wake up in a situation where suddenly the word 'woman' is no longer defined in any legal framework.

That's a massive deal.

And it starts with language. So, while it might be a 'boring deflection' to some, it's imperative to draw attention to, and challenge it every time it happens.

People think they're 'being kind'. But actually they're incrementally enabling a movement towards a status quo where 'woman' has no legal meaning and is reduced to a subjective abstraction.

That's intolerable in any context, but especially in the context of maternity care.

I see your point @Interrobanger. Do you think it's possible that by focusing on language you unintentionally erode the systems and services that provide for women, by diverting any conversation about them back to language? Maybe we'll wake up in 20 years and the word woman is firmly safe, but provision, support, safety all remain in tatters because the movement was divided and distracted.

@PartridgeCoop

I see your point *@Interrobanger*. Do you think it's possible that by focusing on language you unintentionally erode the systems and services that provide for women, by diverting any conversation about them back to language? Maybe we'll wake up in 20 years and the word woman is firmly safe, but provision, support, safety all remain in tatters because the movement was divided and distracted.

I’m not clear how or why wanting clear language about who a service or provision is for would be to the detriment of that service.

I support this campaign but I agree with Clymene and others.

The language is not inclusive, it's the opposite. It excludes the words "woman" and "mother".

We are talking about the care and safety of mothers; women and their babies. No one else.

How do you discuss those systems and services if you can’t use the word woman, in its legal context or everyday?

Is the word mother really a gender identity issue? I thought it was primarily a relationship signifier? And so even if a person doesn’t identify as a woman they can still be a mother because they have given birth to a child. I know it’s more complicated than that, but the state of being a mother has existed long before the post-industrialised lifestyle magazine idea of “motherhood” that many are seeking to reject or redefine. After all, people of all identities manage to use mumsnet, and nobody is asking it become birthingpersonsnet to save confusion or exclusion or hurt feelings. (Only half facetious here)

I never could have imagined how badly I would be treated by midwives during pregnancy, birth and in the aftermath. It wasn’t just stretched service, there was actual malice and neglect and it left me with pnd and ptsd. And so many mothers I know experienced the same poor treatment, cascades of interventions and indifferent midwives or difficult midwives. Whose attention was focussed on the monitors and barely had two words to say to the labouring woman. It’s only got worse under corona. Women left to labour alone etc. Bullied and made so afraid their labour stops and out come the interventions to get the baby out according to nhs shift changes schedule. There’s a lack of compassion and a lack of caring across the board, and the few that do care burn out of the service.

So what needs to change to make sure these experiences don’t happen ever? How do we talk about women’s experiences as service providers and service users? How do we ensure sex specific provisions and funding from the government so midwives are supported and present in enough numbers and poor treatment of mothers becomes impossible and abhorrent? I hope the marches help this but they must centre women and mothers and listen to us.

If language doesn't matter, why are some people trying so hard to change it!?

As Lord Lucas said in the House earlier this year when he led a debate to change the word 'pregnant person' to mother in the Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill: "As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, laid out at Second Reading, last year’s judgment in the Court of Appeal in the McConnell case makes it clear that anyone who gives birth is a mother under English law. That is a word that signifies a role—a word that honours the millions of women who undertake it ... Words matter, especially on the long road to equality. The use of the word “person” in the Bill as it is now erases the reality that, overwhelmingly, maternity is undertaken by women and not by men. To leave “person” in place would be a step backwards in women’s equality, uncompensated by gains elsewhere and inconsistent with government policy."

Women and mother are words that matter. If we do not have the language to describe ourselves, we cannot defend our rights.

I've looked more closely at the language of the opening post, and counted the use of various words and phrases.

families: 4
parents: 4
mothers/birthing people: 2
(there is no standalone reference to 'mothers'; it's always 'mothers and birthing people')
service users: 1
women: 0
babies: 0

Absolutely zero mention of 'women' and 'babies'. Of course women are referred to in vaguer ways, but babies don't get any mention at all sad What about the babies who die or are seriously injured as a result of substandard maternity care?

Here are all the examples:

birthing families neglected or coerced through their maternity journey
(How many families give birth? I gave birth, it wasn't my family. How many families are coerced? It's the mothers who are coerced in their maternity journey.)

Maternity workers and families were joining the group in droves

midwives and parents shared their trauma and sadness

we set up an online form for service users and health professionals

We knew we needed a diverse group that represented parents, lay birth workers, NHS midwives and independent midwives

given the outrageous statistics on increased risk of maternal death for Black and Brown mothers and birthing people, we were also determined to include people from marginalised communities

not enough energy or compassion for the families needing support

Parents that are damaged by either too much medical intervention or, conversely, falling through the cracks and not receiving the medical care they need
(This is the worst example IMO. It's mothers who need medical care and suffer damage from the lack of it or from too much intervention.)

up to a third of mothers/birthing people have symptoms of trauma

avoidable damage, deaths and long term trauma to families
(It's mothers and babies, not fathers, who suffer injury and death.)

the voices of parents, midwives and doulas

I agree with other posters, I had a terrible, traumatic birth which was pretty much entirely due to not being listened to by midwives. That was not about lack of resources, there were loads of them there but they just did not listen and because of that, I almost died.
And this thread just makes me feel the same about a profession which seems determined not to listen to the very people it should serve.
I said "I am in so much pain this really doesn't feel right, something is wrong".
They said "no you're not even in labour, you're making a fuss about nothing."

We say "when you use the term birthing people, or refuse to say the word mother, you make us feel ignored, marginalised and disempowered"
They say "no that's not true, you are wrong, we are just being kind".

I am sorry that you had such an awful and frightening experience @wherethewildthingis

There are some midwives who are standing up for woman centred care and woman centred language, you can find out more on the link below

with-woman.org/2021/07/11/and-pregnant-people-nope-nope-and-all-the-nopity-nope/

There are also some breastfeeding counsellors doing so too

www.mothersformother.com/

And

fullcreamweb.blog/2018/06/28/when-breastfeeding-is-for-everyone-except-the-baby/

I am not gaslighting anyone - although I didn’t write the opening post it does in fact use the word mother twice.

Yes but to be fair, the poster you responded to by saying “twice. It appears twice” had said the word woman didn’t appear, not the word mother.

My husband wasn't the one who was damaged when a midwife fobbed off my concerns about my c section stitches popping open and bleeding, and ushered me out of the hospital post haste.

My husband wasn't the one who was damaged by the fact the midwife had such poor English that she couldn't even explain to me how to administer anti blood clotting injections.

My husband wasn't the one who nearly died of sepsis, had to go back into hospital have the c section reopened, cleaned out and restitched.

That was all ME, the mother. Woman. My injuries and piss poor care related solely to the fact that I am female. No male could've sustained the specific injuries I did. Not to mention the mental toll it took, the PND caused by not being able to bond with my baby because I was in hospital for his first 2 weeks of life.

So yeah, I'd like to see women and mother's centred in the language. Call it what it is, underfunding maternity services is just another way for the patriarchy to fuck females over. If we were truly being inclusive the word would be female as that is the common denominator between "birthing people".

I'd love to show solidarity with this but I can't while it doesn't center the majority of people it claims to serve.

Final thought, despite all of the above it was a truly brilliant midwife who stepped in and essentially saved my life. She was the only one who spotted the signs of infection during a home visit, and pressured the local maternity ward to readmit me for an emergency procedure. She visited me a few times after I was discharged, and I know she would've held no truck with the linguistic gymnastics.

This reminds me of a few threads back in 2015 or so when the Women’s Equality Party were asking MN for support and also rejected women’s concerns about gender ideology and language.

WEP didn’t get the response they were hoping for.

@endofagain

I was a midwife. I have carried and given birth to my own children. I have taught midwives and medical students. The only advice I would give to midwives is to listen to women.

I said this earlier. A simple statement of my philosophy and practice. It is clear to me that not many people in the NHS or government are listening to women. I mean actual, biological women. Who are they listening to that has made it so important to change language, to avoid using the words "women" and "mothers" as much as possible and substitute things like "menstruators", "birthing people", "bodies with vaginas" "people with a cervix?" It is so disrespectful and dehumanising. Every human on the planet was gestated and birthed by a woman. Midwife means "with woman". For me, that is akin to a covenant. Something close to sacred. It is such an intimate relationship and there has to be trust. Improving maternity care has to start with recognition, respect and reality. I worked for several years as a midwife until I was bullied out for having the temerity to lose my own baby over Christmas, thus leaving the labour ward short staffed. I worked with some wonderful midwives and some absolute harridans. Twas ever thus. I understand about the state of the NHS, I have been a pretty sick patient for the last 5 years. I really want to support this movement, but the language undermines my trust.

If language doesn't matter, why are some people trying so hard to change it!?

Precisely.

As usual the response is language doesn't matter, oh but it does matter to a miniscule percentage of people so we are changing it and being kind to them, the overwhelming majority who don't like it and find it unkind to them, well, I/we don't give a fuck, those complaining are only women and mothers and they don't matter or count and therefore we don't listen to them, I mean why would we?

@RedDogsBeg

If language doesn't matter, why are some people trying so hard to change it!?

Precisely.

As usual the response is language doesn't matter, oh but it does matter to a miniscule percentage of people so we are changing it and being kind to them, the overwhelming majority who don't like it and find it unkind to them, well, I/we don't give a fuck, those complaining are only women and mothers and they don't matter or count and therefore we don't listen to them, I mean why would we?

You've summed it up perfectly. The dismissal of our concerns about language demonstrates perfectly the way so many of us have been fobbed off when voicing concerns about our own bodies and care by midwives. Some of them really do carry this "oh do be quiet dear" attitude. It starts with seemingly innocuous things like language, but bleeds into the rest of the profession to the point where women and mother's (let's name the group affected) suffer from sub par care because we're so easily dismissed.

@endofagain you sound bloody marvelous and I wish I'd had a midwife like you when I had my son.

I'm so sorry for your loss

In defence of midwives, my experience is that midwives haven't been erasing the words "mother" and "woman". It's the doulas and other "lay people" who seem to be leading the charge on it. I find it highly ironic, given that these doulas have paying clients who are WOMEN.

Of course, not many women challenge it, because we've all been socialised to "be kind", and a lot of women buy into the argument that excluding the words we use to define ourselves is somehow "inclusive".

Just adding my voice to others to say I'll stand with midwives when they stand with women and mothers. If you're not able to name us and acknowledge basic biology, I can't help you.

And it was me that suffered the tearing and life long continence issues, not the father. My midwives were great though (admittedly it was a long time ago) and I have nothing but praise for them.