28 May What happened so far... Part II
What happened so far...
PART II
We would like to keep you updated and share with you our experiences of the last weeks.
Some wonderful news is the expansion of our team by Soulmaz Datubar, who will be active in the future house, especially in the health center and in postpartum care. We met Soulmaz through an info session where we informed midwives about our foundation. We are still in discussion with some midwives and finalizing our collaboration. Recently we even received our first letter of application, what a great feeling!
We are also particularly pleased that Elisabeth Hunfeld, with her many years of experience as a home birth midwife, will be supporting our birth team until it is established.
Our capacities for home birthscapacities for home births are now available on the website. Starting in August! At the same time, midwifery student Valeen Kölling starts her first externship on our team (read more here on the blog in August).
In addition, there is great news from the non-profit association: Neues Geburtshaus für Hamburg e.V. is continuously getting new members and continues to actively support the foundation of our birth center. The regular members currently meet every two weeks via Zoom. We have recently participated in the spray action Hebammen #unersetzbar (midwives #irreplaceable) on international midwifery day. In the future, the association is also planning workshops and film screenings followed by discussions.
A really nice aspect of the founding work is networking with other people and institutions. You get to know an unbelievable amount of great people! Very important for us are the experience sharing meetings organized by the network of birth centers - Netzwerk der Geburtshäuser. It is so exciting to hear how other birth centers deal with the various challenges and how diverse the ways of working are overall.
Apart from the House for Birth and Health, a number of other birth centers are currently being founded in Germany. In regular meetings to exchange ideas, we can share our experiences with each other and walk part of the way together.
An important aspect of our foundation work is the joint development of our philosophy. During our regular supervision meetings, we have begun to put down on paper our common stance on women's health. In doing so, we have noticed that we need to further deepen individual aspects. It is important for us to define racism for ourselves and also to determine how we as a future institution will deal with experiences of racism. We are also planning workshops on feminism, gender and sexual diversity.
Now for our favorite question: do you have a space yet?
The search continues. We've had a few rental offers, but so far our dream home hasn't been one of them. We are still working on it with all our might. Please think of us when you have another villa to give away 😀.
