The Pride movement (short LGBTQIA+) and new forms of family life have arrived in the midwife's work is long .
Two externally as a male recognizable people stand in front of the delivery room door. One of them is a woman is pregnant biologically. At first glance, is not to identify who is the Person who comes into the delivery room for the birth.
Both understand their belonging to the sexes as nonbinär. Nonbinär means that both of you feel any of the two strictly divided sexes (male – female) belong to. In the Pride of the world, there’s a huge spectrum of gender identities.
Well, come on in for the first time, you will be welcomed by my colleague. The mood is charged, and defensive towards us. You wanted to get your child in a birthing centre, with a special focus on LGBTQIA+needs, and have now landed in a place that is little prepared to your wishes and needs .
And let’s be honest: Yes, we are overwhelmed in the delivery room. Each of us in their own way. We need to keep to stop, take a deep breath. We Google it, read, and discuss, share our thoughts. The Computer doesn’t work when you take a man’s birth into the delivery room System, but the parturient Person is a man. That is how your card and on your health insurance card. So the Couple must pay for the birth itself, which causes understandable annoyance. His desire to record the expected child as a “nonbinär”, we can not correspond, because the System only knows the three categories of “male”, “female” and “divers”. The indignation we feel also.
Our Team consists mostly of colleagues going in the next 10 to 15 years in retirement, and a few boys midwives that are not yet 30 years old (male or various midwives are not including). Same-sex couples, Patchwork births, and so many other constellations that we all know. Here in our work in the delivery room of a Berlin hospital. Different and different cultures, traditions, customs and religions, we encounter more and more frequently in our work and in the fast-changing world. From total lack of understanding to indifference and shoulder everything is batting a Team of midwives. The theme does not let us. Our pictures in the mind and our language in the Gebärsaal are female. Breasts, Vaginas, Vaginas, bellies and female forms and sounds … women who give birth to a child, because only the female body can bring this beautiful.
Now, however, a proven man with externally visible Beard, a deep voice and masculine forms in the tub sits in and has an obvious pregnant belly, in which a Baby is on the way in our world.
How are we to appeal to the Couple, as the woman Person to touch or even vaginal investigate? It is a mine seems to be the field for us. I hear from the ladies discussions and tension, of expectations of us, how everything has to be right. It is our job as midwives to discuss here in the delivery room about a nonbinäre registration of the child is not going to be possible? Outside the world is burning. There is war, Hunger, drowning people, flooding, and drought crises, fears for the future, the climate crisis, energy prices and Inflation, and, well, a little bit of Corona. All that captivates us and our life Together, even here in the delivery room. And now someone of our delivery room-the world on the head there. The birth is female, and the terminology associated with it.
48 hours later, a healthy baby girl is born. The midwife, which accompanied the last part of the birth, tell me about your impressions. A personal evaluation from leaves them in their narratives. Recognizing the birth of the work done by this nonbinäre being irritated by a male hairy body and a lack of Breasts. The theme of the Gender you have just excluded in their care, because it was in this Moment, don’t care, or? she tells me. You know, she says, in the last minutes of the birth, just before the baby’s head was born, Max (Name changed), once again, completely female. The voice and your eyes, your search for help and support, transformed this Person at once in the parturient, we know of midwives. It was impressive to see, and touched my colleague deep. She wonders if this is the experience of the birth, this power, and the wonders, which can only bring a biologically female body, if the woman Person can recognize that for yourself, even if your Name is Max?
