The Doulas Report that we talked about yesterday and which we mentioned with the interview with Jesusa Ricoy will be going to school for a few days, surely. The nursing and midwifery collective has started a war firing with everything they have and willing to reach the end to end a figure, that of the doulas, whose mission is not to supplant the midwife, but serve as support for the mother and, incidentally, also as support for the midwife.
Before such report and before such impudence, Dr. Ibone Olza, of whom we have spoken on occasion in the blog, has initiated a campaign to collect signatures in Change requesting the withdrawal of it, by contradict what the studies recommend: care and continued support during childbirth.
Is that what the studies say?
So is. That is what the studies say based on a review of Cochrane studies, where the influence of the accompaniment of a woman in labor was analyzed. As they concluded, being with the future mother during childbirth, giving support when required and making her feel more secure, increases the likelihood of vaginal delivery and women are more satisfied with their deliveries.
Actually, accompanying women in childbirth has always been done. I do not speak of the expulsive, I speak of the delivery itself since the contractions begin. There was always someone who accompanied the woman to help him in whatever it took. With the passage of time and with the transfer of deliveries to hospitals, that support was disappearing because now there is no longer one or more women aware of the woman who will give birth, but only the couple, the husband, who It is not little, but sometimes it is as or more misplaced than the mother.
That supportive, accompanying role of staying close to the woman is the role of the midwife. I think that the short film we talked about five years ago, "Mother of Many," summarizes that paper very graphically. However, we live in a time of crisis when the ideal or advisable is not what actually happens, and that accompaniment has gone less to the point that the norm is that the couple is left alone most of the time.
Cochrane reviewed 23 studies from 16 different countries with more than 15,000 women in different settings and circumstances. In them the final result and the satisfaction of the mothers were evaluated, comparing deliveries with continuous support from hospital workers (midwives, nurses, etc.), by women who did not work in the hospital or had a personal relationship with women (doulas or women who had minimal training) or people around the woman (couple, mother, friend, ...) with deliveries without that continuous support that, as I say, are usually the norm today.
They saw that the women who received continuous delivery support had more likely to give birth through spontaneous vaginal delivery than the others, who were more at risk of giving birth by caesarean section or vaginal with suction cup or forceps. Labor time was also shorter and infants were less likely to score low on the Apgar test.
In addition, the women who were accompanied used less medication to alleviate the pain and had a level of satisfaction towards their greater delivery.
This results they occurred with more intensity when the companions were not part of the hospital or were part of the mother's direct environment (That is, when the accompanying were doulas or women with minimal training).
In this review they found no adverse effects and therefore concluded the following:
Continuous support during labor has clinically significant benefits for women and babies and no associated damage is known. All women should be able to have the necessary support during childbirth and birth.
Withdrawal Request
In the request for the withdrawal, Olza adds what many people think: before entering to fight for who supports and helps a woman in labor, they should perhaps start by solving a serious internal problem that is still in force, obstetric violence in delivery rooms, which remains a reality and seems not to deserve any "report" that speaks of it.
Has anyone asked mothers what they need? Has anyone wondered why many midwives are not happy with their work? Has anyone wondered why many women end up requesting the support of a doula? Perhaps they should spend more time trying to answer these questions and put a solution, rather than complain because there are women who have decided to do what midwives do, for whatever reason (in many cases because of the workload, or outdated protocols that they should continue yes or yes "or if you don't like how we do it here, you go"), it seems like they haven't done for a long time.
And if they are so worried that there is a profit motive, that they work without any regulated title, perhaps they should value what the figure of a doula contributes and assess whether the fight should not go for try to include them as a profession instead of eliminating them.
The petition of signatures, by the way, seems to carry a considerable pace. It started 5 hours ago and right now, at the time of writing these letters, they are 1,853 people They have signed.
