Juliet Rayment

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Body work for birth

• Juliet Rayment
• Department of Sociology
• University of Warwick

University of Kent 11th July 2008
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(No Transcript)
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Head, Hand and Heart
HEAD Professionalisation, objective knowledge
HAND Touch, palpation, diagnosis, body
work, physical intimacy, embodied knowledge
HEART Care, trust, spending time, building
relationships, emotional labour.
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Performance Indicators

• Industrial time vs. body time
• Cervical dilation and length of labour
• Constructing complicity
• Administration
• Interruptions telephone, doorbell, visitors
• Computers and record-keeping
• CTG monitoring

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Body time vs. Clock time

• A womans experience of birth
• fuses her physiological, conscious and
  unconscious Self with an event in which the
  everyday times of clocks calendars, schedules and
  deadlines have no place. And yet, of course, for
  women in industrial and many industrialising
  countries this archetypal time of the birthing
  process tends to take place in a context where
  clock time reigns supremeThe more intrusive the
  obstetric assistance, the more the woman in
  forced to oscillate between the all-encompassing
  body time of her labour and the rational
  framework of her clock-time environment
• (Adam, 1995 48-49).

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Space

• You werent able to perhaps spend as much time
  with the women as you originally came into the
  job to do, really, which was sort of the role of
  being a midwife. It was more like see a patient,
  quickly try and get them out the doorget them
  in, get them out. It doesnt matter how theyre
  feeling or how if the care is adequate.
  (Veronica)

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Conclusions

• Good midwifery responds to the needs of womens
  bodies
• Understanding the needs of womens bodies
  requires emotional intimacy
• Emotional intimacy comes about through spending
  time with women
• Midwives are with institution, rather than
  with woman
• Its difficult to maintain the kind of
  relationships which define good midwifery.