A midwife from Melbourne, Australia, faced some serious heat after a photo of one of her clients struck a nerve with followers of the midwife's Facebook page. Martina Görner posted a picture of one of her new moms after childbirth and explained in the caption that she was "surprised" when a second baby came along. Well, for some people this was basically an admission of guilt.
People argued that a midwife should have realized there were twins on the way — even though this mom requested not to have an ultrasound scan before giving birth. Martina was suspended from her practice, but the argument rages on: Should she have known that her client was pregnant with twins?
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The drama started after Martina's midwifery practice posted a story of the home birth victory.
In the post published on October 19, 2018, Ten Moons Homebirth Services shared the story of how a client was delivering via home water birth when the unplanned happened. The post said that the day had been full of "unexpected surprises" and in this case that meant that mom Brooke was going to get more than she had originally anticipated.
Brooke was waiting to push out her placenta after the birth of her first son, but instead quickly learned that her bundle of joy was about to double.
"The twins are identical twins and were born this morning ☀️ 10/19/18 @ 08.03 & 08.07 weighing 2350 and 2200gr," the post noted.
And a later amendment to the post shared that after the twins had been born, an ambulance was called to take the family to a hospital for additional care.
The twins had come early, at only 35 weeks, and one of the boys was having "respiratory difficulties," which prompted the family to switch gears and make their way to the hospital.
But for some people online, this whole thing was a mess.
There is no reason why Martina didn't know that Brooke was going to have twins, they argued.
Many started slamming the midwife.
Any health care provider could have realized that it was a "high risk" pregnancy, one person believed.
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Other moms of twins were just stunned that Brooke didn't realize sooner. 'You know when there's two babies fighting it out inside of you!'
And someone else said that it was 'irresponsible' not to get a scan.
Though others felt like the haters had started to overreact.
One mom said that she didn't feel like twins were an emergency.
But another woman shot her down, "Twins that share a placenta are definitely high risk."
According to Babycentre, some twin pregnancies are categorized as being high risk. "Some complications, such as premature birth, are more common in twin pregnancies," the site advises. And a high-risk pregnancy typically means more monitoring and attention from health care professionals.
Others wondered why can't we just focus on the positive. But the damage was already done.
In a petition created on change.org entitled Mothers have the right to a safe natural birth of their choice. Save Martina, it was revealed that a staff member at the hospital where Brooke had taken her boys to get a checkup reported the midwife to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.
On October 29, 2018, in pursuant of the case lodged against her, Martina was asked not to practice until the AHPRA could hear her testimony. Things must not have gone her way, because in a statement given to Kidspot.au, a representative noted it "can confirm that Martina Görner's registration as a midwife was suspended by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) on 8 November 2018."
And it appears that the organization took the case extremely seriously. “Immediate action to suspend a practitioner’s registration is only taken in the most serious cases when the NBMA believes it is necessary to take action to protect the public," it said.
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