At Wellesley, I was struggling to keep up with the four classes a semester I was enrolled in. I remember during course registration fall of my first year thinking four classes a semester didn’t seem like enough, just compared to how many classes I had to take in high school. But I quickly learned that college courses are very different from high school classes, and that the independence granted to us in college isn’t just limited to what we choose to eat for dinner – time management and prioritization of work is one of the more important skills I’ve had to learn since getting to Wellesley.
The workload here at DIS in Denmark is nowhere near as intense as it is at Wellesley, so I’m taking six classes this semester with topics ranging from health to philosophy to film history. Out of these six, I’d have to say one of my favorites is Pregnancy, Birth, and Infancy in Denmark, a course designed and taught by healthcare professionals (mostly midwives) involved with maternal and neonatal care.
Nearly all births in Denmark are supervised by a midwife. Obstetricians are only called when there is a complication or an abnormality with the birth processes. Midwives in Denmark are highly respected, especially since they have to go through intense schooling and training to become certified and Danish midwifery is regarded as one of the best pregnancy assistance programs in the world according to the WHO. In many other countries including the U.S., midwifery is seen as an “alternative” career choice, a non-medical assistant to a now highly medicalized procedure.
Yesterday for our field study, we visited a hospital outside of the city center and spoke to two midwifery students and received a tour of the facility. We were able to check out the birthing suites and neonatal ward, a well as see the equipment used to measure fetal heart rates and contractions. The two students told us about their experiences in the midwifery schooling system in Denmark, too.
We were also able to see, touch, and cut the umbilical cord attached to a placenta. I was amazed at how willing this hospital was for us students to come in and touch all of their equipment and ask so many questions about how their institution is run. I’m so grateful for the many opportunities I’ve gotten since being here to talk to actual professionals and see with my own eyes the procedures and organizational systems we read and talk about in class. I hope to do more field studies when I get back to Wellesley next semester, maybe get an internship or a shadowing opportunity at a local clinic or hospital.
Speaking of internships, it’s around that time when applications for summer internships are due. I am currently looking in to organizations based in Japan that do global/public health related work to be able to work with next summer. The more I learn about maternal health and how advanced a lot of the medicine is and how beneficial a (semi)-socialist welfare system works here in Denmark, the more I want to learn about how these things work back home in Japan and in the rest of the world. Women’s rights and women’s health are topics I am extremely passionate about, so I’m planning to learn more about how to improve healthcare systems so that women’s autonomy and health aren’t just special interest topics but are primary concerns for law makers and medical professionals.