Let’s Keep Making Birth Better

Midwifery Today, Issue 133, Spring 2020.
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Midwifery Today is now an online publication—which is very exciting to us! This change allows us to include value-added material with articles. You will find links that provide further information, videos, or sounds, and there is no limit to the length of articles—long or short. We can include photos without coming up against page limitations that prevent us from fitting them in. I think that offers a lot to our readers.

Those of you who have taken full advantage of our Online Membership know that we are continually adding previously printed articles from Midwifery Today, including many clinical ones not previously available online. I hope that you are feeling it is a win/win situation. I encourage you to keep writing for us because your ideas and words, well-edited by Cheryl, will reach an ever-growing audience to help make the needed changes in birth practices around the world.

I want to tell you about a very pleasant experience I had recently with a true birth change agent and visionary. Robert Biter is an Ob/Gyn who had a birth center practice in San Diego. It was wildly successful and many motherbabies were helped there. He then moved to Tulum, Mexico, and practiced in a hospital there, teaching the nurses about kind, loving birth. He taught the staff about those beautiful births where the cord is not cut quickly and tremendous respect is given to each mother and baby. It is amazing how quickly the ideas of great birth can be taught to a willing group of practitioners.

Rob hopped on the conference planning bandwagon with me and thought Tulum would be a great place for a conference. Because he has worked and lived there for so long, he knows the territory well. It has been 17 years since we had our last conference in Oaxaca, Mexico. It might be time to go again. We have many ideas for where to have a conference. Let us know if you have a great place in mind. Greece, anyone?

Rob is an astounding visionary. His thought process is remarkable to me. His idea is to establish birth centers all over the world. He is working on one in Perth, Australia. Now he is volunteering in the Solomon Islands. He is a real believer in mother-centered birth, with rights of mother and baby being protected. He is also ready to fight for midwives’ rights. With more of this, we can reach the whole world with better, bold, empowered birth practices.

I have more good news regarding Rob. He is an excellent writer and wants to write for Midwifery Today. You will see some great articles by him soon, so please become an online member so you don’t miss any of them.

It is a joy to work with an outside-the-box thinker because big ideas, good communication, and mutual support and respect are needed to move this mountain of birth and make it a joyful event for families. We who know and understand birth are the ones who will need to make these changes. Partnering with those miraculous points of light all over the world and connecting with each other is how we will make birth right. You who are reading this have more in common with each other than you realize. We are the few who understand and, if we work together, we can reach the world.

The time is right to give birth back to women, and midwives and doulas are the ones who can help manifest this. Again, we must work together for this greater good. We will get birth practices changed if we unite.

All Toward Better Birth,

About Author: Jan Tritten

Jan Tritten is the founder, editor, and mother of Midwifery Today magazine and conferences. Her love for and study of midwifery sprang from the beautiful homebirth of her second daughter—after a disappointing, medicalized first birth in the hospital. After giving birth at home, she kept studying birth books because, “she thought there was something more here.” She became a homebirth midwife in 1977 and continued helping moms who wanted a better birth experience. Jan started Midwifery Today in 1986 to spread the good word about midwifery care, using her experience to guide editorial and conferences. Her mission is to make loving midwifery care the norm for birthing women and their babies in the United States and around the world. Meet Jan at our conferences around the world!

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