Occupation: Student

My first degree was a bachelor of Behavioural Science with majors in Psychology and Sociology. A three year degree that i learned so much from, but really couldn't give me much in the way of employment, and id had no experience in the area so didn't really know what i could do- i needed more. Ive always had a passion for social justice issues and counseling. Talking with people through their issues and challenges is something that has always come naturally to me. I decided that i should do more than just counseling so i applied for the Masters In Social Work and got in. Again, i leant heaps, and met lots of great people, but after working for a little while with foster children and getting a better understanding of how crap the 'system' is it got pretty disillusioned and confused about whether i really had the emotional stability to handle this type of work. i had always dismissed comments like "wow that's a hard job" or "how can you cope with that" by saying "well someone has to look out for these people, someone has to do it" truly believing that my passion to make a difference, even if only small would be all that i needed. I started to feel that i was wrong, particularly when i realised that burn out, high job turn over and high alcohol consumption is often the way many social workers get through their day. On the other hand some social workers, particularly some of the people i studied with who have since graduated are just really great at what they do, and probably even better at being able to leave work at work. Im not one of these people.

I was ready to give up and surrender to a feeling of failing myself in being able to come up with a passion that i really wanted to pursue as a career. I decided that I would finish off my first placement as a school counsellor and then embark on some soul searching, with the intention that at some point i will do my second placement and finish off the degree but probably not just yet. I absolutely loved my role at the school, but was upset that I would need a teaching degree to actually get paid for this role. But i felt that helping young people- more specifically young girls was immensely rewarding and helped me not only grow up alot, but it gave me alot of confidence in my abilities. While i knew that social work was not the area that i wanted to specifically work in, i knew that i wanted a combination of social work and something more specific to women's health. While doing this prac i started to become introduced to the area of homebirth and midwifery. I had always loved the whole area of childbirth, women's health and empowerment and childbearing but always thought that the area of midwifery would be too science based for this right brainer, but after watching an Insight program (which featured one of my all time fav Australian artists Clare Bowditch), and finding a fantastic blog on homebirth i started to look into in more and decided that i had finally found my calling! The only problem being- the government wanting to have homebirth abolished! So the kind of midwifery i want to practice, being holistic independent midwifery in which i can combine social work and midwifery, attend homebirths and maybe create an educational program for disadvantaged mothers or young women that highlights all options available to women and not just the medical, mainstream model is not really something that looks like it will be easily achieved.

Getting into midwifery was really one of the highlights of my life, especially because it is so hard to get into. And i dont quite know what i expected because i knew that i wouldnt be accepting of what is pushed at uni and the hospitals, but i guess i didnt expect to feel quite this confused and secretly a bit scared. Midwifery is about being with women, which is exactly what i want to do, but here is australia it is so medicalised, and as much as my uni lecturers go on about how different nurses are from midwives, most people dont see it that way. I dont want to be a nurse. Im not interested in being a nurse! i admire so much what they do because i know its something so important that i just cant do, but i want to be a midwife more than anything and am so upset that people cant see the difference. I dont want to work with sick people. Yes, pregnant women can sometimes be sick, but how is it not clear the difference between working with sick people as a nurse and supporting pregnant women as a midwife? I also trust birth and believe that it is a sacred journey in which the midwife's role is to stand beside and support women not to intervene in any way, or even touch the baby or mother unless absolutely necessary- which is a far cry from what happens in a hospital! I hate my placements so much, im stuck in a general medicine ward trying to learn vital signs and make the most of my time not learning much relevant to midwifery at all! and worst of all i have to stay quite about what i really believe because independent midwifery and homebirth are barely even seen as the same field as the midwifery taught at uni, and if you go against it you are placed in a box with a big label of "rebel/wont conform" making it clear to everyone that you are different!

One of the assessments that we had for uni were weekly reflective learning logs, and two of them asked about how we are feeling both as university students and as midwifery students. I would like to share them here because they really highlight my feelings right now about what is like to be a midwifery student after 6 years of constant study and the feeling of being such an ousider. Note, they were only supposed to be 250 words!:

 Life as a student at university

This year marks my 6^th year at university, so life as a uni student is not really something new. It is however strange to be back as a first year after so many years, although this has come in handy because I know all about university policies, how to use the library and how to reference. But to be honest, I am really tired of being a uni student, and wish I wasn’t, and the only thing keeping me going is the passion I have to become a midwife. Being a uni student has been great, I love being able to work in my own time, have consistent holiday breaks and I love to learn new things. Its a great uni to study at and I have certainly met lots of great people over the years, but after 6 years I’m well and truly over studying and really just want to be able to earn some money. I’m tired on having to rely on Centrelink, and having to push back holidays or outings because I cant afford them or don’t have the time, and having to work Saturdays and Thursday nights to pay the bills is frustrating. It has been wonderful having policies in place such as Centrelink, but they really dont help encourage people to work. I mean you are punished if you work to much, which keeps you in a cycle of poverty and not able to get ahead financially, but i cant work enough to pay the bills and study- midwifery is alot harder than i was expecting, harder than any degree i have done! I know I shouldn’t complain too much because I don’t have children to worry about and it was my choice to go back and study, but honestly, it can often be a struggle as I have to keep reminding myself why I am here and keep doing this to myself so I can have a job I really love, because at the end of the day I know that is what’s going to be important.  

Life as a Midwifery Student 

I have a number of mixed feelings about studying midwifery and my experiences in following women through their pregnancy. I currently have 5 women that I am following, one of which has birthed.

Explanation:

I have not found it too difficult to find pregnant women to follow through, however I am not a shy person, I know quite a lot of people who are helping me, and I work in a baby/store which surrounds me with women either pregnant, planning or friends with women having babies. However, I do not know that I feel comfortable in just going up and asking women whether they would like a student at their birth. I find this very intrusive, and feel that women are becoming so used to birth being a very ‘exposed’ event that they do not see this as an issue. I haven’t had one woman offended in me asking them which is great, but I don’t know that I feel right about it ethically. I have had many women say that they would love to have a student but haven’t been told it was an option, in which I feel that maybe it should be the hospitals, doctors, midwives and university who more actively ‘recruit’ women, especially in the teaching hospitals. What really bothered me the most about this issue was the fact that I hadn’t really thought about it as an issue until a previous lecturer (in the Social Work department) was totally horrified that we were ‘recruiting’ women to follow through. I don’t even know that I would want a student at my birth, and I have talked through with women their issues about whether or not to have me at their birth and it really feels wrong to be selling myself to them, especially because many of them don’t really want me there, but are doing it because they are helping me out. But I realise that it is necessary for me to learn and I can offer valid support.

While I am enjoying learning at uni and am really grateful to have received a lot of credit from my other degrees, I am feeling that it is sometimes very different to what I really want to be learning. I am finding the hospital system very difficult to rationalise in my mind, particularly to remind myself why I’m doing it. The women I am following through are quite different to the women that I normally associate with, which I have found to be an interesting learning experience. I am interested to see how they birth and how they cope with being pregnant, and I am supportive of all women’s decisions and actions even if it differs from my own views. However its been really difficult to define my role as a student and what I can and cant say/do, particularly because a lot of these women are not interested in educating themselves about birth and options that they may have. I never want to put my own views on a woman because as a midwife I strongly believe that our views stay at the door, but I’m finding that I just lose myself and start to feel anxious and don’t know what to say. Not to mention that the first birth that I attended was not a particularly positive experience for me or the birthing woman, and to make this worse, I was unable to debrief with the midwife (or anyone) and felt very let down and a little disillusioned.

My clinical placement is also killing me. Honestly I just feel so claustrophobic up there, and its really weighing heavily on me. I really understand why we are doing it, and I can see its importance, but doing this in a semester when we are hardly talking about birth or women leaves me feeling quite sad about what midwifery is all about, especially because it is so vastly different from the role of the midwives that I admire and want to be like, and even the facilitator on my ward feels like it’s a waste of time for me because most of the people are incapacitated so I cant even use my communication skills.

Additionally, I am terrified of all the new laws coming into place in July around insurance and being independent and I just keep feeling that I cant win and if both uni and the government don’t support me in what I really want to be doing, then what is the point? I know I don’t want to work in the hospital, but I also know that I have a lot to offer to women in areas other than birth, possibly combining midwifery and social work, which is why I haven’t given up, but it is scary and frustrating. I feel that in order to obtain the skills that I feel I will need working outside of the hospital I will need to continue studying after this degree or even move overseas which I don’t really want to do- and I don’t want to work illegally. So I’m always in a debate in my mind as to why I am continuing. Fortunately though I have gained a lot of credit which has kept me from quitting because I know I have a lessened load, and I have a lot of support from women in the area that I want to work, and classmates who continue to pull me up, and I am considering taking a year/semester off next year to help me reassess.

On top of all of this though, I am feeling frustrated with the assessment requirements of the course, not only because of the bioscience topic which could be a whole essay in itself, but many of the assessment requirements have not been very clear and then the marking provided no useful feedback at all, which is very different from what I am used to in other degrees. I like to do well, but if I haven’t I am able to accept it but I need to know why, with feedback on what I can do better. I have worked really hard this semester to try and decipher exactly what we are supposed to do, without a lot of support, and then have not been given useful reasons as to how I could improve. I have been able to keep up a high GPA all through my masters, thus allowing me into this degree, and now its falling because we are not given any feedback about how to improve. I just keep hoping that next semester, without bioscience and with lecturers back from leave, will improve.

Evaluation:

            I understand that no profession is perfect, midwifery included, and that there isn’t some utopian midwifery outside of the hospital, and I see how vital the hospital system is, there are areas that I really love, but why is it so wrong to want to work away from the system? What is upsetting me is that I feel that its not acceptable within the university system (and to most people) to think like this. We are being trained to work in the hospital- this is what the government wants and it is the norm. To keep myself from getting too depressed or quitting all together, I am making sure that I associate with other like minded students, and those who have finished and do work in the setting that I admire. These people are really helping to keep my thoughts in perspective and believe that what I want is possible, I just have to persevere. I have also booked a holiday to somewhere that I can learn from some alternative birth workers and I am just trying to figure out my study options, try to focus my priorities, and as a midwife friend said to me, not to lose my ‘calling’ and just be with-women. I also have to stop whinging and find some peace and balance in what I’m doing- I’m considering some meditation.

Evidence:

Pairman, Pincombe, Thorogood and Tracy (2006) outline how independent and team midwifery serves to be as a beneficial primary care model, and a successful midwifery model that encompasses a focus on continuity of care, and that it works well in New Zealand, but that Australia have gone about healthcare in the wrong way (p. 18-19).

            Additionally, I have become familiar with Anne Frye’s book Holistic Midwifery (1998) and am almost finished reading Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin (2002). I feel that Holistic Midwifery (Frye, 1998) in particular is a very comprehensive book that gives a lot of insight into being a midwife on a level quite deeper than the textbooks that I am currently using. I feel that it is a shame that the options for prospective midwives have been limited so much today, with university being the only option. Anne Frye’s book is aimed at apprentice midwives, which still exists in certain parts of America and Europe, and I feel sad that this was not an option for me here in Australia. Additionally, while spiritual midwifery is quite dated, much of what is said is still relevant to any birth, or caring for any woman, and should not been seen as ‘hippie stuff’ that is useless, but just another was of thinking about birth that I relate to so much more than many of the more medical textbooks. When reading Spiritual midwifery, that is the kind of midwife id like to be, but it feels that what Ina May is talking about is not related at all to the mainstream midwifery that I feel I am supposed to want to be. My next books on the list to read are Birthing from Within, Gentle birth, Gentle Mothering and Birth Crisis.

In all this confusion, where do i go from here?? job, continued study, travel, baby, move to byron?? hmm, i think I'll just go back to bed.