"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."

Wonderful to see so many women standing up against this relentless silencing of women. I hope that the doulas and midwives who are participating in this nonsense take a bit of time for self reflection and consider why it is they are so reluctant to listen to women. As the numerous testimonies on here attest - there's a pattern in maternity services of women not being heard, sadly by the professionals who are meant to listen and care.

We've already shown beyond doubt that this language use is offensive, unkind and exclusionary. By my reckoning, this incomprehensible, unclear language excludes around 100 pregnant women for every one pregnant woman who feels included by being called a birthing parent.

But I also want to pick up on something Motherofthreecubs and Sittinginthesand commented on earlier in the thread.

I have advised quite a few companies on their messaging, marketing and language. And here's why our criticism of your exclusionary, incomprehensible language MaddieM is not a "very boring deflection from this important issue into an unnecessary rant about gender politics" but a service to you in pointing out that you are being disrespectful and engaged in self-sabotage.

You write in your petition that there's a shortage of 2500 midwives and 57% are considering leaving the profession.

Across the NHS there's a shortage of fully 35,000 nurses, and in a representative survey of health workers, 73% said they were considering leaving the profession.

There are many specialties under enormous pressure - ICU, A&E, mental health services to name but a few. The NHS as a whole is understaffed, chronically underfunded, with staff being overworked and struggling.

And there's a lot of political noise about the issue. Junior doctors spent years campaigning about their work conditions, the NHS and its funding feature highly in all parties' election manifestos and campaigns.

Covid has exacerbated all of these problems. Brexit has exacerbated the staffing problem too.

So amidst all this noise, what's your USP? What makes midwives so much more important than all the other life-saving NHS workers?

To me, the answer is clear: all people are women-born. Birth is universal to all of us. Death is the only other thing all humans have in common. If we get midwifery care wrong, women and babies are harmed, many permanently and some women and babies die.

All other things the NHS deals with do not affect 100% of the population.

So there's your USP. Birth happens to us all. We wouldn't be here otherwise.

But why is the situation here so much worse than in other specialties? You could argue it's because our healthcare system has historically treated pregnant women with disbelief and disdain. It was and still is an institution that is deeply sexist, treating our health issues as less important because we are female.

No other reason.

It's not because we like pink, romance movies, cooking or celebrity gossip. None of these things matter. The maternity scandals still being investigated today show that prejudice against women on the basis of their sex leading to outright ill-treatment and discrimination on the basis of their sex has caused the needless deaths of women and babies at UK hospitals.

And 40% of maternity services were strongly criticised by the Care Quality Commission for being either inadequate or requiring improvement. Partially that's due to another ideology, the one equating birth without medical support with having a "normal birth". It took hold of the profession and led to the deaths of mothers and babies in Morecambe Bay as well as Shrewsbury and Telford. Because what happened at those trusts shows midwives too are disbelieving women about their own bodies, their own experiences and insisting that they know best. And it shows what happens when midwives and their organisations ignore pregnant women: mothers and babies are harmed and some will die.

So how can you address such concerning issues? By belittling women for asking to be respected? By calling them boring for telling you they feel excluded by your language? By framing the many thoughtful responses as "unnecessary rants" and completely ignoring the many posters sharing their harrowing experiences of receiving poor care from midwives?

No. You address both the historical and ongoing discrimination of women and midwifery's unacceptable levels of care by unequivocally centering women, committing to listening to their needs and experiences and focusing on their sex being the reason why we are where we are.

That's an effective argumentation. There's evidence for all the claims made in aid of it.

Unfortunately, you're beholden to an unscientific ideology, the doctrine of gender identity, whose proponents deny evolution, the science of biology and the importance of sex.

So according to this doctrine, it isn't just women giving birth, but men give birth too. If the underfunding, understaffing and under-researching of maternity services are not limited to women and cannot therefore be happening on the basis of their sex, then why are they happening? You cannot argue sexism if sex has been removed from your public messaging. You cannot argue sexism if sex doesn't matter. But that is the only argument you can bring to justify why midwifery should get extra funding ahead of all the other wards.

@MaddieM

This is a campaign that almost every woman, mother, would want to get behind.

So speak to them. Ask them.

Honest to god, I'm pretty well versed in the current ideological de-sexing of language, but even I couldn't make head nor tail of that opening post.

I don't know who you're trying to reach. It certainly doesn't feel like it's me.

If you want people to connect with you, you have to make it personal. Not de-personalise everything about it.

If you want help, and you bloody well need it, ask the women who'll give it to you.

@CharlieParley

We've already shown beyond doubt that this language use is offensive, unkind and exclusionary. By my reckoning, this incomprehensible, unclear language excludes around 100 pregnant women for every one pregnant woman who feels included by being called a birthing parent.

But I also want to pick up on something Motherofthreecubs and Sittinginthesand commented on earlier in the thread.

I have advised quite a few companies on their messaging, marketing and language. And here's why our criticism of your exclusionary, incomprehensible language MaddieM is not a "very boring deflection from this important issue into an unnecessary rant about gender politics" but a service to you in pointing out that you are being disrespectful and engaged in self-sabotage.

You write in your petition that there's a shortage of 2500 midwives and 57% are considering leaving the profession.

Across the NHS there's a shortage of fully 35,000 nurses, and in a representative survey of health workers, 73% said they were considering leaving the profession.

There are many specialties under enormous pressure - ICU, A&E, mental health services to name but a few. The NHS as a whole is understaffed, chronically underfunded, with staff being overworked and struggling.

And there's a lot of political noise about the issue. Junior doctors spent years campaigning about their work conditions, the NHS and its funding feature highly in all parties' election manifestos and campaigns.

Covid has exacerbated all of these problems. Brexit has exacerbated the staffing problem too.

So amidst all this noise, what's your USP? What makes midwives so much more important than all the other life-saving NHS workers?

To me, the answer is clear: all people are women-born. Birth is universal to all of us. Death is the only other thing all humans have in common. If we get midwifery care wrong, women and babies are harmed, many permanently and some women and babies die.

All other things the NHS deals with do not affect 100% of the population.

So there's your USP. Birth happens to us all. We wouldn't be here otherwise.

But why is the situation here so much worse than in other specialties? You could argue it's because our healthcare system has historically treated pregnant women with disbelief and disdain. It was and still is an institution that is deeply sexist, treating our health issues as less important because we are female.

No other reason.

It's not because we like pink, romance movies, cooking or celebrity gossip. None of these things matter. The maternity scandals still being investigated today show that prejudice against women on the basis of their sex leading to outright ill-treatment and discrimination on the basis of their sex has caused the needless deaths of women and babies at UK hospitals.

And 40% of maternity services were strongly criticised by the Care Quality Commission for being either inadequate or requiring improvement. Partially that's due to another ideology, the one equating birth without medical support with having a "normal birth". It took hold of the profession and led to the deaths of mothers and babies in Morecambe Bay as well as Shrewsbury and Telford. Because what happened at those trusts shows midwives too are disbelieving women about their own bodies, their own experiences and insisting that they know best. And it shows what happens when midwives and their organisations ignore pregnant women: mothers and babies are harmed and some will die.

So how can you address such concerning issues? By belittling women for asking to be respected? By calling them boring for telling you they feel excluded by your language? By framing the many thoughtful responses as "unnecessary rants" and completely ignoring the many posters sharing their harrowing experiences of receiving poor care from midwives?

No. You address both the historical and ongoing discrimination of women and midwifery's unacceptable levels of care by unequivocally centering women, committing to listening to their needs and experiences and focusing on their sex being the reason why we are where we are.

That's an effective argumentation. There's evidence for all the claims made in aid of it.

Unfortunately, you're beholden to an unscientific ideology, the doctrine of gender identity, whose proponents deny evolution, the science of biology and the importance of sex.

So according to this doctrine, it isn't just women giving birth, but men give birth too. If the underfunding, understaffing and under-researching of maternity services are not limited to women and cannot therefore be happening on the basis of their sex, then why are they happening? You cannot argue sexism if sex has been removed from your public messaging. You cannot argue sexism if sex doesn't matter. But that is the only argument you can bring to justify why midwifery should get extra funding ahead of all the other wards.

Excellent post.

@Izzy24 - Despite the issues I have with the language in the OP and the corresponding Facebook group, as I've already expressed, from an employment standpoint I wish you every success in securing better work conditions.

Nobody should be made to feel "exhausted, sad, scared, on edge paranoid, pressured or bullied". I hope you (as a collective) have managed to drum up enough support to force some positive change from your employers/managers.

@RosettaTheGardenFairy

Thank you for your post. I’m not any part of the collective. I had seen the information on social media and I started a thread (not this one) as I was surprised there was nothing on MN about the vigils.

Then when this MN thread came on I think people assumed that I was part of the organisation.

From looking at social media it seems as though there will be nationwide vigils this afternoon. I hope they will be successful.

This group led by @MaddieM are actively removing gender critical women from the Facebook group, all in the name of 'inclusivity'. They see women with these views as an irrelevant, bigoted minority apparently. I hope some of the fantastic comments in this thread have made them stop and think but somehow I doubt it.

@FemaleMule

This group led by *@MaddieM* are actively removing gender critical women from the Facebook group, all in the name of 'inclusivity'. They see women with these views as an irrelevant, bigoted minority apparently. I hope some of the fantastic comments in this thread have made them stop and think but somehow I doubt it.

Going by her response to posters

No, it won’t make her think

I suspect the abject failure of the campaign may do though

Improved care for women before, during, and after birth and improved working conditions for midwives is a cause I can get behind. Unfortunately, it's clear that this group is in no position to achieve this aim because they can't even bring themselves to name the group whose interests they claim to represent.

Also @MaddieM, just think about the numbers here. How many actual women who identify as something else do you have dealings with? As opposed to the women who are truly scared of the political movement to erase sex as a meaningful category, and are saying so? Even just counting those who are telling you specifically. Here, on your fb page and elsewhere? The actual numbers should tell you something.

This isn't helping women.

And for the love of god, stop doulas ruling the roost. You are the ones with the qualifications, the experience and the ones staring at the coalface.

How does this bastardisation of the language around women and mothers improve any of the things in CharlieParley's post?

It doesn't.

This is a woman's health issue you need to use the word "woman". Men's health campaigns still use the word "men".

Also @MaddieM there are at least 12 million unique users of mumsnet. So many women, so many mothers. This erasure of sex is so alienating. Please listen to them.

@Datun
"stop doulas ruling the roost. You are the ones with the qualifications, the experience and the ones staring at the coalface."

MaddieM is a doula. This is not about doulas "ruling the roost", it's a campaign started by doulas in support of midwives and women (even if they don't refer to us as women!) and I don't think we should criticise the doulas for doing a good thing.

Surely we can stay respectful to doulas and what they do even while we disagree about the language they're using.

Surely we can stay respectful to doulas and what they do even while we disagree about the language they're using

Any double that refuses to centre women in the process of child birth is failing the very core tenant of what their role is supposed to be.

As always, a brilliant, brilliant post by @CharlieParley

@Motherofthreecubs

Listen up women! Did you know that 60% of UK midwives are considering leaving the profession. If this was to happen it would have for catastrophic effect on your pregnancy and birth. We have set up an online form for mothers and health professionals to write about how the staffing crisis has affected them, either anonymously or with their name

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 women needing support. The result? Mothers 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 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

Our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages are growing by the day. Our inboxes are flooded with people sharing their stories and wanting to help. Please join us to protect women during their pregnancy and births.

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

We need to protect our midwives so we can give you the best care

Please get involved

• 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.

You need to remember OP its the mothers/women that will pull you through this - not the less than 1% on a PR basis this is awful

This!

👏 👏

I'd already seen the Facebook page but I've just looked at the group - that last paragraph

They are literally silencing women

[quote AnotherEmma]@Datun
"stop doulas ruling the roost. You are the ones with the qualifications, the experience and the ones staring at the coalface."

MaddieM is a doula. This is not about doulas "ruling the roost", it's a campaign started by doulas in support of midwives and women (even if they don't refer to us as women!) and I don't think we should criticise the doulas for doing a good thing.

Surely we can stay respectful to doulas and what they do even while we disagree about the language they're using.[/quote]
Reading the op was so confusing and their meaning so opaque that I entirely missed the fact that it's started by doulas. If they are supporting midwives, then all to the good.

But several women's experience on this thread suggests that many doulas are ideologically captured. And that is also my own personal experience, which is why it resonated.

Either way, the disintegration of maternity services for women is very, very worrying and this ideology, which excludes the very women the op is appealing to, is making it worse.

It's frustrating to watch.

There's another thread on here, currently, talking about the word mother, and how meaningful it is to women. These are the very women who would be 100% behind a campaign to improve the conditions for midwifery. But they are being alienated. If it is doulas who are responsible for this campaign, and it is they who are responding to the women on here, then I desperately want them to listen to what the women are saying.

There's not a woman here who doesn't want maternity services for women to improve.

Absolutely agree with you.

@CharlieParley

I’d support you if you had started this campaign!

@AnotherEmma

I'd already seen the Facebook page but I've just looked at the group - that last paragraph

"We dont care about your feelings but we want you to care about ours'

This group is inclusive of all.... apart from people who disagree with us!

The March is today!

Will be interesting to see turnout