WORKING AS A COORDINATOR MIDWIFE IN A TERTIARY ...

don’t know how much longer you can do this before the consultant loses his cool
again!”
My perception was that the consultant felt the midwives didn’t care about the
physical implications of the birth and were all up in the air spiritually. I stood
there thinking, “Please, please, let him hold it together”. I felt unable to go to the
midwife and ask her to “just be quiet for five minutes”. For me that was the
wrong thing to do, because I could understand where they were coming from.
As a midwife, Irene understood the philosophy of informed consent and the partnership
model of legislated New Zealand maternity care. Irene does not pass judgment on the
woman’s birth choices and makes it clear that the woman was reluctant to transfer to the
tertiary hospital for whatever reason. This is part of Irene’s ‘knowing’ and reflects the
way she approaches the situation. We do not know why the woman chose to birth at
home nor why she declined to have the obstetrician in the room at the birth. This is also
the way it was.
Irene is caught between supporting the woman’s birth plan choice which was to exclude
the doctors and herself from the room, and supporting the doctors who are awaiting the
unknown, oblivious to what is happening in the room. Irene knows all she can do is be
ready to ‘leap in’ to a situation if an emergency reveals itself.
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