WORKING AS A COORDINATOR MIDWIFE IN A TERTIARY ...

Irene shares a story which supports Alice’s comments. Irene reveals her sense of
responsibility to challenge obstetric colleagues regarding the rigid timelines which can be
enforced upon women within which they are expected to progress in labour at a
prescribed rate, in the absence of consideration of individual circumstances:
A primigravida woman was being induced who was almost classified as morbidly
obese. In this situation the registrar was focused on a timeline for her progress
and the timeline for when to commence augmentation of the labour. We know
syntocinon 3 can lead on to an epidural which for these overweight women can
make things really complicated. So, I challenged the registrar by asking him
whether he was aware that current research shows heavy women labour
differently because they are slower and their body functions are not the same as
a woman with a normal BMI 4 . This communication resulted in the woman being
left alone long enough to progress to a vaginal birth with no assistance. This was
a good outcome for the woman rather than being categorised ‘this is what you
are; this is how I treat you’.
Harman (2007) writes “time cannot be understood when it is measured by clocks, or stop
watches or calendars since all of these instruments distort time in the same way that
science distorts its objects, by viewing them from the outside” (p.26). There is a sense
this was ‘a body in a bed in labour’ not progressing at an acceptable rate with a clinical
3 Syntocinon is a pharmaceutical medication which contains a synthetic version of the naturally occurring
hormone oxytocin. It is used to induce labour or stimulate strong contractions to facilitate progress in
labour.
4 The body mass index (BMI) is a statistical measurement which estimates a healthy body weight
121