The International Day of the Midwife 2017 has a theme that is looking into partnership and bonding between midwives, pregnant women and their families, with the hope that such partnership is capable of improving experience around pregnancy and skilled birth attendance.In this excerpt, Mrs. Emmanuella Abiodun Ogunbiyi, the Chief Nursing Officer at Amuwo-Odofin Local Government Secretariat, Festac Town, Lagos, describes how, as a midwife, she partners with families of many pregnant women she attends to.
What role does partnership with the families of pregnant women play to improve maternal and newborn health?
Partnership between midwives, the pregnant women and the relatives is very important. In a family where God has blessed one of them to be pregnant, that family should not think that only the woman should do all the necessary things. The relations have a lot to do. One of their contributions includes advising the pregnant woman to register for antenatal care at the right time. This is also one of the first things we advise families of pregnant women to do.
For our own partnership as midwives, we always tell our pregnant mothers to invite their husbands to join them at the clinic for antenatal care.
They can also invite anyone they trust when their husbands are not available. This will enable us let the husbands know that they have responsibilities in nurturing the pregnancy. Other family members too become aware of all necessary things that the pregnant woman needs so the woman is not left to face the pregnancy demands all by herself.
What collaboration do you enjoy from families of pregnant women?
So far we are enjoying a huge cooperation from husbands of pregnant women and their families. When a woman falls into labour, we allow her husband to enter the labour room to witness how his wife would give birth. This experience ensures that the man does not just see the baby when it arrives, but he witnesses the process. The husbands are always with their wives when the delivery happens in this PHC. It is even the law here, that husbands must be present when their wives are giving birth, or at least a family member.
What can the government do more to improve the partnership?
A lot of people do not know that there are health centres in certain areas. This makes them resort to birthing homes that are not good for their safety.
The government should continue and even do more of health education on radio and television. It increases the reach of the health talk that we do.
But once such information is given, for example, on radio, the information will go round. A woman once told me that she thought that this area was only the local government secretariat. She didn’t know that there is a PHC here. The government should support us with more of health information in the media.
How do you partner with families to propagate health information?
We partner with heads of communities to inform their people on the areas where there are PHCs nearest to them. This is to encourage pregnant women and their families to patronise health care centres and to improve the rate of women giving birth with skilled birth attendants.
MamaYe is very proud of the works that midwives are doing, as their partnership with the families of pregnant women is very important to improve maternal and newborn health statistics. Happy #IDM2017!