Johan Morreau. (Part 1 of a FOUR part series) Yes, I watched your 3rd October 2016 Ted talk.
But guess what. You (both "you" personally and "you" the medical system) missed one group you don't talk about, yet it's a very big issue. It seems to me "you" are only looking through reductionist narrow blinkers. The elephant in the room isn't just "connection and protection" of the groups you describe, in the way you describe. There is more than one way to be deprived of "connection and protection".
The biggest ignored elephant in the room, sits in YOUR room; YOUR system, and is YOUR problem. Are you too scared to look at it Johan?
You probably don't remember me, Johan. You, and Elizabeth Wilson, were involved in my first labour and delivery in Middlemore. You were personally "charged" with explaining to me what would happen to my son after birth, while I was in active labour, in a situation that would become a total nightmare of medical mismanagement.
Neither you nor Elizabeth made any attempt to support me, or my son in the face of a brutal senior paediatrician on a power trip, whose aim was NOT the protection of my child. Seemingly you were too scared of him, to be a human.
Then you did nothing to stop the continual emotional blackmail that happened to me, under your watch, in your hearing, in NICU which you witnessed with your eyes, and stayed silent about.
The only people in the whole incident who had any decency was one NICU nurse who couldn't bear what was happening, and the head of the records department who resigned over what happened to my files, but was kind enough to tell me the whole sordid story.
There is only one problem with that. It was nice to hear the truth from two horses' mouths, and the confessions helped heal the hurt because it proved to me that the deceit and the betrayal wasn’t just in my head, as so many would later have me to believe..... But them telling me what really went down, did nothing to instill confidence in your behaviour then, or in the future. Have you changed Johan? I saw your choking tears in the talk, but tell me, were they tears for things you could have prevented yourself?
Everything you talk about in your Ted Talk two days ago, wasn't relevant to me personally. Yes, I see your pain when you discuss looking at newborn notes and seeing that what followed was preventable, because that first 1,000 days was not appropriate. I get that. And yes, that group is also disenfranchised.
But you forget one thing. What you and your colleagues did in 1981 was an attempt to fully disempower a fiercely protective mother, but even so, I stood up to you, doing everything to look after him, protect him, and later keep him as far away from you people as possible. Today, you paediatricians are still doing the same thing to thinking mothers like me, who initially have one flaw. We naively trust paediatricians like you. I know, because I spend a lot of my time retrieving mothers who are run over in 2016, just like I was run over in 1981 on your watch.
But you rarely "see" us later, or our children in the system, because our total commitment is parenting, and in particular, protecting our children from trauma at your hands.
You say you want a culture that is supportive, and nurturing and facilitates engagement.Wouldn't it be nice if that's what parents first experienced in your system, Johan?
If you want a society that is supportive, nurturing and facilitates engagement, then take a long hard look at how you treat pregnancy, mothers in labour, and after their babies are born - because your definition of compassion and parental support within the hospital system remains sadly lacking.
I know. I deal with the emotional trauma that mothers incur every day. Right now, I'm going through a thick medical file detailing astonishing ignorance on the system's part, resulting in no resolution, because the right tests weren't done right at the beginning which could have provided the answer. Why's that? "Oh, the dermo isn't available for three more days and we don't know what is wrong so we will just throw cluster-bombs (multiple antibiotics) at your baby in the meantime, in the hope that one or all pellets will fix the problem." What? Meanwhile these parents have no resolution because.. BECAUSE you guys stuffed up right at the start ( we can't mess with the dermo's weekend, now, can we?), your system now wants to look for this, that, and the other, because they have no idea whether the guess at the start, was right or not.Hello? False economy much? I would advise them to run from you lot like the plague but they worry that if they do that, you might pull the CYPS card, because they know that card has been pulled on others. What kind of "practice" is that, Johan?
Your system now infects mothers with a fear of pregnancy, a fear of infection, a fear of labour, a fear of everything…. as if having a birth and a baby is some sort of disease lottery that only YOU can fix. Which is one reason why your caesarean rate has shot up so high since 1981, right Johan?
At 12.03 in your talk, you have a screen shot about "enabling hope and aspiration" What hope and aspiration does the medical model bring to parents in 2016?
You talk about "purifying a pregnancy" yet you consider throwing a raft of vaccines into pregnant women to be part of a purified pregnancy. Really?
Pregnancy is also now a serial raft of scans, tests, vaccines, and loaded with fear-promotion because obstetricians and paediatricians have become people who if they behaved like that as parents would themselves be diagnosed as having Munchausens by proxy. What does 7 months of iatrogenically stoked stress in a pregnant mother, do – epigenetically - to a mother and baby today, and for the rest of their lives?
The irony is that most of the parents you are actually talking about, are the lucky parents who often accidentally avoid all those tests and fear mongering because they don’t get prenatal care, yet they are then blindsided when they land up unprepared for a fear mongering calloused system that lacks empathy towards them at the most vulnerable time in a woman's life. Staff can be even more callous towards these people, than towards mothers like me! I know. I've heard their stories too.
You talk about "disability" and "unnecessarily sick children" yet ignore the role of the medical profession in causing a lot of these. The way you treat birth, followed by the huge amount of antibiotics you people dish out in the first year of life, which trashes gut flora and contributes to everything you consider to be a problem, is a huge ignored problem. It's easy to "practice medicine" and dole out drugs, but helping from the ground up takes far more than your allowed 10 minute slot, right? Here lies a major issue you are missing out in this equation and that is the first domino which you create, which can and does knock over all the other dominos which you put there, ...adding unnecessary repeated antibiotics and other drugs because you don’t know how to do anything else. These constant lung infections you talk about... the constant bounce back for more antibiotics... why Johan?
These mothers know no better - you are right. They lack the life skills which would enable them to avoid you in the first place.
They go to you when their children are sick and then when your drugs and your treatment do a whole lot to cause breaches in their childrens' immune system, you blame damp housing!. Do you forget Johan, that in the 50's and even through the 80's, living in damp houses was normal? I know. We lived in one.Zero insulation. Remember all the draft stoppers that had to be placed to stop cold air whistling under closed doors?But in those days, we fed kids real food, then went to bed early, and wore singlets and woollen knitted jumpers which we washed by hand. Does that seem like a century ago to you?
You say, "it's going to take an all of country approach to solve the first thousand days". That's one step up from Hillary Clinton's "village".
What I want to know, Johan, is why do YOU refuse to look at yourself … your system?. Instead you finger the care of midwives. Why is that?Because people like me, out of fear of your system, went to midwives to find some humanity? Consider the hospitals Johan … and how women are now treated in pregnancy, labour and delivery. You can point the finger at all the rest of the country, but there are three pointing right back to you and your system which you refuse to look at.
Until you examine your own house Johan, you will get nowhere. Until the medical system stops acting as societal accuser and treating parents (and society) as if they are the problem and the solution, the current situation will continue to escalate. People would rather hide under the table, with their fingers in their ears singing “lalalalalala”, than talk to you about what happens during pregnancy, labour, delivery and afterwards in the system, because its just too traumatic.
Just recently, a woman in your Tauranga hospital was threatened with CYPS because she didn’t want vitamin K or your idea of precautionary antibiotics in a needless situation, when clearly the hospital was in a paranoid panic. For a mother to refuse panadol in hospital is just about considered a crime by some staff. People have got to the point where they believe that saying no, or speaking out about how your system treats them, could lead to them having their babies taken off them. There are some serious problems for you to consider, which are hidden under "patient silence", Johan.
You rarely saw or see people like me, as your regular bounce-backs in the system, because we have a backbone. We think – we learn, and had support from previous ‘victims’, and pay forward. We recover from the system's abuse, and keep away from it as much as possible, and do it differently next time.
The people you are talking about, often have no idea what the system will dish up, get into it and are shocked into silence. You don't hear about that. And they won’t tell you how they feel about you, either.
I understand your desperation Johan, but .... IGNORE the past and current totalitarianism of the medical system at all levels, at your peril, because a lot of these problems that you want the country to fix, lie right at your feet from the start. Often, YOU... are the first domino.
Part two
