Today is the International Day of the Midwife.  Midwives practice around the world and are the perfect health care provider to provide care for healthy, low risk families during the childbearing year.  In many circumstances, midwives also provide well-person care reproductive care such as contraception, screening and diagnostic testing, and with guidance through puberty and menopause as well.

2020 has been declared the Year of the Nurse and Midwife by the World Health Organization.  May 5 is globally recognized as the International Day of the Midwife, which makes today extra special.  The theme of the 2020 campaign is “celebrate, demonstrate, mobilise, unite” and the goal is to more deeply examine how midwives can partner with families and work together to mobilise and unite toward a shared goal of gender equality.

There are three key objectives to this year’s recognition:

Inform: everyone with an interest or background in health and justice that midwives are crucial to reducing maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality.

Celebrate: the achievements of midwives and their contribution to improving sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn health outcomes

Motivate: policymakers to implement change by lobbying for adequate midwifery resources and recognition of the unique professional role of midwives

As childbirth educators and perinatal professionals, the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) suggests we can help the families we come in contact with to:

• Demand their rights to make informed choices about their pregnancies and childbirth.
• Demand their right to midwife-led care.
• Highlight the work of midwives in our communities and countries as a feminist profession.
• Campaign for respectful maternity care as the right of every person globally.
• Demand an enabling environment to ensure midwives can deliver quality care for pregnant people.
• Defend the rights of midwives to practice their profession as a separate profession.
• Advocate to governments that midwife-led care should be the first choice for maternity care.

Educators have an important role in normalizing the care that midwives provide to families who may not even be aware that midwifery care is an option.  In fact, we know, for healthy, low-risk people, it is actually the best option, with excellent outcomes, at lower cost and high satisfaction levels.

Please use the ICM Toolkit to share about midwives and celebrate the profession worldwide.  And take a moment out of your day to thank the midwives you personally know for providing families with a safe and respectful way to grow their families.

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