Midwifery Today Community

Dear Jenn,

I have just re-sent the e-mail to you. If you don't see it, maybe look into your junk e-mail as well? Your message to me was in my junk e-mail and I only saw it by chance. If it is not there either, let me know. My e-mail is ninarinkes at hotmail dot com, so you can add it to your contact list or write to me directly. 

Cheers,

Nina

the email might still be in your sent box if you have a look, you can just re-send it to the right address :)

Hi Jenn,

I received your e-mail. And I re-sent mine. If you still did not get it, do you maybe have another e-mail address I could send it to?

Nina

Muliebrity, did you send me personal email? I think you did, but can't find it. I would love to stay in touch with you and when you come to Belgrade to be my guest too. situation here regarding homebirths are completely in grey area, women don't have much support in hospital stuff and birth plan is something they laugh about. But things are changing, there are few of us who are working on improvement and we hope that lot of things is going to change soon. Email me again if you wish, I would love to :)

 Hello.  My name is Emily and my husband and I are investigating the possibilities of having our first baby in Europe while he is completing a Master's Thesis. One of the possible locations is Austria, hence I found your post about an Austrian homebirth midwife. I would love her contact information, if possible. The other countries in which we may have the babe are France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands and Sweden. Any other names or contacts would be wonderful. Neither of us speak another language fluently, or even sufficiently really, and so we would really want an English speaker. Thank you so much! Emilyholzer@gmail.com

 Hello Nina. How hard would it be for you to travel to Freiburg? Or Austria for that matter?  We aren't set at all, but are in the extreme details of family planning for about a year from now. And yes, August might even be the best month for us!

Hi Emily,

I'll tell you a bit about the homebirth and midwifery conditions in the countries you are considering to live in. As far as I know, that is.

Most of the countries you mentioned would not require a travelling midwife, as they have their own homebirth midwives.

For places where there are no homebirth midwives available, I am happy to travel and can even travel outside August now (hehe) as my son is almost grown up. However, when travelling these days, I have my almost two-year-old daughter with me.

Now some more detailed information about the various countries:

NETHERLANDS

Many women have homebirths there, I think about a third of the population. So it should be very easy to get a homebirth midwife there. Dutch people typically speak very good English, too.

SWEDEN

Here is a link to a Swedish homebirth association consisting of parents, midwives etc. There is a list of people you can contact for more information about homebirths in the various Swedish districts:    http://www.fodahemma.org/barnmorskor_mm/kontaktpersoner

In Sweden people typically also speak very good English.

AUSTRIA

I can't remember I wrote anything about an Austrian midwife, but anyway I did a little search for you and came up with some websites: 

 www.hebammenzentrum.at   -   Midwives' center in Vienna. They have a long list of homebirth midwives on their website. Click at "Hebammen" (midwives) on the menue to see the list. There are so many midwives listed there that some of them should certainly speak English!

A midwife in Vienna that somebody recommended on a website:  www.hebamme-ulli.schuster.at.tf/

A midwife in Graz that somebody recommended on a website:  www.hebamme-wenger.at/

GERMANY

In Germany, my home country, I personally know many midwives, so if you end up here, let me know where exactly and I see if i can find one. Quite a few speak English, too. Unfortunately more and more homebirth midwives stop practicing due to low fees paid to us by health insurance companies and at the same time steeply rising indemnity insurance fees. So far it is still possible to get a homebirth in most areas, though, at least the bigger towns. And hopefully we can manage to revert this trend by securing better payment for midwives.

As for Freiburg, I don't know anyone personally, but here is a website of four homebirth midwives, which really sounds good:    http://www.hausgeburt-freiburg.de/portrait.html

My own location is in Southeast Germany, near Czeck boarder.

FRANCE

Don't know much about the conditions there, but one hears that it is getting more and more difficult to get a homebirth midwife there. I think most have stopped practicing because of the enormous indemnity insurance rates.Births are very medicalized in France, with just about everybody having an epidural and so on.

Here is the story of one woman's four births, the second of which was a homebirth in France:   http://www.homebirth.org.uk/pat1.htm

SPAIN

In Spain having babies is very medicalized, too, and not many women have homebirths either. But there is one place that would certainly be able to give you all the information you need about homebirths in Spain and that's a birthing centre in Andalucia. Here is their English website:                                                          http://www.da-a-luz.co.uk/index.php

Wherever you are headed, I wish you all the best in having (and making ;-)) your future baby or babies. 

Kind regards,

Nina

 Nina,

Nina,

Thank you so much for all the information you gave me! It was helpful
at the time and now things are more concrete. We will be moving to
Finland in September and I'm surprisingly due in January! Now we know
we will be giving birth in Finland and any information about their
birth scene, healthcare, and midwives would be greatly appreciated!
Any contacts would be wonderful also. We'll have to transfer care
midway, at about 5 months, and I'm nervous about changing hands and
finding someone quickly in Finland. Also we are not bilingual! Eek!
It's daunghting, but I hope with information from more people like you
I can be better prepared!

Thank you again!
Emily

I just wanted to pop into this thread and say...  YEAH!! to the combination of traveling, service abroad, and midwifery.

I was inspired to become a midwife after wandering around New Zealand, Asia, and the southwestern USA for 14 months.

In the future, I would love to combine my interests in education, development, birth, and travel...  training midwives in Asia or Africa while serving expats...  that would be awesome.

But first, I gotta get through school.  Or just choose a school.  Or even choose CNM v. CPM.

...sigh...  :-/

Anyway, so glad to hear that some midwives DO practice like this, even if only occasionally.

Hi all, well I'm up to my old tricks again - currently in Malaysia at attend a birth :) I actually have 2 women I'm taking care of - sisters-in-law, due a few weeks apart!

Dear Midwive Friends,

My name is Laxmi Tamang from Nepal. I'm one of the founding member of the first and only nurse-midwives led independent birthing centre in Nepal and the Midwifery Society of Nepal, established in 2007 and 2010 respectively.

Actually, we are struggling for the sustainability of our birthing centre because we are not donor funded. During the establishment of the birthing centre each of 11 nurse members contributed US $ 1333 to set up the birthing centre. We had registered our birthing centre as a social enterprise and have very good cooperation and collaboration with the government of Nepal. We provide free of cost maternity care to all women who come to give birth in our centre. We provide whole range of sexual and reproductive health services to urban poor families. These include family planning, antenatal care, delivery, postnatal care, safe abortion care, immunisation, STI treatment and management, etc.

Since May this year Julie-Ann Dowdel, an Australian Midwife is helping us volunteering her time in our centre and at the same time carrying out her research on the perspective of consumers, staff and others towards the birthing centre.

I would appreciate if you could help us in volunteering your time during your travel to Nepal.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards

I might be in India some time next year, so a side-trip to Nepal could well be possible :)

A woman in Zimbabwe has contacted me about her birth in May (2012) and I am interested in attending her, but am wondering about oxygen. I have always had oxygen available to me at deliveries, and obviously couldn't pack my tank! Other things like pitocin I'm pretty sure I can manage to bring. Any thoughts on how this is done?

Thanks,

Jenny

P.S. I got my training in the Philippines at a charity birth center in Davao (www.midwifeschool.org) and am now a CPM, LM with a home birth practice in MN with a wonderful husband and 10 month old daughter. I would love to do more traveling like this for moms without home birth care available to them so please let me know if a need comes up! My website is jhall@newbirthmidwifery.com and my contact info is there as well.

When I travel to a birth, I do not bring an oxygen tank, because anyways as I understand it the recommendation is to resuscitate just with normal air. I bring a bag and mask which works with normal air. (One just does not attach an oxygen tank to it, then it sucks in air.) And I bring all my other equipments including things like pitocin etc. If travelling by plane, one would have to store all these things securely in the main luggage. I don't think it would be allowed in the hand luggage.

All the best to you in your travels and your midwifery work!

Sisterly love, Nina

Well I had thought that it would be another 4 years until I got to travel but it appear that events have conspired to emacipate me sooner.  I'm hoping to travel around Europe (especially the Balkans) to begin with possibly from May/June 2013.  If anyone would like to get in touch & share good practice or perhaps needs a travelling midwife, please get in touch.