Sustainability, Midwifery and Birth

This new edition outlines how sustainability can be incorporated into midwifery practice, education and research. It has been thoroughly revised to include new models of sustainable midwifery practice and new chapters on rural midwives and rural communities, social justice, and compassion. Environmental awareness and sustainability are vitally important concepts and, as a low environmental impact healthcare profession, midwifery has the potential to stand as a model of excellence. This international collection of experts explores the challenges, inviting readers to critically reflect on the issues and consider how they could move to effect changes within their own working environments. Divided into three parts, the book discusses: - The politics of midwifery and sustainability - Midwifery as a sustainable healthcare practice - Supporting an ecological approach to parenting. Sustainability, Midwifery and Birth is a vital read for all midwives and midwifery students interested in sustainable practice.

Lorna Davies is Academic Manager, Department of Healthcare Practice at Ara Institute of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Rea Daellenbach is a Senior Lecturer in the Bachelor of Midwifery programme at Ara Institute of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Mary Kensington is a Principal Lecturer and Head of the School of Midwifery at Ara Institute of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Section One: The Politics of midwifery and Sustainability 1.Globalisation, midwifery and maternity services: struggles in meaning and practice in states under pressure. 2.Costing birth as commodity or sustainable public good. 3.Social justice, motherhood, and Midwives. 4.Valuing the labour of Midwives in Ontario, Canada and New Zealand. Section Two: Midwifery as a Sustainable Healthcare Practice 5.The Midwife as Social Connector. 6.Sustained by joy: The potential of flow experience for midwives and mothers and the blocking of that flow. 7.Sustained by compassion. 8.Career or life cycle: The phenomenon of transitioning work-setting within Midwifery in order to remain personally and professionally sustainable. 9.Sustaining rural midwives and rural communities. 10.Good housekeeping in sustainable midwifery practice. 11.A values-based approach to sustainability literacy in a bachelor of midwifery programme. Section Three: Supporting a sustainable approach to parenting 12.The pregnant environment 13.The birthing environment: a sustainable approach 14.Antenatal education: sustaining healthy families 15.Climate action and infant feeding 16.'Good mothers' in the age of finance.