Abolishing The CPM Midwifery ‘Credential’

Homebirth midwives often claim that homebirth is “as safe as hospital birth, or safer”. Dr Tuteur, currently the most vocal voice against homebirth but certainly not the only one, certainly rubbed me the wrong with her continuous claims that homebirth mothers care more about their own comfort than about the safety of their babies.

Let me assure you, that is not true. I chose homebirth twice, because I believed it to be the safest choice for both me and my babies. I believe in informed consent, and in autonomy over one’s own body. Every individual’s circumstances are unique, and there are certainly cases in which homebirth is the best or only choice.

Yet in order to make informed decisions, we need to have the facts. The Midwives’ Alliance of North America (MANA) — the organization that represents CPMs — collected data on the safety of homebirth, but refused to give anyone who couldn’t demonstrate they were a homebirth advocate access to that data for five full years.

Are you surprised? Perhaps you wouldn’t be, if you knew that CPMs wouldn’t be able to practice in any other developed country with a tradition of homebirth midwives, including the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Certified Professional Midwives do not have to be trained nurses, and they only practice at birth centers and preside over homebirths. Before being licensed, these midwives have to meet the requirements of NARM, the North American Registry of Midwives — an organization founded by the Midwives’ Alliance of North America (MANA).

Patients should certainly be aware that a class of midwives that should not be able to call themselves midwives at all practices in the United States. I believe in a woman’s right to choose homebirth, but not also in a woman’s right to pretend to be a medical professional when she simply isn't.

Let’s keep women and babies safe by ensuring that everyone knows that even midwives with a professional-sounding title can be fake midwives, and that choosing to have them at your homebirth increases the chance your baby will die by a whopping 450 percent compared to hospital birth.

What can you do? Raising awareness of the situation is the only start we can make. Dr Tuteur told SteadyHealth: "We have started a petition drive (557 signatures so far), a Facebook page for the Not Buried Twice campaign, and are posting tweets with the Twitter hashtag #notburiedtwice." Sign the petition or find the Facebook page by clicking on the links in the "Links" box below this article.

Why "Not Buried Twice"? Because after the preventable death of this baby, the midwives in question are attempting to delete all evidence of his existence — and with that, their own responsibility. There is nothing anybody can do to bring this baby back, but you can think twice before choosing homebirth with a CPM yourself. 

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"My most important advice for women thinking about homebirth is this: keep in mind that CPMs (and Lay Midwives and Direct Entry Midwives) are not real midwives. They lack the education and training of all other midwives in the developed world, and therefore, the studies they quote in support of homebirth don't apply to them," Dr Tuteur warned us.