Speaker: Linda Deys
Facilitator: Linda Sweet
Midwives traditionally guide, create safety and share goals with women through labour and birth. Childbirth is recognised as a woman’s right of passage, with a positive experience associated with a sense of control and how she is treated and made to feel. When the birthing landscape is an operating theatre, women lose their autonomy and the midwives’ role of being ‘with-woman’ is challenged. Separation of mothers from their infant is common.
Design: Using a feminist phenomenological framework, fifteen women who experienced non-medically indicated separation from their infant at caesarean section were interviewed.
Results: Preliminary data analysis using a Modified van Kaam approach shows feelings of powerlessness, loneliness, sadness and frustration which lasts well beyond the perinatal period. It impacts their personal relationships and plans for future births. The results reflect a patriarchal, staff-focused environment where women are disregarded and do not feel safe.
Conclusion: Separating mothers and babies at caesarean section negatively impacts birth experience. Midwives have the opportunity to recognise power imbalance and create a sanctum within the surgical environment. Recognising that birth is more than the mode of delivery, midwives are often the only ones in a position to be the woman’s advocate at a caesarean birth. Midwives have the opportunity to create an environment where the woman has power and agency over her body and baby. Separating a mother from her baby can negatively impact her birth experience and future personal relationships.
Recording: https://youtu.be/is7ho3NoP4w
Speaker:Jennifer Moffitt
Facilitator: Caitlin Goodwin
Abstract:
Bringing the practices of mindfulness to our patients and ourselves can significantly impact our patients’ relationship to pain and fear in labor, birth, and life. In this presentation, participants will have an opportunity to experience a mindfulness practice and learn ways to implement mindfulness in midwifery, including for childbirth and parenting. Participants will be exposed to how mindfulness meditation can decrease stress during pregnancy and beyond and hear about mindfulness skills for working through pain and fear in childbirth. Further, participants will learn how to encourage mindfulness life skills for parenting with wisdom, kindness, and connection from the moments of birth, as well as how mindfulness skills may be implemented as a way to disrupt intergenerational patterns of suffering. In particular, this presentation will offer concrete ways to bring mindfulness to the contractions of labor, and to the space in between the contractions of labor. The potential for separating “pain” from “suffering” using mindfulness practices will be explored, which can be applied to labor, and of course, to life. We will examine the research around mindfulness-based interventions, the relationship between perinatal stress and outcomes, and the potential that mindfulness strategies have for reducing health disparities.
Recording: https://youtu.be/9VIUNKd_WoY
