The 15 promotion of midwives in the city of Madrid decided to celebrate their graduation by singing a song and recording a video with humor and grace, showing some of the characteristics of their profession as a satire.
So far, everything could have been in something funny without more. The problem is that when watching the video, many women, mothers, have felt offended, many midwives have not felt identified and many health professionals have seen somewhat outdated details, contrary to the struggle that has been taking place for a long time to ensure that births are increasingly respected (in fact, this week the World Week of Respected Childbirth), and more according to the decision of each woman.
Come on, they have "bundled brown", because in social networks and in the blogosphere many people are talking about it. For my part, I'm going to give you the reasons why the video doesn't excite me either and why they could have done it differently.
We are Spanish, we are humorists
If something characterizes us Spaniards, we have the ability to laugh at everyone and everything, even at ourselves, with special grace and salt shaker. The problem is that, in addition, we could also define ourselves as a country where health is light years away from that practiced in other parts of Europe (and if we add the "tambourine country", cradle of thieves and the place where less prepared they handle the cotarro, nor I tell you).
To what I was going. The video aims to be funny and satirize a little the work they do in the day to day of a hospital. The main problem is that for them it can be funny to put everything in a song with rhyme, but for others, some users (or users), not so much.
"Come to epidurals all day"
It is the model we come from, to instrumentalize a birth in such a way that the woman is prostrated, immobile and painless. The obstetrician or midwife has all the control of the process, since when the pain and sensations are annulled the ability to control the body is also annulled. I do not say that the woman who wants the epidural should reject it. Rather, the woman who doesn't love her should be able to have the possibility of giving birth in the best possible conditions: with freedom of movement, dilating in the water if you feel better, in a pleasant environment, with professionals attentive to the process, but who do not intervene if it is not necessary.
"Girl raises the oxytocin"
It is the title of the song and the video. Just at the moment when the most controversial oxytocin brings, believing that it could be related to the current increase in autism cases, it turns out that they choose it as the title of the video.
Oxytocin is usually needed when using the epidural, since it tends to slow down the births, to lengthen them. Faced with that situation, Oxytocin increases the frequency of contractions and their strength. The effect on the child is not always positive. Many do not tolerate these contractions well, they do bradycardia and the process ends in caesarean section. Come on, it can help in many cases, but it can spoil others.
"Make that puerpera right away"
Health professionals have a lot of work and little time. I think we all know this. The consequence is that we do not know the name of the patients and this makes us refer to them for what they "suffer" or for the "reason for consultation." Appendicitis of 12B, heart attack in room 7 or puerpera. And worse, they are not taken care of, they are made.
I guess you don't have to say much about this ... it is disrespectful to reduce people to their pathology and it is another disrespect to talk about "doing" and not "attending", because we are not talking about an assembly line, but about a customer service.
How much things would change if we referred to people by name and treated them as people.
The same is seen again when they sing "put a glove on that dila". Dila, dilatation. Come on, that a woman when she enters becomes a dila.
I want to believe…
I want to believe that this is not how they work. I want to believe that all these professionals who have finished the residency have created this video to laugh, in a way, at the instructions they have received in their apprenticeship of some midwives, with a rather old-fashioned professional leave, and that they don't consider that the axis of their work.
The work of a midwife, as we could see in the beautiful short "Mother of many", goes far beyond raising the oxytocin, putting a way, looking at the dila and doing puerperal. In fact, all this is not important. What's more, the most important role is the accompaniment, the love, being there, saying the right word at the right time and using silence when nothing else is needed. To give trust, make the woman believe that she is able to do it and let her know that if something fails, she is there to help you.
Let's see if the next promotion takes it into account for the next video. For this, I said, I want to believe.
