Midwife team
- ‘We aren’t going back to the way we used to practice.
Independent Midwife:
“Just an update on how The Pink Kit is working out for me this year. I have had many more primips and women with previous cesarean section or forceps births, and have not had a transfer all year!!! (apart from a vaginal breech and elective cesarean section for placenta praevia). This week I have really needed to use the body work stuff to get babies out. Three babes have been 4.5kg, and I have used lots of sit bone spreads. All have had intact perineums or tears that did not require suturing!!! Other couples have been buying the kit and I am ‘strongly’ saying that the work done now may feel like ‘Homework’ but it will help get your baby out.”
Rostered Midwife in Melbourne, Australia.
‘I learned about The Pink Kit in 1990 when I saw the founder of Common Knowledge give a presentation at The 2nd International Home birth conference. Since I was a rostered midwife, at first I didn’t see how I could take this information into labors when I had never met the woman, though I could see the benefit for birth preparation. Years later and 2 kids later, I’ll tell you, I take it into every birth, and it works! The difference is that I educate women and their partners right then and there.
Anyway, at first I learned some of the techniques and went into labors and DID ‘hip lifts’ etc. They worked, but I soon realized that I was ‘doing to’ women, rather than working with them. I also had understood from my own first birth, that I had to rely on MY knowledge and my support people, rather than on the care provider, to get me through or help me stay focused or even remind me of the skills I knew and wasn’t accessing because it hurt and for a time, I lost focus. I prepared using The Pink Kit and chose care providers who had taken workshops of the information; yet they didn’t come forward to help and I realized that I had expected them to do so, rather than me have to ask when I needed help.
My whole practice changed. I used every opportunity to teach women and their men in labor. If the woman was having trouble with her breath, I taught that. If she was holding her bum, I taught her to let go. Everything works. We still have c-sections and forceps, but fewer, and the women and men just love the work. I wish every rostered colleague knew this stuff, so that any couple would have and will have a midwife on shift who knows this.
Since I’ve been teaching women and men in labor, their ability to help me help them has exponentially benefited. They are so grateful. There has never been one woman in labor who says ‘no’ when I walk in and say. ‘I know something about our birthing body, want me to teach you?’ Even women having good births, love how they can use this knowledge.
At my second birth, I taught my sister. She was amazing. Now at births, I feel more like a companionable companion to the couple. I still do my professional things, but I now have a common language with which to talk to everyone. I extensively work with very ultra orthodox religious women.
Over the past few years as more women have learned about The Pink Kit, more have done the Internal Work, which isn’t anything like ‘perineal massage’. After the birth, you often hear a woman remark ‘I did my homework.’