Birth in the Western Cape
I would like to give a very raw flavour of what birth in the western cape has been for me in my last few years in medicine….
Dignity is a basic human right in Childbirth too
I have seen racism, rudeness and force by the head of departments. I have seen disregard for consent. I have seen midwives joke and poke and stare at various vulva’s when the mother is conscious and her head is behind the screen in preparation for a caeserian section.
Don’t Let Them Take Your Newborn!
When a mother embraces her newborn baby, her third child to her chest with deep loving affection and relief, a few minutes old and you witness the most precious time in a life, and she says “this is the first time I am seeing a newborn”…you wander what is so wrong with the system that she did not have this with her first 2?
TRANSFERENCE IN BIRTH
“Will the baby breathe?
Everyone is holding their breath. Identifying with the baby unconsciously. We have all returned from our own births – fighting for breath just like this newborn baby; on the verge of suffocation……”