Please do get involved to make sure non-nurse Certified Professional Midwives are included in any national health care reform plan.  They are NOT "lay midwives" - they have several different training pathways, all of which meet the same accreditation criteria applied to the Certified Nurse Midwife credential (though the actual training and education requirements are different for the two credentials.)  Certified Professional Midwives are fully trained and qualified professionals prepared to attend out of hospital birth.   You can learn more about them here.

In any case, there is a new group forming to make sure women's access to CPM and out of hospital birth care is ensured under any new health plan.  Get involved!

M.O.M. Campaign: midwives and health care reform

Dear Friends,

Congress has laid out an ambitious timeline for achieving health care reform this year. Midwives and consumers are mobilizing quickly to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity and to defend against any threats to accessing midwifery care.

Midwives Organizing for Mothers (M.O.M.) is a new national campaign to raise awareness and secure a place for Certified Professional Midwives in our health care system. Spearheaded by the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM), the M.O.M. Campaign Steering Committee includes the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM), the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council (MEAC), Citizens for Midwifery (CfM) and the International Center for Traditional Childbearing (ICTC).

CfM’s President, Susan Hodges, and Vice President, Nasima Pfaffl, are designated members of the M.O.M Campaign Steering Committee representing Citizens for Midwifery. They will be heading to Washington DC, along with the other Steering Committee members from NACPM, NARM, MEAC and MANA, to meet on May 4-5 to fine-tune our campaign strategies and meet with various legislators and congressional committee members.

SAVE THE DATE:
Join the leaders of this initiative for a conference call Webinar on Thursday, May 7th at 8 p.m. EST to find out more about the M.O.M Campaign and how you can participate! Details to follow early next week; this will be an information call rather than a discussion.  And, be ready for Action Alerts!

Rachel - I think this is an excellent idea and a much needed book!!  (Having just turned 42, I can ESPECIALLY say this is a much needed book.  I need this book.  Soon. Okay, now.)

Say, YOU'RE a writer!!!!  YOU could write this book!!!!!! 

Actually, I am not aware of a specific resource yet, but two come to mind that might serve, or at least give some direction.

One is a faithful Catholic program through ENDOW (Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women), a program I have been involved in this year as a facilitator studying Pope JP II's Letter to Women and LOVE!!!! 

ENDOW has a program for older women called "Discovering Your Dignity": 

Discover Your Dignity:  A Woman's Journey Through Life, Part II- (Part I leads a woman from birth through mid-life and Part II leads a woman from mid-life through death.)  In keeping with the mission of ENDOW, which is to educate on the nature and dignity of women, it seems appropriate that we come to rest on this particular topic and ponder what the Church has to say about how God's workings manifest themselves throughout the course of a woman's life.   In a very real sense, our life on earth is a journey to heaven.  These Study Guides invite us to ponder that very thing.  

The authors are four Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan, each with a different area of expertise.  Each chapter will discuss events and milestones in a woman's life from four different perspectives: the biological, psychological, philosophical and theological.   The stages mentioned are not ages exactly, though ages are included to better orient readers to an approximate chronological period.  It is understood that each woman is an individual and the details of her particular life are her own.  Still, there are many shared similarities and issues that surface at particular stages in life and it is those that will be examined.  It is hoped that each of us will find ourselves on the pages and come away with a deeper understanding of our God-given dignity.   Discover Your Dignity:  A Woman's Journey Through Life reminds us that God has a design for a woman's development that includes her body, mind, and spirit. 

Authors
Sister Prudence Allen, RSM, Ph.D. (Philosopher), Sister Marie Paul Lockerd, RSM, D.O. (Medical Doctor), Sister Moira Debono, RSM, S.T.D. (Theologian), and Sister Lydia Allen, RSM (Psychologist).

I haven't read or facilitated this particular program so I don't know exactly how it deals with end of fertility, but it sounds like it does deal with menopause, including the physical and the psychological.

The other program is not specifically Catholic but it occurs to me that it might be appropriate for Catholics, or possibly adaptable.   The curriculum for the post-maternity phase of life is currently in development:

Menopause By His Design

I'll contact the author, Doran Richards, and see what I can find out about it.

I thought I had had a Catholic resource on coping with miscarriage, after I lost a baby at 7 weeks' getstation several years ago.  But I can't remember what it was. 

I hope we can put together some more resources on these important topics.

Sign AABC letter to Support Birth Centers

Dear Friends,

You can help support birth centers  one of maternity care choices that should be widely available to all women  simply by signing an on-line letter.

The American Association of Birth Centers (AABC) is asking for your help.

Rep. Susan Davis (D., CA) will soon introduce a bill to include birth centers as eligible providers for Medicaid payment. To clarify, when a Medicaid-covered birth takes place in a hospital, the doctor gets paid, and the hospital is paid too -- a facility fee.  A judge recently ruled that Medicaid may not pay the 43 birth centers in Texas, because birth centers are not specifically listed in the federal statute for Medicaid. This ruling would apply nationally. But hospitals can still get paid if women who are Medicaid recipients give birth in hospitals.  When birth centers are not reimbursed for a facility fee, they cannot survive economically, and Medicaid-eligible women are denied this excellent (and cost-saving) choice.

 If you think this is wrong and bad public policy, please sign the AABC letter. The letter supports enactment of legislation, ie Rep. Davis’ bill, that would correct this inequity.

Please pass this on to everyone you know and all birth-related or women's health elists that you belong to so others can sign too. PLEASE both sign and pass it on. AABC's goal is 1,000 signatures in the next week.

To sign the letter go to:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=XGO2ZxaqKojCOGBg_2fBVxWg_3d_3d

Greetings folks,

When it comes to the Swine Flu, some people are blowing it off as nothing.  Others are glued to the TV and bracing themselves for the worse.

So who do you believe?

Since I have a close personal friend who is a Ph.D. expert on viruses for the Center for Disease Control, I decided to give him a call and get his take on the swine flu outbreak.  He is not an upper level administrator of the CDC, but a prominent enough researcher to have been interviewed on National television for his work on Lymes disease.  We’ll call him Dr. R.  He prefers to remain anonymous since he makes a few comments about upper level government officials here!

Here’s a summary of what he said on May 1^st:

-       Normal seasonal outbreaks of influenza kill about 35,000-40,000 people per year in the USA, usually elderly people.  Any flu outbreak ought to met with common-sense precautions to cut down risk of infection and care for those infected.

 

-       For a particular new strain of flu to qualify as especially dangerous, it has to satisfy two criteria: 1) that it is especially virulent, that is, that it kills a larger proportion of those infected than normal flu and 2) that it is especially easily transmitted from human to human.  The killer Asian Bird Flu did not qualify as a pandemic because it met only 1 of these criteria – it killed about 10% of those infected, but it seems that most were infected through direct contact with live birds as opposed to being passed from human being to human being.  It is not uncommon that viruses that originate in animals move less efficiently from person to person than from animal to animal or animal to person.

 

-       It is impossible now and will remain impossible for several months to be able to make a scientific judgment whether either of these two criteria apply to this new swine virus.  There just have not been enough cases reported and data collected.  Anybody making “factual” statements on how dangerous this flu is basing the statements not on science but on hearsay and emotion.

 

-       The media has a vested interest in sensationalism and hype – it keeps people buying papers and watching TV which makes advertisers happy.  Heads of government departments have a vested interest in being overly precautionary to cover their rear.  If the outbreak were to get severe, they could be blamed for not doing enough.  So it is helpful to keep this in mind when listening to the TV. 

 

-       Being overly precautious can be bad.  In the 1970’s a swine flu broke out in New Jersey.  The government carried out widespread vaccination and the vaccine killed more people than the disease.  Shutting down businesses and schools has significant educational and economic disadvantages.  So common sense needs to prevail.  100 reported cases in the US does not warrant, in his opinion, canceling activities and closing schools.

 

-       The best measure to take would be for people to stay home when they are sick.  Physicians, he says, are often the greatest offenders here.  Washing your hands either with soap and water or with a hand sanitizer (both work well to kill viruses) and doing so frequently, especially when you are in frequent contact with people, also is important.

 

-       He and the CDC staff receive the latest data each day.  He promised to email me should hard data indicate that we ought to take more drastic precautions.  And I promise to pass that news along to you immediately.

Hope you find this info helpful.

Stay healthy!

Marcellino D’Ambrosio

Friday, May 1, 2009

Get behind your local Certified Professional Midwives and expand birthing choice in Ohio!!!!! 

Don't let me down here guys!!!!!!

A couple of hundred people are expected to gather at the Statehouse in Columbus today for what is being billed as the "Mother of All Rallies."

The gathering is the latest effort by grass-roots groups fighting, state-by-state, for certified professional midwives to be licensed to practice. Right now those midwives, who assist with at-home births and in free-standing birth centers, aren't given licenses in 24 states (including Ohio), Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.   More...

Rachel and Maura - I'll chime in here because I agree with you that the word "crone" has negative connotations, and when I read books about women becoming "crones" (it comes up sometimes in secular or pagan midwifery literature - I know it from Susun Weed - the herbalist, yes, I'm not kidding, WEED - and her book on menopause) it bothers me, even though I know the authors are meaning something positive.  The Wikipedia definition notes that a crone is usually sinister, malicious or disagreeable.  (Not that my family doesn't ever experience me as at least disagreeable - if not hopefully outright sinister...)

I believe the authors who use "crone" positively are meaning to use the term "wise women" - or wise grandmothers, female elders in the society - women who have raised their children to adulthood and have gathered knowledge from their life experience- unique and irreplaceable and valuable knowledge about womanhood.  It is often brought up to emphasize that just because a woman has passed her childbearing years, her reason for living is not over - that post-fertility life is full of a new kind of spiritual "fertility", which I think is not in principle in conflict with any Catholic teaching.

Personally, I prefer the term "Titus 2 woman" to refer to the older women who teach the younger women to love their husbands, care for their children, etc. etc.  I know that this is often used to refer to women still in their childbearing years who mentor younger mothers and wives, but I think the sense of it could reasonably extend to women who have raised their children (or are raising older children), and are entering into a period of life (an extended period in the human lifespan today most of the time) when their role and vocation expands (according to God's plan) beyond the rigors of day-to-day care of small children. 

I wonder if a Catholic book about this would look at some of the female saints who have accomplished great work having received a calling later in life.  It seems to me that we have to look at a new definition of "fruitfulness", which God calls us to throughout the lifespan, but is an adjustment I think for women who have embraced and loved physical motherhood.  I also wonder if something from Pope John Paul II, who embraced his own process of growing older.   I'm just brainstorming here.

I'll agree that a good Catholic resource would be so welcome.