Yesterday I had the most wonderful amazing conversation with Birthing From Within workshop participant I met the week previous - a local CNM. She and I connected pretty strongly (I thought, could be wrong, but I loved her warm eyes, clear strength and youthfullness...one of those: "I really want know more about this person" moments) and she taught me a quick lesson at the workshop that I am still thinking about.

Anyway, part of the directions given at the end of the workshop was to connect with someone from the workshop in the following week. So I mustered up the courage (and by golly, I waited until the very last minut oe the week to call her - true to form) and said hello, how are things, here's how things are for me.

The talk led to her struggles with case review and how it is done and my sturggles with peer review and how it feels to me. Pretty in sinc we were.
And I realized, how very, very deeply I want to connect with folks in the trenches of patriarchal/oppressive systems of medicine and birth. This is far, far cry from the Birth Junky 20-yr old of my past wherein I saw the vast majority of those involved in that system as the enemy.

I don't anymore. I see them all as potential allies. I see the positive motivations behind their actions and the muddied-thinking and struggles they undergo.

I still very much see the system as the enemy though.

She relayed to me a case review that was brought up about a birth she had attended at the hospital as the attending midwife where the cord had broken at birth, and how put on the spot, interrogated, hostile it felt. How in case review one cannot ask "Has anyone else had this happen and what did you do, what did you learn?" Instead of it being an open-discussion of why cords break, how to deal with it, the only thing looked at is the clinical picture and how to Make Sure It Never Happens Again.

And little midwife me is thinking I have heard lots of stories of cords breaking at homebirths, how it's such a surprise, and that it will probably happen to me one day - no big deal, just deal with it. How I would bring it up at Peer Review and the discussion would probably centered around when it happend, what was done and what the cord looked like, the placenta looked like, were there any clues there as to why it might be weak. And other midwives would share their experiences and we could learn from eachother, or in the very least, be encouraged that "yeah this happens".

What that must have been like for her...to be called up and have to cover her butt in front of a panel of Experts. Meh, to know that someone at this birth flagged this case for review, much to her surprise and dismay.

And how very, very hard it can be for women to learn to navigate a masculine system, designed not for learning and improving, but for protecting the satus quo (that not quite right, but it's all I can come with atm) - A punitive and oppressive system of judgment.

So this is where I am sitting tonight. Thinking about that. I feel her lonliness.

What did I say to her?
I said it was good disclipline to look at the clinical picture & I wish we had more of that in Peer Review. To look at the chart, to see if everything there was clean. And also that part of Case Review IS discipline: to sharpen skills and make us better at what we do (who we are)- those are not bad things. It takes discipline to practice breath awareness at a birth! It takes discipline to see our thoughts and how they can cause us suffering. Discipline is good. How can she see that aspect of Case Review and work off it might be the fuel she needs to go forward.

Dunno, just some thoughts.