The National Association to Advance Black Birth (NAABB) kicked off Black Maternal Health Week #BMHW20 with the debut of the Black Birthing Bill of Rights; which includes twenty evidence based rights. In their 4-13-20 e-newsletter the NAABB states, “We want each black woman and birthing person to know their rights and to have the tools to confidently exercise these rights.” Research by Vedam et al. has identified that women of color are more likely to experience mistreatment or disrespect in maternity care. NAABB noted in the coming months they will be working on a Black Birthing Bill of Rights Toolkit. The Black Birthing Bill of Rights is a tool for individuals but also for policy and care provision. The NAABB states, “The Black Birthing Bill of Rights serves as guidance for government programs, hospitals, maternity providers and others as they transform their policies, procedures, and practices to meet the needs of Black birthing people.” Visit the Black Birthing Bill of Rights or download here. To further connect with NAABB’s BMHW20 events visit the NAABB events. Visit BMMA to connect with more information about Black Maternal Health Week and how you can share and participate in the events, webinars, scholarship, and centering of black mamas and birthing people.

Photo credit: theNAABB.org. Black Birthing Bill of Rights. Visit thenaabb.org to download the document.

New CfM Factsheet

New CfM Factsheet

Citizens for Midwifery has created a printable/shareable factsheet to help inform shared decision making and advocacy around the issue of infants being separated from birthing parents due to suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection: “Get the Evidence You Need to Inform Your Decisions: Separation of Infants at Birth from Their Birthing Parent Who Is Suspected or Confirmed for COVID-19”

We hope home and birth center professionals will share this factsheet with their clients so they can be prepared if they need to transfer care. We hope childbirth educators and doulas and the public will share this information to help support their students, clients, and friends.

Here are some other resources on the topic:

Waiver: Evidenced Based Birth Sample Informed Consent Waiver on Separation.

Data on Outcomes: EBB is putting out weekly research summaries on COVID-19. These contain very helpful information on the emerging research on the rate of infection, severity, and transmission of infection for infants, pregnant and birthing people.

Media: Excellent article by Irin Carmon on separation of parents and their infants.,“‘They Separated Me From My Baby’ Hospitals are keeping newborns from their parents over coronavirus fears.” Importantly, the article centers the experience of a woman of color.

Why Continuing to Chest/Breastfeed and Skin-to-Skin Are So Important in a Pandemic: Evidence Based Birth Article Evidence on: Skin-To-Skin After Cesarean is focused on cesarean but the information on why skin-to-skin is important is applicable to all births.

ILCA Statement on Breastfeeding and Lactation Support During the COVID-19 Pandemic

LLLI: Continuing to Nurse Your Baby Through Coronavirus (2019-nCoV; COVID-19) and Other Respiratory Infections

UNICEF- Q&A on breastfeeding

Protocols, Recommendations and Guidelines: American Academy of Pediatrics: INITIAL GUIDANCE: Management of Infants Born to Mothers with COVID-19. April 2, 2020. -Recommends separation.

California Perinatal Quality Collaborative webinars- A new webinar from UC Davis is available. Provides an example of how a hospital is implementing CDC recommendations. Does include shared decision making update from CDC

Center for Disease Control (CDC) Recommendations as of Feb 18, 2020. These recommended separation of infants and birthing parents who were suspected or confirmed for COVID-19 infection. It mentioned discussing separation with the birthing parent and rooming-in if it was the“mother’s wishes” but did not specify shared-decision making should be utilized.

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) 4-4-20 Update: Interim Considerations for Infection Prevention and Control of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Inpatient Obstetric Healthcare Settings. Recommendations now say separation should be done on a case-by-case basis and should utilize shared decision making with the patient.

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection in Pregnancy. Information for healthcare professionals” Version 7: Published April 9, 2020.

World Health Organization (WHO) “Clinical management of severe acute respiratory infection when novel coronavirus (nCoV) infection is suspected. Interim guidance 13 March 2020”

WHO “Q&A on COVID-19, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding”

Visit the CfM COVID_19 Resource Page or our blog for further information and resources.

In response to the increased demand for out of hospital birth during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Big Push for Midwives has spearheaded a new crowd sourcing map to connect potential clients with midwives. See the PushHeadlines page for links to media articles detailing this increased trend toward community birth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Citizens for Midwifery is a listed supporter of this crowd sourcing map. Learn more on The Big Push for midwives website.

Over the last six weeks midwives across the country have mobilized to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Midwives have worked within states and across the country to be part of the emergency response to COVID-19.

Community Midwives (CPMS, LMs, CNMs, CMs) who practice in out of hospital settings are uniquely positioned to help care for low-risk healthy birthing patients when the hospital system is overburdened. CPMs, and other midwives with home birth experience, are especially important in a pandemic because they know how to support physiologic birth with limited technology in a community setting; something most hospital providers do not know how to do.

State midwifery organizations across the country have reached out to Departments of Health and other officials to offer midwives as part of emergency preparedness plans. The Midwives Association of Florida sent a letter to the Department of Health and AHCA offering ways Florida midwives could be utilized in the emergency response if needed. The Midwives Association of Washington State (MAWS) is working with the Washington State Midwifery COVID-19 Response Coalition on several aspects of emergency response and issues related to community birth. This group has also created “Interim Guidelines for Community-Based Midwives During the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

Several national organizations have also addressed this issue. The Foundation for the Advancement of Midwifery (FAM) wrote an excellent statement “Out-of-Hospital Birth and Pandemic Planning” that lays out why and how CPMs can be part of the emergency response to COVID-19. NACPM presented a webinar on COVID-19: Community Midwives, Public Health, and Emergency Preparedness which included eight speakers detailing efforts across the country to include midwives in the COVID-19 response and how midwives are working to address the COVID-19 pandemic. As midwives are working to be part of the larger public health response, clients are also flocking to their care.

Increasing numbers of families are seeking midwifery care to escape overburdened hospitals and the risk of infection from COVID-19. Articles such as The Daily Beast’s: “Pregnant Women Turn to Home Births to Escape Virus” are highlighting this trend. Many midwives are working to take late transfers to home birth care to accommodate these clients. However, access to midwives during the pandemic is limited in several states. Midwifery advocates are working to increase midwifery access by requesting emergency licensing in unregulated states, medicaid coverage, and insurance coverage for CPM services. The Big Push for Midwives has a detailed list of these efforts.

As the pandemic continues to evolve, midwives and advocates will be continuing to work to increase access to midwifery care and to offer their special knowledge and midwifery expertise to the emergency response to COVID-19. Not to mention, catching a whole lot more babies as well!

https://www.citizensformidwifery.org/covid19-1

Citizens for Midwifery (CfM) has posted an evolving list of resources on COVID-19 and pregnancy, birth, midwifery and related topics. These include general information, linking birthing people and midwives, midwives involved in emergency preparedness, social justice and resources centering people of color, evolving birth protocols, and information on the CDC recommendation to separate birthing parents and infants if the birthing parent is suspected or is positive for COVID-19 infection.

Evidence Based Birth (EBB) has been putting out very helpful weekly email updates on COVID-19. You can sign-up for these and find copies of the research updates on COVID-19 on the EBB website. On March 23, 2020 Rebecca Dekker of EBB hosted an hour long webinar to review the current evidence on pregnancy, birth, and COVID-19. She noted that COVID-19 has not been found in amniotic fluid or placenta tissue. It has also not been found in breastmilk. EBB is also offering virtual doula and childbirth education services to help connect clients with support at this time of social distancing.

Please pick up your phone, make about a minute video of you talking about what matters most to you about your births or what needs to change in maternity care. If you don't want to be on video, then point your camera toward a baby picture, favorite image, or words on a paper while you talk. Please share your story and your thoughts so we can keep childbearing families at the center of our planning meeting. More details below-

More Details:

On May 11-13, midwives, childbearing families, midwife students, midwife educators and policy makers are coming together during the 2018 CPMSymposium at the William F. Bolger Center in Potomac, Maryland to plan how to make midwives accessible to all people having babies, especially those most in need of this care. We are committed to bringing the voices and perspectives of people having babies – your voices – into this planning event. 
 

We want to hear from you directly so that your voice and
your experience can help to guide this work. 

To make this possible and bring your voice into the Symposium, we are inviting you to make a one-minute video about your experience of having a baby and send it to the planning team for the CPM Symposium. Your videos will be shared on a “Gallery of Voices” on the 2018 CPM Symposium Website. You can send your video anytime between now and May 5th to have it included in the “Gallery”. Symposium participants can then watch your videos and center your perspectives and experiences in their work at the Symposium.

This event is sponsored by the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM), along with midwife educators (Association of Midwifery Educators), consumers (Citizens for Midwifery) and the National Association for the Advancement of Black Birth (NAABB- Formerly ICTC), a national association of Black midwives and doulas.

If you have any questions, please contact Tiffany Pertillar at cpmsymposiumcoordinator@gmail.com.  To learn more about the 2018 CPM Symposium, please visit our website.

Video Submission Instructions:

• Names are not required in your videos. But if you use names, please only use first names.
• Submit your 1-minute video by posting it to the platform of your choice: such as YouTube, Facebook, Apple iCloud, or Google.
• Send your video link to Tiffany Pertillar at cpmsymposiumcoordinator@gmail.com no later than May 5, 2018. In your email please tell Tiffany which question number below you are answering in your video.
   

Please Answer One of the Following Questions:

1.     What is most important to you about your experience of giving birth?

2.    Were you able to access and receive the kind of care you wanted or needed for your pregnancies and births? What barriers did you experience in accessing the kind of prenatal or birth care you needed or wanted?

3.    What changes are needed to improve access to Certified Professional Midwives' care for more families having babies in the US?

4.    What is your hope for childbirth in the future?

Invite Others to Submit Videos Too

Please spread the word and let others know: The CPM Symposium partners would love to hear childbearing families' birth stories, hopes, and voices. Visit the CfM Blog for more information and instructions on how to submit a video by May 5th. 

For the 2018 Symposium, NACPM invited CfM to be a Symposium Convening Partner along with the International Center for Traditional Childbearing (ICTC) and the Association of Midwifery Educators (AME).  As convening partners, we are participating fully in the development of the program and other aspects of symposium planning.  To further ensure that the 2018 CPM Symposium will be informed by multiple perspectives, the planning team reached out to other stakeholder organizations committed to health equity for childbearing families and invited them to become Consulting Partners for the Symposium. These twelve organizations (see list here) are providing guidance and feedback on the program, scholarship awards, and other topics. NACPM feels to effectively and legitimately plan for the future of the profession, it is essential to engage multiple stakeholders and voices, including those too often left out.
 
CfM President, Nasima Pfaffl, has been our representative on the planning team. We are grateful to be working with NACPM, ICTC, and AME and all the Consulting Partners on this important meeting.

Read further here:

Consumer and Advocate Participation Essential for 2018 CPM Symposium

We are working on new material for our new blog. You can still visit our old blog platform and articles.