Tuesday, January 1, 2008

August 29, 2007 7 am - So how was your night?

I made my way downstairs to find Kristin pacing around and refrained from telling her how refreshed I felt. Instead, we give a call to Jeanne, our midwife, and let her know what's up.

Now is probably a good time to talk about midwives. Personally, I think they rock. At first I was skeptical about employing someone who isn't a "real" doctor but after a couple of visits I was convinced. First off, they do have to go to school and get certified. In Jeanne's case she's been certified nationally by NARM (North American Registry of Midwives) as a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM), and locally by the New Hampshire Midwifery Council as a New Hampshire Certified Midwife (NHCM). She also has trained as an Emergency Medical Technician, Professional Doula, and worked as Breastfeeding Counselor for NH Health and Human Services. Whenever we talked she was always on the ball and could rattle off medical terms and cases off the top of her head. That's harder than it seems, since Kristin spent way too much time looking up worst-case medical scenarios online before each visit and could often put "real" doctors on the spot.

The second advantage of midwives is how much time they spend with you. Our visits would often go over an hour and would be pretty casual. During that time I could tell that Jeanne gave us her full attention and gave us frank, honest answers. I have yet to have a medical checkup that wasn't ten minutes answering a questionnaire by a nurse and then two minutes with a doctor who glanced at my form and prescribed a pill.

The third advantage of a midwife is how they treat pregnancy. I never gave it much thought before, but childbirth has been reduced to a "condition" and treated just the same as an injury or illness. It's the most natural thing in the world, so why are you strapped to a table and pumped full of drugs? (I'll save my rant on C-sections for another post.)

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