How DEMs make themselves look very foolish
It is hardly suprising that many health officials refuse to license DEMs when some clearly know so very little about childbirth. A licensed CPM describes her response to the news that the Border Patrol is training its agents to assist in emergency childbirth in the desert.This CPM seems to feel that the only important factor in birth is the use of pain medication in labor. The post starts with lots of jokes that epidurals cannot be used by the Border Patrol, ha ha ha.
The sheer lack of knowledge gleefully displayed in very disturbing. In the CPM's world:
There are no abnormal births, so the Border agents don't need to know ANYTHING about childbirth.
There are no breech or transverse babies.
There are no twins.
There is no obstructed labor.
Postpartum hemorrhage can be treated with nipple stim.
All poor, malnourished Mexican women are low risk.
The CPM writes:
I would think a Licensed Midwife would much better be able to demonstrate normal birth without medications and medical paralysis.Here's a newsflash. Chilbirth is not about epidurals. Poor malnourished Mexican women scrabbling to reach the American border to give their babies the gift of American citizenship are at high risk that their babies or they will die in unattended childbirth.
The logical conclusion from this is that CPMs who do not acknowledge the complications that can and do occur in unattended childbirth in malnourished women are hardly likely to be able to care for anyone in labor. If you don't know about complications, you won't recognize them and you clearly will not know how to handle them.
Finally, what happened to the veneration and respect accorded to the midwives of old? Most doctors would laugh and say that the accumulated knowledge of lay midwives could be transmitted in under an hour. I didn't expect the same attitude from a DEM.
Labels: midwifery
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