Midwife Ruth Wilf RN has been helping babies and mothers for over 50 years

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Call the midwife: Ruth Wilf has been helping babies and mothers for over 50 years

Michael Vitez, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted:Sunday, November 9, 2014, 2:50 AM

...Wilf, 83, who started teaching childbirth classes in 1962, and drives a Prius with a bumper sticker reading, "Midwives help people out!", got on her soapbox.

"This is where women run into trouble with their obstetrician," Wilf said to Hull. "They go to the doctor and say 'I'm so tired of being pregnant.' Well, of course you are. And the doctor says, 'You want me to deliver your baby, don't you? So why don't you just come in on Thursday and I can induce your baby?' So that way lies disaster.

"The mother and the baby are not ready. All these mysterious forces that we know so little about work together in complicated ways. So you induce the baby for nothing, and what happens? It doesn't work. The baby gets in trouble. The woman winds up with an unnecessary C-section and the baby winds up in intensive-care nursery. Bingo. And that's what's going on in the United States."...

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20141109_Call_the_midwife__Ruth_Wilf_has_been_helping_babies_and_mothers_for_over_50_years.html#0oeECEv6ck6P8Pvh.99

[ArtClassRN, ADN, RN]

I wasn't aware that Certified Nurse Midwives, as opposed to doulas, were so dismissive of the MDs they work with in hospitals.

[Red Kryptonite]

The truth is not dismissive. This happens every day in the United States. Obstetricians are trained surgeons. Their expertise is in handling birth gone wrong, and thank God for them when they are needed. However, expecting a trained surgeon to sit and do nothing while watching a natural process slowly take place is like expecting Theodore Roosevelt not to charge San Juan Hill. It's not their nature or training. The reason birth gets treated as a disaster waiting to happen in this country is because obstetricians are primary providers for healthy low risk pregnant women. They still have an obligation to know the research and provide evidence based care, but far too many of them do not.

Midwives are trained to aid and facilitate natural, normal, physiological birth, and to intervene with some minor complications. They are the primary providers for pregnant women all over the globe, and especially in comparable industrialized countries with better outcomes for both mothers and babies than we have here.

Go Ruth!