The COVID-19 global pandemic has left doctors without enough masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment (PPE). Forced revisions in visitation protocols are restricting families from visiting their loved ones. Yet business for birth workers is booming!
Expectant mothers are understandably concerned for the safety of their newborns, partners, family members, and themselves as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic courses through medical facilities.
Women considered at low risk for post-delivery complications are scrambling to readjust their birth plans - favoring a hopefully safer at-home experience instead.
And at-home birthing experiences are where the services of midwives - trained nurses who support women during pregnancy, labor and delivery, and postpartum care - shine.
An expectant mother’s midwife and/or doula (a non-medically licensed birthing professional) are employed to provide comfort as well as logistical and emotional support in the weeks before and after a birth - as well as delivering the child during the birth itself.
Studies have shown that women, especially Black mothers, fare far better when the advocacy services of a doula at minimum are on hand. But the service can be stigmatized and expensive.
“In the past, midwives have tended to be marginalised in America. Licensing rules vary across states, and insurance coverage for midwifery services is patchy,” The Economist reported. Costs can vary widely, though midwifery is being covered by more and more insurance plans.
Starting March 1, the New York State Doula Pilot Program began tapping into Medicaid funding to expand access to better maternal healthcare, particularly for low-income families. Brooklyn-based doula Regina M. Conceição told the Huffington Post that she agrees that New York’s pilot program shows public opinion of non-physician birth workers is progressing.
For Black women especially, that shift can be a matter of life or death.
“The risk of dying during childbirth can be exacerbated by a lack of trust between patients and health workers. In America that is especially true for black women, who die from pregnancy-related complications at more than three times the rate that white women do,” said Conceição.
“[A] lot of providers are more open to working with doulas now than they were [when I began in 2000]. The kind of treatment women get is not consistent at all, and that’s the key. It sounds so simple, but we need for it to be standard that pregnant people are treated with dignity and respect, and that their providers really listen to them.”
There’s a persistent myth purposely depicting birth as a universally scary, complicated, and risky job that only a doctor can do. Will this myth be shaken up as the pandemic makes hospitals seem less safe?
For now, as health workers struggle to protect themselves and their patients from a deadly virus, the reward of having a safer and more intimate birthing experience through the help of a midwife and/or doula is a top priority for many mothers-to-be.