Primary birthing and National standards for maternity care.

I was just reading the New Zealand Maternity Standards document from the Ministry of Health. Standard three states "All women have access to a nationally consistent, comprehensive range of maternity services that are funded and provided appropriately to ensure there are no financial barriers to access for eligible women."

There is however no primary birthing facility option for women birthing in Dunedin. There is no national consistency in the provision of primary birthing facilities for women. This is a matter that needs to be addressed if we are to support women to birth without medical intervention.

At last: Making a change, promoting normal birth.

The momentum seems to be building to raise public awareness about the dangers of ever increasing intervention in childbirth.
In new Zealand we have the Maternity Manifesto. This initiative is raising public awareness in New Zealand and lobbying government to:
◦Become informed about the impact of maternity services on the welfare of women, their babies, whanau and our communities
◦Set a comprehensive definition for ‘normal birth’ consistent with international standards
◦Develop an accessible, practical NZ campaign to increase the understanding of ‘Normal Birth’ and how this can best be facilitated
◦Publicly acknowledge positive maternity care outcomes.

And now, on the 1st of September, a new project is about to be launched raising awareness and initiating change around the world. Here is the video which launches this project. Lets get behind these initiatives and start to make a difference. The time is right! For all the women children and families we work with we need to get behind these initiatives and do what we can to raise awareness and support normal birth.

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Updating midwifery pages on WikiEducator

I have just been updating the Midwifery pages on WikiEducator. These are free resources on midwifery education, with many links to other useful online material, for student midwives and those with an interest in midwifery education. Anyone can edit these pages and add content which may be useful. I check it fairly regularly and so far no one else has added any content. If you feel that there is something you think might be useful, which is not included there, please feel free to add it. Or you could let me know here and I will add it for you.

My wee game has gone :(

I am sad to say I have just discovered that the wee game I had linked on my blog has gone! Sorry to all the many fans of that wee game who came here solely to play it.

Pelvic floor muscles

Necessity is the mother of invention so they say. Well this week I have been proving that statement to be correct. I have been at home with flu but had to meet with my lovely Invercargill group of students on Wednesday. We were to cover pelvic floor muscles and I had no model of these available without travelling through to Polytech so I decided to make a model to fit with the wonderful wee pelvis model I had sourced earlier in the year for the students from the Hesperian foundation.

I used photographs of the models which we use with our regular sized pelvis models, which I had available to me and developed the model to be constructed out of paper or card or any other medium you might wish.
Here is the pattern
Pattern, Small Pelvic Floor Muscle Model

And the instructions
Instructions for Making the Model of Pelvic Floor Muscles

Please note that you will need to download these before you can print them off and use them properly.