I am "only" midwife, I love my job, however, it cost me so much - blog

Midwives-I am a midwife because in the 2000s (I constantly forget the date), I succeeded in a competition at the end of which I was able to choose between becoming a doctor, dentist, or sage-woman.I chose midwife.

Why?

I admit that I cannot explain it too much.Because one day, during the year, midwives came to present this poorly known, atypical profession.I remember a big fellow of almost 2 meters called Charlie, a slender blonde whose first name I looked for all night that comes back to me at the moment, Perrine, her name was Perrine.There were so many others, Hamance I think, Ma-So, Christine ...

They looked happy, it seemed to be a nice job.

The day of choice, it was obvious enough for me without really knowing how to explain to you why.

4 years of intense study

It followed intense years.Difficult.Very.4 years of lessons, internships in the various structures of the region, years during which we learn theory, we accumulate the hours of practice (when other sectors do the same number of hours in an additional year).Great years.Years when I often cried when I was in guard, where I went to class with my pants upside down, but where I made friends for life, and where I found my place in this job.

I liked this job, I love it, and I will like it.

But the years that flow make it more and more difficult every time.

I remember my first guards in the delivery room.From this first birth with this baby posed on the mother's belly, such a beautiful delivery for the first time ... but which I saw the midwife gets busy to resuscitate this child who had made a discomfortOn her mother's belly half an hour after birth ... So .. Isn't that all beautiful rosy?

I remember the first emergency cesarean, which we attended with my Sylvène girlfriend and whose grilled pig smell.

I remember every time I had to explain what I was doing.No, it's not as a nurse (who is a great job).No, it's not like good sister.

But what is it?

It would be so long to explain ... and why?

This is the main demand for midwives today.

No, it's not like a nurse.No it's not like good sister

Why is such an important, so vital, so central job in the lives of women, couples, children still so little known and poorly considered?

This is what we wonder all.

It's not just a matter of money.

Even if the evolution of the salary is one of the lowest of category A civil servants. Even if the NGAP (general nomenclature of professional acts, note) are different for midwives for the same act (why a gynecologist would beBetter paid when he poses an IUD than a midwife? Real questions).Why is my time as a medical professional not valued at the same height as that of my fellow dentists with whom we share the same medical status with limited prescription certainly, but just as much medical?

What questions to which everyone finds their answers.A profession mainly of women, poorly organized to represent themselves, who do not really know what they want, and then good anyway, it is "only" of the midwives what ...

Than midwives.

Who are the hands, ears, shoulders that support women, throughout their lives.To date prepare them so important that the birth will be, monitor the good evolution of pregnancy, their good health and those of their children.

Than midwives.

Who accompany young girls to their first contraception, answer their questions about sexuality, their fears.

Than midwives.

Who welcome these newborns in this world, ensure their good adaptation, revives them if necessary.

Than midwives.

Who are there, night and day during these first moments to three, at maternity, or then at home, facing this mountain of questions and doubts that logically assail each new couple of parents.

I am "only" midwife but I like my job.

I love it and yet.

A job that costs and overflows

He cost me so much.

With regard to my loved ones already, you have to talk about it.

Sharing the life of a midwife is not being able to organize family meals because Tata midwife will not know before the last moment what only weekend of free she will have this month, orOn the contrary, she will ask you to decide the date of a meeting 6 months before because you have to apply for leave from November to March.

To those who share the life of midwives, I would like to shoot my hat.

Because it’s an overflowing job.

Because the hydrogeologist engineer who shares my life is capable of making the difference between Omphalocele and Laparoschisis, by dint of having made me revise.Because it is necessary to be this support, which comes to receive the end of guard tears.Because it is necessary to accompany, sometimes physically, at 6 am, in the middle of winter, to the CHU which is so scary sometimes and which should not be released.Because you have to manage the children, solo, during the 12 hours of guards, on full weekends.

Because you have to bend at the random schedule, which is only decided from one month on the other, which mixes days, nights, 12 hours, 8 hours sometimes.

This job cost me because I saw it evolve in the wrong sense, for years.

A profession that evolves in the wrong sense

We tariff the medical.This is the system as it is.A delivery is so worth.

A childbirth is so much worth that it is that of a multipares that gives birth on its own in the parking lot, or that of a primiparus that must be accompanied for generally a dozen hours.Listening, support, which women and men need, is not counted.The benefit that emotional security, of all that is not measured, is not counted.

The hospital, as a whole, is a tense flow.

We run, all the time.

We run after the equipment, the staff, time.

We run by trying to preserve women, their partners, their children.

This observation and this discomfort concern all the medical and paramedical professions as evidenced by the large number of caregivers gathered in the collectives of caregivers in danger.

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I'm only talking about midwives because that's what I am, what I know.

I can tell you about these guards in the hospital, where we hold thanks to solidarity, good understanding and complementarity with our gynecologists-obstetricians, anesthetists, pediatricians.Where we are trying to do our job with the precious help of childcare workers, hospital service agents.And I don't forget the medical secretaries, and so many others.

I could tell you about the hours of these giggles in the guard room, these balloon races, or wheelchair.Of these parts of Morpion that we made on the board of guards.

Today, and for many years, it has become impossible.

The painting is all the time black.

Tears have too often replaced laughter.

I don't blacken anything.

I met in the team in which I worked much more than colleagues.

I met friends, sisters and brothers, our wonderful male colleagues, Didier, Robert, Hervé, who do so much good to the profession.I will not tell you everything, these are my treasures too.

But that is also why it hurts so much.

That Sandra's smile has disappeared, like that of so many others, Clémentine, Virginie.The lightness of Muriel, of Myriam, crushed by administrative heaviness, by the workload which constantly increases, while at the same time, never so much women and couples had manifested the need for a return to humans,to a birth as physiological as possible.

It hurts so much as you are broken ... burn out, cracking ...

A system that has broken vocations and people

How many caregivers to go to the body had to leave the hospital?

They did not give up no.The system broke them.

I am a bit of it.

A little, only because I left the hospital by choice too.

For another way of practicing my profession, in a liberal cabinet.

A cabinet where I can take the time I want with my patients.Some consultations only need a quarter of an hour, others for half an hour.Because behind a rehabilitation of the perineum, there is sometimes screening for a post-natal depression and a mother who tells you "I think I am not doing well at all".

A cabinet where I am responsible for my hours, where I can cry because I work too much but where I only have to take it to myself.

But where I can decide when I go on vacation.

Because this is this kind of detail maybe, as well as discomfort is played out.

Because when you have the right to take only 2 weeks out of 5 of leave with your children and your spouse "because it is like that", it is not normal.And no, going to Ibiza alone in the middle of November, it never made anyone dream.

Because giving your time, its hours, the midwives are ready to do so, they have always been.Perhaps too much, some will say, and they may be right.

A profession that learns from the studies, to bend in four, never to relieve, to treat, to give everything.To endure the hand crushed by this patient who is in pain, to fart her back because this other did not want to climb on the delivery table, to endure hours of tamtam, of prenatal song but it is well huh, IDon't say the opposite, but it's hard.

It's hard when you follow up on your fifth guard of the week, far beyond 48 hours of maximum weekly because it is a night, it goes.

It’s hard when you don’t always feel supported, recognized, for the know-how that we bring, that we do not have the pay that corresponds to the medical responsibility of mothers, their children.

It's hard yes.

And at one point, the nice midwives can no longer.

In short, I wanted to finish on a point.

Find the link with women in their eyes

The eyes of the patients.

A woman, a midwife, is to find this link.

This look that we dive into theirs to give them confidence, to reassure them, to explain to them if something is wrong.

I made by tilting in liberal, by finding this link, that I had lost it.

That patients who give birth in the hospital sometimes feel neglected yes, just like midwives who despair that patients sometimes do not even retain their first name ... My patients today, send me this valuation that I hadLost in recent years in the hospital but it is not enough.

It is necessary to recognize more global, more general, in all modes of exercise, in maternity, public, private, in liberal, in PMI (childhood maternal protection, editor's note).

The mobilization of the profession goes in this direction.

A profession of small number whose mobilization does not affect many people.

The number of liberal firms closed, over several days, despite the immense financial effort that this requires, should be taken into account.

The number of hospital strikers who, requisitioned, work as usual to accompany as best they can, despite the situation, should be taken into account.

Legitimate, repeated requests from the profession and their representatives for months and years, should be taken into account.

Regain meaning.

The meaning of our profession, which we love so much.

Find our values.

For midwives, but above all, for you, all, women, parents, future parents ...

This weekend is the black weekend for midwives from October 22 to 25.

Support them.To support the midwives means supporting the health of women, their couples, their children.A woman, a midwife.

To see also on the HuffPost: “I am mistreating”: the cry of the heart of this midwife which launches a non-negotiable appeal: a midwife for each woman

Emy B.

Midwife

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