Calling all expectant Canberra mums to help train a midwife.
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Today is International Day of the Midwife, and anyone who has had a baby would likely testify these medical professionals are in a league of their own.
Now, expectant mums can play a part in training a new generation of local midwives.
In response to a chronic shortage of midwives in Australia, the University of Canberra has this year doubled its intake of midwifery students – but now needs more pregnant women to join the University student midwife program, offering continuity of care.
Midwifery-led continuity of care is widely regarded as the gold standard for maternity care, and the ACT has targets for the model of over 50 per cent of births by 2028 and 70 per cent by 2030. Only a small fraction of ACT women are able to access a continuity midwife through the healthcare system – in 2024 it was 23.4 per cent – due to its popularity and a shortage of continuity midwives.
UC’s student program offers the same benefits of a continuity program – allowing for a relationship and trust to build between practitioner and patient, which is shown to improve rates of vaginal births and breastfeeding, and reduce incidents of birth trauma.
Dr Noelyn Perriman, the Discipline Lead for Midwifery, says by having a midwifery student, the woman has another point of contact for support through their pregnancy – and that student is always under the guidance of a registered midwife.
Dr Noelyn Perriman, Discipline Lead for Midwifery at UC
“Continuity empowers women because they don’t have to retell their story. Their midwife knows their journey from the very beginning, so as questions come up throughout their pregnancy, they feel comfortable talking to their midwife,” Dr Perriman says.
She says UC’s midwifery program has the most extensive continuity component of any university in Australia; all midwifery students follow six women through their pregnancies in the first year of an undergraduate degree, then another 16 over their second and third years of study.
Dr Perriman, who sat on the committee for the ACT’s Maternity in Focus Advisory Group, says she has only seen positive feedback from mums who have had a student midwife.
“Our students having the continuity embedded in their program means that when they leave this course, they’re ready and trained for the continuity model.”
The problem she says, is not enough women know the program exists, and it currently need 100 more women to meet the immediate training needs of the larger first-year cohort.
Megan Rueckwald gave birth to a baby girl in January, after she was recommended to the UC program by a non-continuity midwife she saw early in her pregnancy.
Megan, Chris and their baby
She and her partner were matched to a second semester student and found enormous benefits to having support through all their ante-natal appointments, labour and delivery in the “mutually beneficial” arrangement.
“Being a first-time mum and not being familiar with the healthcare system, it was really helpful to have someone we felt comfortable with attend all those appointments with us,” Megan says.
“We had that friendly face, someone who was able to lead our care and be there at the birth in particular,” she said. “All the midwives who we interacted with at the North Canberra Hospital were wonderful, but knowing someone in the delivery room, who knew our birth preferences, I felt really helped me. It made me feel a lot more comfortable and I felt like I could speak quite frankly in terms of communicating my preferences.”
Pregnant women can find out more and register their interest in joining the program at canberra.edu.au
