Why I left midwifery

(and am so passionate about supporting birth trauma)

My passion for supporting women who have experienced birth trauma does not stem from having a traumatic birth. My births were big learning curves for me, but not traumatic. My first one was exactly as I had hoped/planned for, and my second one was not, yet I still felt like I was the leader in that experience and felt empowered even though it was not what I had dreamed for – and the distinction there is huge. But that’s not entirely why I love doing this work.

My passion stems from my experience as a midwife – working within the maternity care system where I saw women regularly being traumatised by their birthing experience. I know for a fact that I was involved in traumatising some women, even when I was simply ‘doing what I was told/taught’ – it still makes me feel deeply uncomfortable to think of this.

I entered midwifery thinking it was going to be my ultimate dream job – I entered nursing straight out of high school with midwifery as my end goal. And I loved being a midwifery student – being amongst so many passionate students talking and studying all things birth and babies was everything I dreamt it would be.

The ‘real world’ of midwifery was not the same as university midwifery

Yet when I started my graduate program without the buffer of university and all that it provided in terms of support and education, I became very disillusioned very quickly.

It was unfortunate that there was no strong midwifery leadership where I was and instead it was very heavily obstetrically led. Interventions were very high, and you were considered lucky to have a woman come through and have a physiological birth.

I was often left in situations beyond my scope of competence and there was no support or debriefing available after difficult births or situations. I was getting burnt out and resentful of the shift work and it was not how I wanted to feel in my work.

After starting to feel burnt out from the heavily led obstetric care, I was also starting to feel disheartened from the misplaced trust that the women and families would come in with.

They would enter the birth suite with no real plan or preparation, instead they had complete trust that the doctors and midwives would have their best interests at heart (and it mostly started that way) Yet very quickly if any seed of doubt or fear came up then the pathway to interventions would begin, and their births would get derailed very quickly and they would be left reeling at the end of it wondering what just happened to them. I saw this time and again.

And then the women who came in with a birth plan, or heaven forbid, a doula, would be laughed at or ridiculed behind their back, or even to their face with snide or dismissive remarks.

Hospital midwifery has a fear-based culture and does not trust women

This type of birth culture was not what I had envisioned midwifery to be, and it was not what I had signed up for. I was coming home crying after shifts (and I’m not a big crier), I dreaded each shift and was burnt out. So I left, weeks after finishing my grad program.

I did not want to be part of or a system that was routinely traumatising women, and I did not want to be responsible for being a part of the reason why women were traumatised.

I was sad that my midwifery dream didn’t pan out the way that I thought it would, but that knowledge and experience lives in me – as Jane Hardwicke Collings says – once a midwife, always a midwife – and I feel this and draw on this knowledge and experience in my work today.

 After I left midwifery I found an amazing job as a maternal and infant health nurse researcher where I stayed for nine years – my passion for birth went dormant but didn’t die. I had my boys in that time, and it was a lovely supportive environment that was fulfilling yet not too overly taxing to work in as a new mother. I spent a lot of time talking to these women about their births and early motherhood experience, and I heard a a whole range of stories and experiences, from the good and the bad, to the downright terrible.

A different type of birth work

When I started studying matrescence and was looking to step into a different type of work, I went and saw the documentary Birthtime. This rekindled my dormant passion for birth work (and I have seen it three times now!) I found it so inspiring and validating of my own experiences, and then I came across Carla Sargeant’s Healing Birth practitioner training, and I jumped in immediately without hesitation.

The need now is greater than ever. You've probably heard me say it before that the system is not going to change from the top down. The research is out there on how to improve it, and it's largely being ignored. So we need to collectively heal our birth experiences and start demanding better, because we deserve better.

So I came to this work not with my own personal birth trauma, but with the collective trauma I witnessed in my time as a midwife working within the maternity care system.

I have witnessed obstetric violence.

I have witnessed coercive control.

I have witnessed the cascade of intervention over and over.

I have also witnessed the worst of the worst, with the medical professionals doing absolutely everything in their power to turn a situation around and providing support when it was 100% necessary.

It's all valid and it all deserves support.

So this is my big why for why I’m so passionate about this work.