06 Mar Lena
In year 12, I knew that I wanted to become a midwife. It was simply clear to me. At the time, I was already taking my first steps towards feminism and was fascinated by the feat that a person with a uterus achieves when she brings a rather large baby into the world through her vagina. I found it impressive that this works. That people with a vulva can do something like that.
After graduating from high school, I travelled through Latin America for a year and completed my internship in a delivery room in Lima, Peru. It was there that I saw a birth for the first time. While the episiotomy was being performed, I counted the lamellae on the ceiling. When the baby was taken away from her after the birth to be taken to the paediatric ward, I cried. The midwives made fun of me and told me that I would have to work a lot harder to become a midwife, but then I would certainly make it.
Am I tougher now?
Back in Hamburg, I wrote around 40 applications to get a training place as a midwife somewhere in Germany. After the I-don't-know-how-many applications, I was invited to an interview in Munich and got one of the highly coveted places there.
It wasn't easy arriving in this city as a „newcomer“, but somehow it worked out quite well. My first assignment in the hospital was on the internal medicine ward. My first assignment was to be present during an endoscopy.
While they were inserting the endoscopy tube rectally into the man who was rearing up and screaming, I tried to count the lights on the ceiling so as not to fall over. However, this time I couldn't say anything, but merely remarked that the man was not yet properly anaesthetised. That didn't just get me into trouble. A nurse I told about the situation laughed at me and said that if I really wanted to become a midwife, I would have to toughen up a bit more.
Am I tougher now?
During a birth debriefing during my training, I was told that I could have been a bit tougher so that the woman would do what I said.
Am I tougher now?
During my time in Mexico, I worked in the delivery room of a clinic in Mexico City and in a project in the countryside. In the delivery room, every woman was routinely given a manual internal postnatal palpation. I felt sick every time and refused to do it.
No. I have not become tougher! And even today I don't want to impose myself against the will of a woman giving birth while she is giving birth. It's her birth, not mine. I also no longer want to have to look the other way when people are treated in an undignified and inhumane way.
My aim is to combat and highlight misogynistic behaviour in medicine. I want to create an environment for as many women giving birth as possible in which they can let go and open up without having to fear that something will be done that they don't want.
I decided in favour of original midwifery work in out-of-hospital obstetrics because I believe that this is where the woman giving birth can most actively decide on the course of her birth. Many women in labour don't need much other than their own rhythm and their own strength and as little outside intervention as possible. If they need suggestions, ideas, help or advice, I am there to offer my knowledge and my hands.
I would like to support people with a uterus in what is perhaps the most stressful, sometimes most difficult and most beautiful situation for them. Through participative midwifery work while a new person is coming into the world. By making good arrangements in advance, being sensitive to the situation and actively asking which needs are currently in the foreground. By promoting a conscious and informed decision to find the right place of birth for each person.
It doesn't always have to be your own home. It doesn't always have to be the birth centre either.
But there must be a choice.
This option should also be available in Hamburg in the future, and I hope for good cooperation with the clinics, the gynaecologists and paediatricians in private practice, the homebirth midwives and the city of Hamburg!
