“While midwives like me are trying to improve the standards of maternal care, all I ask is for the government to support us.”
Midwife Bhargavi Bairapaka believes that when women experience childbirth, it changes them completely. Convinced that the experience of childbirth makes a huge difference, she wants to ensure that no woman is neglected or harmed during pregnancy and birth.

Bhargavi works as a midwife in the Area Hospital at Gajwel, Telanagana. She has over 15 years of experience working with pregnant women in the rural areas of Telangana. She donned the ‘staff nurse’ badge for almost a decade before getting trained in midwifery by Fernandez Foundation. After being mentored by the best international midwifery educators for a year, a six-months internship at the Maternal and Child Health hospital at Sangareddy followed.

During her tenure as a nurse at the Mangapet Public Health Centre she knew something was just not right. She was not happy with the way childbearing women were treated. The redundant methods of “delivering” babies got her hungry for evidence-based knowledge and practices. When she saw that the rural women suffered verbal and physical abuse while birthing, she was committed to change the scenario.

What motivated her further was the simple fact that she had always dwelt in the rural hinterlands of the state. Such places have neither doctors nor robust health facilities. Pregnant women reach out to staff nurses in case of urgent medical complications. She was used to handling strenuous situations and normal births. But she did not have the slightest idea about respectful maternity care until she was trained to be a competent midwife. After completing the midwifery training, she understood the true meaning of it all – the actual significance of personalized care.

Bhargavi narrates an incident that occurred sometime ago in a health facility that had no doctors on duty. There came a mother who had had a traumatic birth experience the first time around. She was verbally abused and had to forcefully undergo augmentation of labor through injections. The second time she wanted to birth, she came to Bhargavi to receive midwifery care. Bhargavi dealt with the case expressing genuine concern, love, care and support. She was able to provide a positive, humanized birth experience for the mother. This experience changed the woman from a fearful mother to a strong and confident person brimming with positivity. “The icing on the cake was that she named the baby girl after me!” adds Bhargavi. She advocates midwifery strongly and says that it is a model of care that has the capacity to uplift each and every woman.