Midwives are awesome. Practically magic. But we don’t grow on trees…

Midwives have always been associated with magic. Sorcery or witchcraft depending on how generous you were feeling.

Νot gonna lie, we can do impressive magic!  We have vampire fingers, able to locate the most recalcitrant veins and coax enough of your blood into the test-tube.  We have x-ray hands, able to work out what position your little contortionist baby is in, and pinpoint her heartbeat just like that; we can read minds, you just have to think water and we’re already on it, handing you your freshly-filled water bottle; we can hold some impossible poses for a crazy long time if we think it’ll get the baby feeding or if you’re in the water and that’s the only way we’ll hear baby’s heartbeat; we know you are fully dilated just by listening to you; we have an uncanny ability to know when you are ok, and when you really aren’t just by looking at you; we can run on coffee and fumes for hours, exponentially longer if given a slice of cake and a whiff of gratitude. Obviously, this so-called sorcery comes from experience and practice.

They used to say midwifery was a vocation, a calling. You didn’t choose it, it chose you. In the good old bad old days, society tolerated your magic, but only up to a point. It tolerated the fact that you were a (resaonably) well educated, single, childless, cat lady. With your own (very modest) income. Because it was understood that your magic was a not-for-profit gift, and the wisest women knew better than to display too much autonomy or financial independence. Society was alive to the fact you couldn’t tend to your own family while ministering to everyone else’s.  Every father-to-could see the value of a skilled birth assistant and it behoved him to keep the mother of his children alive to care for those children. Still, midwives had to toe a fine line: too much knowledge which might lead to slightly improved birth control, maybe even the odd (extremely risky, utterly desperate) termination of pregnancy, and you’d be cinders. Literally.  Not enough and your women died, and you were toast. Literally. 

Of course, female literacy wasn’t a thing, so knowledge wasn’t often written, or if it was, not much has survived. Skills and knowledge were passed on from one generation to the next, from one wise woman to her apprentice with limited access to the wealth of expertise gleaned by previous generations detailing particularly effective magic, versus things that were simply superstition. We jest about ye goode olde days of yore, but we shouldn’t, because there are still plenty of places in the world today where midwifery education is rudimentary at best. Places where girls are excluded from education, where a midwife relies entirely on outdated knowledge, and can still end up as target practice for men with rocks…

But midwives don’t appear by magic. They never did. I suppose that a young girl answering a “divine calling” was granted a modicum of respectability which afforded her the freedom she needed to do her job with an expectation of safe passage. Everyone knew that babies are often born at night, so the midwife needed special dispensation to be out alone after dark. Any other lone female was, of course, asking for trouble. In spades.

Thing is, there needs to be a supply of healthy, well educated young women who can be trained to become the next generation of midwives. It really helps if these young women remain unburdened by their own maternity at least long enough to complete this training.

This sounds so obvious to us in countries where we take women’s right to health and education for granted. In the UK, it’s not perfect but we have decent education for everyone, decent health care for everyone. Young women are expected to graduate from school with the same qualifications as their brothers, and this provides a solid foundation from which to start the training. The training is rigorous but enhanced with decent technology as standard. Marriage and kids are not a priority. 

When women are educated, even if they don’t become midwives, even if they go on to motherhood after completing secondary education, their babies fare better because educated mums are, by definition, older (barely pubescent girls make pretty poor incubators for the next generation), more informed about choices they may have, and better able to follow advice in the form of written instructions.

Educated women are empowered to secure decent jobs and their inclusion in the workplace, any workplace, will improve how society functions simply  by acknowledging the female perspective which is often invisible to, and therefore ignored by men. For example since women tend to be responsible for all their kids’ health needs, a woman involved in planning health care for children might consider it good sense to establish a clinic near a school, and to make sure that clinic remains open after school hours. When researching anything, from medicine safety to road safety, from town planning to online shopping, women will remember to consult other women as well as men. Ask Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women how beneficial to all of humanity this is, and you’ll find she has a great deal to say! This matters because when the world functions well for a woman, her children (both male and female) thrive. Such a world will prioritise easy access to safe drinking water because she’s the one responsible for bringing it to the family home. It will facilitate access to family planning as she is the one who suffers horribly from too many pregnancies. It will promote investment in sustainable agriculture because growing food is, you guessed it, also her responsibility. It will promote good sanitation since, yes, she’s in charge of that too! Thus, her children are less sick, better fed (more food grown, fewer siblings to share it with) and therefore more able to attend better schools (there are now more educated women who will teach) with a full belly, ready to learn. This in turn creates a virtuous cycle.

I know, first hand, that this works because I’m privileged to know the founders of a girl’s school in South Sudan. It’s called IBBA Boarding School for Girls. This is awesome because, according to The Windle Trust  International: “Education in South Sudan continues to face significant challenges due to decades of conflict, economic hardship, and limited educational infrastructure. These barriers disproportionately affect girls and young women, resulting in low enrolment, retention, and transition rates, particularly at higher levels of education.”

IBBA Girls School opened in 2014. It helps mitigate the high drop-out risks faced by girls (only 25% finish primary, and 10% finish secondary school) by providing a safe and nurturing environment, free from the pressure of early marriage. 

And guess what: 5 of the recent graduates are training to be midwives! According to The Windle Trust, who sponsor their ongoing midwifery education, ‘these students show strong commitment to serving their communities. They often travel long distances to follow up with patients in their homes, demonstrating their dedication to applying theoretical knowledge in real-life situations.’

How cool is that?

These midwives will be beacons of knowledge, able to educate multitudes of women throughout pregnancy and beyond,  and in doing so they will save countless lives. According to the One Million More Campaign which aims to increase the number of midwives in the world by one million:

“Every two minutes, a woman dies from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. Millions more are denied access to the sexual and reproductive health services they need — or the power to make informed decisions about their bodies and futures…” And access to well-trained midwives is proven to improve childbirth morbidity and mortality.

Because knowledge is power. Knowledge is magic. It should be harnessed to benefit everyone, never hoarded among a self-selected so-called elite. But power brings autonomy and independence, and traditional elites have always fought hard to perpetuate their own power by restricting access to education, seemingly blind to the fact that everyone suffers.

Today is International Day of the Midwife and we could do worse than supporting Ibba Boarding School for Girls, who create a pipeline of healthy educated young women whose knowledge will ‘magically’ transform the lives of their communities, whether or not they become midwives. Should you be interested, here’s a link to their fundraising Facebook page (Friends of Ibba Boarding School for Girls):

https://www.facebook.com/share/18P2hco9kh/

Also, you might consider signing the petition for a Million More Midwives. 

This is where it starts. One signature = one step closer. 

Petition

I thank you warmly!