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Christian, midwife. “The first time I put on the gloves in the maternity hospital, I experienced an incredible feeling.”

Ignoring sexist expressions and harsh working conditions, she embarked on a traditionally female profession: midwifery. As part of the film’s release A wise manhe testifies about his journey.

It is the story of a young man, Leopold, who accepts “the most beautiful profession in the world” – midwifery. After failing the medical entrance exam, she “by default” joins a midwifery course that prepares aspiring students for this profession. In A wise manJennifer Devoldere (in theaters March 15) Leopold (Melvin Boomer) is terrified of the gaze of society, his family and above all his father, a bit macho. If he joins without much enthusiasm, his meeting with Natalie (Karin Viard), a passionate midwife, will be enough to open his eyes to a profession based on charity, know-how and not gender.

The script of the film is not devoid of truth. Although the major has been open to men since 1982, it is still rarely chosen by students. According to the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (DREES), in 2022 only 4.5% of midwives were men.

47-year-old Christian Jean is one of them. This midwife (not a midwife, the term “woman” refers to a woman being cared for) started the school 28 years ago. For Madame Figaro, she looks back at a time when only 80 men graduated against 19,000 women, and where sexist remarks abounded. She remembers the place she had to create for herself in a very feminine world, her first deliveries and her precious meetings with patients, the real guarantees of her motivation.

In the video: the trailer of the movie “Sage-homme”.

Miss Figaro. – Unlike the movie hero, the maeutics were never, in your eyes, a default choice. What made you choose this profession?
Christian Jean: My medical specialty comes from childhood. At the age of 6, I spent a lot of time in the hospital, I even almost died there because of a meningitis epidemic that affected several children. I was the only one among them who survived thanks to the white coats. Since then, I have been extremely grateful to those who saved me. Growing up, I would go to the maternity ward to visit aunts, cousins ​​or neighbors who had just given birth. I remember a very happy atmosphere. I looked at the children from the window of the kindergarten, I smiled with the parents… I found out that the midwife’s profession is more focused on life and less on illness and death, like that of a doctor. I found it to be an incredible opportunity to see this life built over 9 months, and to support parents to be the actors of birth.

Men are still very much in the minority in midwifery schools. How were you accepted at school 28 years ago?
I felt very alone. In my time there were 80 men out of 19,000 qualified midwives in France. In Marseille, where I studied, I was fourth from my school to graduate, and not without difficulty. From day one, the students made it clear to me that my opinion would never be taken into account. Obviously, I was a “guy” so my speech was always second to that of my colleagues. I also worried about the management team, which at the time was represented by university maternity directors, and for whom childbirth was women’s work and medicine was men’s work. It was impossible for them to imagine that a man could accompany the birth without giving life. What was completely out of whack is that you had to have cancer to be a cancer specialist.

And in the hospital?
From the first stages, I worried the medical team. I was a Y chromosome in an X world. Everyone was wondering what I was doing there, how they should treat me. If I was confused like any other student, I still felt that sometimes more was demanded of me because of my gender. For example, I wasn’t allowed to sit in on a 12-hour call and had to answer questions about a pathology I hadn’t covered in class yet.

To think that it is improbable that a man can give birth without giving birth is like thinking that you have to be a cancer patient to be a cancer specialist.

Christian Jean, midwife

What helped you stay the course?
As Karin Viard’s character says in the film, at some point you have to “let go of your own crying.” So I redoubled my efforts to prove myself. It required me to make sacrifices, put in extra hours and practice instead of taking vacations, for example, but it paid off. I was able to win the support of my midwifery instructors at the time. A head nurse who had just given birth offered to trust me and let her baby take its first bath. After observing me, he told me that “the job suits you very well”. I had his approval.

How do expectant parents react when they see you for the first time?
Often we create a surprise when we introduce ourselves to the patient. When I was younger, people took me for a nurse, a medicine practitioner or externship, or a doctor. I know from experience that everything is played in the first 15 seconds. If you arrive looking down, almost apologizing for being there, it’s lost. Therefore, when I enter the delivery room, I immediately introduce myself. “Hello, I’m a Christian, I’m your midwife and I’ll take care of you from now on.”

Do you remember your first birth?
Of course. This is the moment that all freshmen look forward to and look forward to. The first time I “put on the gloves”, as we say in our slang, was during the first shift. I was barely there when they took me to the maternity ward. Usually, students do a four-handed birth with graduates to monitor the delivery of the baby and protect the woman’s perineum, but that was not my case. This was the patient’s seventh delivery, so everything happened very quickly. I remember feeling an incredible feeling that still haunts me today. Since then, as soon as the labor goes well, respecting the patient’s physiology and wishes, I am soar with happiness in the following days.

From the first stages, I disturbed the medical team. I was a Y chromosome in an X world

Christian Jean, midwife

Reality is not always rosy and film A wise man the clock Pace, obscurity and death are also part of the job…
Yes, everything can change in a minute. One day, a patient suffered a catastrophic hemorrhage during childbirth. I remember running through the streets of Paris in the rain to get to the blood bank. Luckily, I had just traded in my plastic clogs for new sneakers (laughs). Thanks to their help and my colleagues, this woman survived. He could have died five times, but he survived. Being a midwife also means experiencing hardships such as fetal death in the womb or medical termination of pregnancy. It’s hard, it’s hard for you sometimes, but it’s part of the job.

Since 2008, you left the hospital environment, turning to the liberal. Why this choice?
Because we are experiencing an unprecedented crisis in the hospital. Working conditions are deteriorating in all departments, even in maternity hospitals. This leads to student burnout and midwives leaving these facilities. And the Covid crisis accelerated this process. The current government ignores our demands. Sure, we gain recognition for our medical status by adding a sixth year of study to our course and eventually getting a doctorate, but the salaries don’t follow. How to motivate students if the pay does not correspond to their level of training? Even when you rise to leadership positions in a hospital, as I did, you don’t get rewards, you get complaints from disgruntled team members. Frankly, I am extremely worried about the future of our profession. What prevents me from leaving the profession are the patients, those who fight for an appointment with a gynecologist. Our profession is necessary for them to accompany childbirth, to save breastfeeding from a bad start, or to monitor their gynecological health.

In the video, eight got ideas about taboos during pregnancy

Source: Le Figaro

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