Another day, another group of funerals brought to parents and families courtesy of UK midwives.
According to the Telegraph:
Mothers said their children had died because midwives “couldn’t be bothered” to fulfil basic monitoring tasks, or to act on warnings that babies were in danger.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Twitter allows UK midwives to recuse themselves from the reality of the injuries and deaths they cause and rewards them with a never ending round of dopamine-releasing self-congratulation.[/pullquote]
Including:
Ella and Lola Greene – 2014. The twins were stillborn after the trust failed to properly read and interpret their heart rates
Oliver Smale – 2015. He died after his shoulders became stuck during a natural birth after his mother was refused a y Caesarean section
Kye Hall – 2015. His death was “caused or contributed” to by the trust, said the coroner, who failed to classify his mother as a high risk pregnancy or to listen to his heart beat
Graham Scott Holmes-Smith – 2015. The trust failed to properly monitor the foetal heart rate during labour
Ivy Morris – 2016. Ivy was born 10 days after Graham but died four months later in May 2016. The coroner ruled her death could have been prevented if appropriate monitoring of the heart rate had taken place during labour
Pippa Griffiths – 2016. An inquest concluded one-day old Pippa’s death could have been prevented if an infection had been spotted earlier
Families have raised questions about two further deaths over the period. They say there was no investigation into the death of Jack Stephen Burn in 2015, who died within days of Oliver Smale, or of Sophiya Hotchkiss in 2014.
It sounds like Furness General where 2 mothers and 6 babies died preventable deaths(Race probe over six deaths on a maternity ward amid claims midwives conspired to cover-up evidence).
It sounds like Queen’s Hospital where 5 babies died preventable deaths (‘If you don’t hurry up, I’ll cut you’: What one mother was told by midwife at NHS Trust where five died during labour).
It sounds like Milton Keynes where 11 babies died preventable deaths (Updated: ‘Not good enough’ hospital chief apologises over baby death toll scandal at MK maternity unit).
It sounds like Royal Oldham/ North Manchester General Hospitals where an appalling 7 babies and 3 mothers died in just 8 months!
You might think that this hideous death toll would inspire soul searching among UK midwives. You would be wrong.
Apparently nothing interferes with the endless round of self-congratulation that makes up UK midwifery Twitter feeds.
I have written repeatedly about the ways in which social media leaves laypeople simultaneously ignorant and arrogant in their ignorance, but that effect is not limited to laypeople.
I’ve quoted Carolyn Stewart who wrote in The American Interest:
We recuse ourselves from reality via the device in our hand, which rewards us for ignoring reality with a series of dopamine-releasing mini-tasks. From Candy Crush and Twitter to work emails, these activities hook us on a seeking-reward feedback loop that is infinitely more gratifying than staring at the commuter sitting across from you. These cyber preoccupations allow us to customize our surroundings, and accustom us to regulating and controlling the information that comes our way. This has several effects: an expanded sense of what falls under our personal social domain, an increased expectation of control over that domain, and a greater sensitivity to input that deviates from our preferences.
Social media, particularly Twitter, allows UK midwives to recuse themselves from reality and reward themselves with a never ending round of dopamine-releasing self-congratulation. That rewarding feedback loop is infinitely more gratifying than facing the injuries and deaths that occur because of UK midwives overweening self-regard. Twitter allows them to customize their surroundings by blocking anyone who might intrude (laypeople and professionals) with distressing stories of babies and mothers who were injured or died because of midwives’ unethical promotion of “normal birth.”
Don’t believe me? Check out the Twitter feeds of UK midwives like Sheena Byrom and RCM head Cathy Warwick on any day. You will rarely find any mention of the preventable deaths that flood the mainstream media (except to excuse them). Instead you will be treated to a fantasy world where midwives proverbially kiss and congratulate each other over and over and over again.
UK midwives prefer to think of themselves as beneficent guardians of normal birth and they are extremely sensitive to any input that deviates from their preferences. Twitter allows them to insulate themselves from such input. On Twitter they can they can dwell in their fantasy world and never give a thought to the seemingly endless parade of tiny coffins — babies who died preventable deaths to preserve midwives’ good opinion of themselves and their reckless commitment to “normal birth.”
