Leave your dignity at the door 🙄

A common saying thrown at people accessing pregnancy care, but in my opinion this saying

should NOT be in a midwife’s vocabulary.

In many ways, saying this is grooming for compliance, to normalise and make people more comfortable and agreeable with some of the physical exposure birth may lead to. With intimate examinations, with a lack of privacy. With not having control over what happens.

However, if someone feels they have lost their dignity during care/birth, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

The meaning of dignity is ‘the importance and value that a person has, that makes other people respect them or makes them respect themselves’ or ‘the state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect.’

And no, the above should never be lost in pregnancy, birth and postnatal care. Quite the opposite. Feeling worthy of respect, and having ones dignity respected are a prerequisite for good care. Without exception.

Part of care for the pregnant, labouring or freshly postnatal person is always how to minimise the impact care may have on people’s sense of bodily, and psychological integrity. The assumption by HCPs that people are going to be totally fine with exposing parts of their body or soul they have never exposed to a stranger, or that they are going to be entirely comfortable having their bodily functions observed, sometimes closely is really concerning to me. Asking how people feel about the more physical parts of care, how I can make them more comfortable, if they need some privacy, how they feel about vaginal examinations should they become indicated for whatever reason, and most importantly *actually* accepting specific requests, a ‘no’ or the need for special adaptations is 100% necessary.

Saying ‘oh yes, I totally understand, but we really just have to do xyz (insert applicable intervention/examination) is NOT appropriate or good enough.

It also means that when people feel embarrassed or exposed or unsafe or simply need more privacy, we make whatever adaptations we possibly can to bring comfort, safety and privacy.

Dignity means respect, worthiness and autonomy and we owe our clients this, without exception.