Midwives' page

Models of midwifery care vary around the world. Orgasmic Birth visits with midwives who exemplify the heart and hands of midwifery skills and knowledge in the care they provide to the women, babies and families in our film.

In the United Kingdom, expectant women are asked whether they wish to birth in hospital, at a birthing centre or at home. As in many countries of the world, the majority of women in England give birth with midwives.

The Albany Midwifery Practice
Based in SE London, this self-employed, self-managed group of midwives offers care to a diverse group of all-risk women registered with four local GPs. Providing an exceptional level of continuity of care, midwives encourage women to decide in labour where they will have their baby. Last year 45% of women had their babies at home and 78% of women had a normal vaginal birth, which includes no stimulation, anaesthesia, instruments, episiotomy or managed third stage.

Working together with women through their pregnancy and up to 28 days after the birth, these midwives practice the art of midwifery. www.albanymidwives.org.uk

New Zealand
Liz Brunton was involved in the push to create a New Zealand College of Midwives, which changed the State Laws and moved midwifery away from nursing. New Zealand midwives are now Independent practitioners. New Zealand is another country that is creating an awareness of the benefits of homebirth. Liz, a homebirth midwife and midwifery educator, says:

"I believe in women's ability to birth well. I believe that midwives are vital to keeping birth physiological and uncomplicated. I know midwives can empower a woman to believe in herself, to have the information she needs to succeed and to support her through the labour/birth believing she will achieve. The experience of birth is so influential toward confidence in parenting and this leads to a quality society because high-self-esteem parents rear high-self-esteem children.”
Liz Brunton - Domino Midwives Wellington, Newtown, New Zealand

In Cuernavaca, Mexico, Angelina Martinez's midwifery skills were handed down from her grandmother and mother. But unlike traditional midwives of the past, Angelina has access to many professional courses and evidence-based information, thus blending traditional midwifery knowledge with scientific research.

United States
In the United States, midwives attend only a small percentage of births, but this is growing. Orgasmic Birth shows home births supported by Martha Roth, Valeriana Pasqua Masback, Anne Margolis and Leah Marinelli, midwives with extensive experience in natural and conventional approaches to women’s health and maternity care.

Hospital -based midwifery services offer another option to women and their families. In the film, Lonnie Morris, founder and director of The Childbirth and Women's Wellness Center, the first freestanding ambulatory birth center in the state of New Jersey and the fourth in the United States, brings her midwifery skills to hospital births with a home like feel. In a hospital environment, yet  with no routine medical interventions.

Midwife Maura Larkin catches babies at the Bellevue Hospital Birth Center, an inner-city facility serving low-income families in New York City. Midwives at Bellevue encourage women and their families to move, use water and find their way through labor in the way that is most comfortable for them. The Bellevue Birth center achieves wonderful outcomes, with a cesarean birth rate below 3%.

Promoting, preserving and passing along midwifery knowledge and skills to all who attend births is an essential part of keeping birth as normal as possible and allowing women and babies to share a birth experience that is filled with dignity, respect, passion and power. Orgasmic Birth demonstrates how this is done.