Author, educator, speaker and experienced birth attendant, Rhea Dempsey is respected as one of the foremost thinkers on working with pain in childbirth
Joined June 2012
- Tweets 923
- Following 91
- Followers 548
- Likes 816
113 Photos and videos
Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
The trouble is of course, that Midwifery is in crisis because maternity care Is insanely medicalised and there aren’t enough Midwives to manage the complexity & drama brought about by over-medicalisation of the natural process. x.com/joseymw/status/1449140…
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
There also needs to be seamless integration of services, so women who do need medical intervention can get it appropriately at the right time and in the right way. We need to change from “too much too soon and too little too late” which plagues the current model
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
We need everyone involved in planning healthcare and government to pay attention and decide that the well-being of the community is worth that change to a better system based on appropriate relationship based care for childbearing women and that’s Midwifery continuity of care
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
The patriarchal fragmented maternity care system has had its day. Women, their partners and Midwives are becoming more traumatised by what happens to women in that system. It’s time for a massive overhaul & a change to providing care that meets human emotional needs.
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
Evidence is clear that informed decision making & choice is a foundational human right & yet how often does this truly happen in the fragmented maternity care system. It can only happen in relationship based care where there is time to explore the situation & the options
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
Humans have 3 core emotional needs according to John Heron. The 1st need is to love & be loved - to have someone care about you. The 2nd need is to understand & be understood and the 3rd need is to choose & be chosen. None of these needs are satisfied in fragmented care
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
With the conveyor belt style of maternity care, Midwives lose their autonomy and their capacity to individualise care to each woman, and because each woman is an individual, with individual needs wants and desires, Everyone is shortchanged in that deal
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
The pressure of the conveyor belt style of maternity care means that care becomes perfunctory with a ‘cookie cutter’ approach & women end up feeling unimportant & not listened to
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
The current system undermines women’s autonomy and sense of self; it destroys women’s belief in their ability to give birth without help and induces them to feel and believe that their bodies are defective
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
What’s best for women and best for Midwives is relationship based care; Relationship based care is therapeutic!! Women’s reproductive physiology works best when they are listened to, cared about, respected & treated kindly.
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
Those people raising the alarm & trying to change the system are assailed by claims that there are problems with birthing because women are older & fatter these days – the generalities are rubbish because we know all women fare better with continuity of midwifery care
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
And of course Midwives seeing what’s going on and feeling powerless to stop it are experiencing vicarious trauma.
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Oct 2021
Governments don’t care to provide the continuity of midwifery programs that we know lead to better outcomes – the evidence is in.For some hard to fathom reason, the number of women emerging from Maternity care traumatised and damaged is ignored
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
16 Jul 2021
Exciting news. Birthing Outside the System - The Canary in the Coal Mine is now in paper back and there is a paperback launch sale of 20% off. This means the book is now $62.39 AUD which is much more affordable than the hard back was. Please share
routledge.com/Birthing-Outsi…
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
6 May 2021
Looking for the perfect Mother's Day gift? Why not smash the patriarchy theconversation.com/looking-…
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
22 Apr 2021
🙏🏽to the wonderful consumer organisations& @BirthTime supporting the Birth Experience Study(BESt) with this ‘go fund me’ campaign. We have>4.8K responses to largest survey on birth experiences in 🇦🇺. Help us translate the survey into more languages. gofund.me/f959248d
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Rhea Dempsey retweeted
New Queensland research shows the top two reasons for birth by caesarean section and the common contributing interventions. Strategies that prevent the overuse of synthetic oxytocin and epidural for pain relief are needed to tackle rising caesarean rates. transformingmaternity.org.au…
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8 Dec 2020
So necessary to spread the word about this important and absolutely urgent work!
8 Dec 2020
"Oxytocin given as an infusion does not cross into the mother’s brain because of the blood brain barrier and does not influence brain function in the same way as oxytocin during normal labour does." Free full text here! doi.org/10.1186/s12884-019-2…
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19 Nov 2020
Wonderful resource! Thank you to everyone involved, firstly for the inspired idea and then for getting this important information out to a wide audience! Rhea ❤️
11 Nov 2020
A warm welcome from me @cheryl_samuels_ to the wonderful @all4birth community, a freely available online platform to help promote all aspects of physiological childbirth and wellbeing 💜 #all4birth #all4maternity all4birth.com
Rhea Dempsey retweeted
28 Oct 2020
Register Now for our November Online Live Panel to learn about Perinatal Anxiety and Depression. Hear from the experts in the field and leave with real improvements you can make to your practice for the women in your care experiencing mental illness. midwives.org.au/events/perin…
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