Photo: Wintec, supplied
It's awesome that Kiwi midwives now learn about indigenous practices but we need more Māori and Pacific trainees to meet the rising demand for culturally specific birthcare, says Janet Taiatini, one of Aotearoa's longest-serving registered Māori midwives.
"Our children coming through kura kaupapa Māori, obviously their lens is going to be different and they have different needs … A lot of us, as we identify as being Māori, we're wanting to be more indigenised," she tells RNZ's Afternoons.
A legacy in birth care
Taiatini, who first discovered her passion for assisting childbirth as a nurse in the Middlemore Hospital maternity ward, became a registered midwife in 1988.
In the early days, she thought of herself as "just a midwife who happened to be Māori". But after 1990, when changes to the Nurses Amendment Act enabled midwives to be autonomous practitioners, other Māori midwives started popping up around Auckland.
To provide in-home care for pregnant Māori women and their whānau who weren't engaging with regular hospital services, the group banded together as a south Auckland midwives collective.
Many Māori mothers-to-be prefer receiving care at home and having whānau involved in their birthing experience, Taiatini says.
A colleague's recent experience supporting an expectant māmā in hospital is, to her, a positive sign that these needs are increasingly on offer in the mainstream system.
"She was able to karanga [ceremonially welcome] that baby and karakia [sing] up in the theatre when their baby was being born. That was really nice for the whānau but also for the staff."
Over the decades, Taiatini has lost count of how many babies she's delivered but reckons it's somewhere in the thousands.
Now based in Hamilton, she currently supports Māori and Pacific midwifery students at Wintec (Waikato Institute of Technology) via a government-funded pastoral programme.
When that soon comes to an end due to lack of funding, Taiatini plans to continue practising as a midwife and keep sharing with trainees her knowledge of indigenous birthing practices - with a side of good vibes.
"I am optimistic, that's my nature. I always look for the good."
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