International Day of the Midwife is in two weeks time, and things are starting to come together for the 24 hour virtual event. Have a look at this wiki to see what we're planning.Theme
The theme for International Day of the Midwife 2009 is The World Needs Midwives Now More Than Ever! According to the International Confederation of Midwives, 350,000 midwives are needed to make a difference to mortality and morbidity on a global scale - over 60% women still do not have access to skilled care during childbirth.
Learning about midwifery
In the meantime, I am really keen to hear from any midwife who would like to take part in the virtual celebration of IDM - would you like to give a presentation, write a paragraph, make a video or podcast, or do anything that can be published on the Internet - tell us about your life as a midwife or student midwife, or an issue that affects your practice as a midwife or interests you.
If you have any questions about this, please get in touch by leaving a comment here or emailing me: sarahstewart07 (at) gmail.com
Image: 'Jewellery seller, Jaisalmer' Dey
www.flickr.com/photos/45966355@N00/7110087
5 comments:
Sarah
I am interested in sustainability from a health point of view ie. is child nutrition sufficient to sustain healthy future generations, or even normal reproduction? 30 years ago IVF was novel and now it is so common. That says something to me about the sustainability of human reproduction. My own reproduction has sustained two children, both breast fed for three years each, but would I sustain a third? My great-grandmother had 11 children. Could I do that? No.
One reason for me not having another baby is that I feel my bodily reserves might not be enough to properly nourish a baby in-utero and then cope with the physical work of carrying a baby and breastfeeding. Unfortunatley I was not raised on breastmilk and healthy whole foods like my great-grandmother, but on white bread, white rice and pasteurised milk etc. Lots of calcium and phosphorus, but very little magnesium.
If I had another baby I would above all want it to be well formed and healthy. This might not be the case if my reserves are depleted, reserves which were built up long ago during the growth stages of my childhood. Would the result be a baby malformed either obviously (as in the Cleft-palete baby)or less visibly on the inside, a mishapen pelvis, for example, to be hidden long into the future when my child attempts birth herself?
One only needs to look at the RDI's of minerals, particularly magnesium, to find that most children's diets are deficient. Modern foods have nothing like the levels of this mineral that is required. To achieve 500mg/day you would have to eat 10 bananas a day (and bananas are a rich source of magnesium). Eating that many bananas would present other problems I'm sure!
If the dietary intake of calcium is high (as it needs to be for children) then the magnesium requirement, according to some, is more like 800mg. I have closely analysed our diets to find out if my children are getting enough minerals to build well formed and functioning bodies. It is very difficult to achieve enough of one mineral without getting too much of another, particulalry sodium and phosphorous.
If your profession is to enjoy a happy future naturally delivering mostly healthy, well-formed babies, then you must make childhood nutrition your number one priority. Children need to be first breastfed from a mother who has healthy reserves herself, and then to be fed on naturally high nutrient dense foods for the rest of their growing years.
I am a mother who has looked at the facts and who has suffered the consequences of a physical developmental deformity which I now know was due to childhood malnutrition (even though I was well fed!)
Tracey
Tracey
Thank you very much for your comment, which is a real challenge to us midwives. I would like to pass this onto the international midwifery community - you would like to be a 'guest' blogger spot on IDM and take this comment & build on it? If not, I'll 'cut and paste' into a blog post for the day. thank you, Sarah
I've just read that and it should have said "would you like to be a guest blogger"? thanks
Sarah
I am not really interested in being a guest blogger as I have quite a few other activities keeping me very busy right now. My feeling is that not many people will be that interested in commenting in any deep way on these issues anyway. It has been a long time since Weston Price wrote his book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" in the 1920's and his important findings could prevent so many health problems that exist today, but so few people seem to even know of it's existence. I sure wish that I had known some of this stuff before I started to have babies. I try to pass on what I have learned to pregnant mum's I know and meet, but they usually don't want to know about some of these very simple nutritional strategies that support proper development and health. I think that most people just don't believe in it so they brush it off. This is done at the disservice of future generations.
Sorry for the negative view, I'll go and continue to focus on my patch now!
Tracey
Thanks for getting back to me.
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