Good and bad experiences with midwives

[peckaboo]

Hi all,

I'm about to go back to university to study midwifery, and wondered if any of you would be willing to share your experiences with your midwives, to give me an idea of what women have found helpful or unhelpful. I know every woman and every pregnancy / delivery is different, so it's impossible to draw up a definitive 'good' or 'bad' list, but it would be great to have some insight from the mothers' perspective, rather than just talking to other midwives all the time (!) and to hear about specific things your midwives said or did that encouraged or frustrated you. I'm interested in learning about how your midwives handled prenatal care, complications, delivery, breastfeeding, whatever!

Thanks so much - hopefully this will help me learn from others' successes and mistakes to be the best midwife I can be

 

[Joseph Hazen]

We're in America, and I'm a man, but we did our first (a year ago today!) Some things we really liked:

Our midwife was very calm and relaxed through the entire thing. As it drew on (hard labor, five hours of pushing) she was measuring his heart rate between each contraction. I don't know if that's normal but it made me feel better.

In pre-natal care she carefully explained every issue, what could go wrong and how we would react, and was very supportive of our birth plan and philosophy. She was happy to let us have whoever we wanted there, and was very calm but still fun.

Good luck!

 

[Hetta]

I had only very good experiences with midwives, but I do remember one who, when I was pregnant with my youngest child, told me that they couldn't find a heartbeat. She did then locate it (he had turned around and was breech) but the terror in those seconds until she located it were very intense. So, just be careful what you say to a pregnant mom! If there seems to be something wrong, wait until you can bring in a doctor who can ascertain what is going on. See, that was over 14 years ago but I have never forgotten that moment or how frightened I was!

My midwives were always great at communicating information such as vitamins and self-care. I always felt myself to be in secure hands. Here, we don't really have midwives involved with breast feeding, but rather lactation experts, and I would have another story to tell about the lactation experts I came across, but that's not your area of expertise so not to worry.