The Big Push for Midwives

Greetings to all dear friends, colleagues, and fellow Pushers!

The Big Push for Midwives Campaign has had an incredibly busy year! Pushing with you for Certified Professional Midwives, the Big Push is bearing down in the statehouses, on the Hill, and in the media. The Big Push campaign hosted its third PushSummit in August, gathering Pushers from all corners of the PushMap in a lovely little spot in Cary, NC to learn from each others’ successes and to develop strategies for the future.

To keep the momentum going nationwide, The Big Push for Midwives needs your help, now more than ever.

It is with great excitement on this Labor Day 2011 that the Big Push campaign announces a new partnership that will benefit birthing families, midwives, and the Big Push campaign itself – a strategic alliance with MyBirthTeam.com, a new website developed to expand women’s birth care options and choices by matching consumers with maternity care providers who meet their needs. The goal of this partnership is to bring choices to families who don’t know that they have options … and put midwives back on the map, and back into the minds of mothers!

Similar to a dating site, MyBirthTeam connects like-minded families with care providers, helping them find the right match. This is a perfect opportunity to not only educate mainstream women about midwifery options, but also to promote your own practice while supporting The Big Push campaign’s ongoing efforts to provide media, messaging, and strategic planning services to advocates working for licensure in every state.

How does MyBirthTeam work?

Midwives, obstetricians, hospitals, birth centers, as well as other specialized providers such as doulas and lactation consultants and childbirth educators, answer a list of questions about the services they provide. Consumers answer the same list of questions about their birth care preferences. Because midwives and OBs are presented on this site in the same category and are answering the same list of questions, women will often find that a midwife may be the best option for them. By presenting medical and alternative models as equal options, MyBirthTeam has developed a new avenue of reaching and education mainstream women.

Providers pay a $4 monthly fee to be listed on the site. MyBirthTeam will donate $1 of each monthly listing fee to the Big Push for Midwives Campaign and $1 to the March of Dimes Prematurity Awareness Campaign.

The new website launches on Labor Day, highlighting the MyBirthTeam featured organization, which as it turns out is The Big Push for Midwives Campaign! The September goal is to get 250 CPMs to sign up with MyBirthTeam in this win-win opportunity, where CPMs can promote their services while so many other Pushers all work to inform the public of the benefits of midwifery care.

**SPECIAL OFFER**SPECIAL OFFER**  Sign Up Today, Get One FREE Month: Join MyBirthTeam during September and get one free month. The Labor Day deal means the $4 monthly billing won’t start until October 1. Join MyBirthTeam today. Keep Pushing.

Sincerely and in gratitude,
The Steering Committee

• Are you working toward licensure for Certified Professional Midwives in your state? Are you planning to?
• Are you concerned about the future of VBAC and HBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean and home birth after cesarean)?
• Have you been frustrated by lack of consensus and infighting within your local birth community?
• Have legislative road blocks, back-door dealings, and insider politics at the state capitol prevented your bill from advancing?

If the answer to any of these questions is YES, then please join us at the PushSummit, on August 6 in Cary, NC, to learn from veteran birth activists who’ve been there in the trenches and will share their insight, wisdom, experience, and not-so-dirty tricks!

Discounted student rates are available.

The Summit’s PushUniversity is a unique opportunity for people who want to become agents of change to learn from the birth community’s experts on everything from effective organizing tactics, to grassroots mobilization, to utilizing the media—as well as the many resources available via The Big Push for Midwives—to promote positive messages about midwifery and out-of-hospital birth and to build effective legislative campaigns that expand access to the full range of birth options for families nationwide. Groups in every state that are working to improve birth can benefit from sending a representative to the Summit, not only to learn but to share. All of us have valuable information to share, and every time we leave our virtual worlds to spend face-time together, it makes our community stronger. Hope to see you there, and please share this link widely! http://bit.ly/PushSummit2011

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The Summit will take place alongside the MANA Region 3 conference, which has secured a special rate of $115 per room. Rooms can be booked at http://ncmidwife.org/MANARegion3Conf/?page_id=17

Please check your calendars and make plans to attend!