Hi there, I have finally managed to re-join myself (please excuse the email
to the group requesting to join!) after having a long break and thought I
should re-introduce myself.  I teach in and coordinate the postgraduate
midwifery programmes at Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin, New Zealand.  I had also
maintained a small midwifery caseload until recently but I am currently
taking a break from this.  I have just completed my PhD and have included an
 abstract from this here.  My plans now are to publish from my thesis and
present at some conferences outside of New Zealand (any suggestions for
suitable conferences for this work would be appreciated). I am also planning
a cohort study examining outcomes for low risk, New Zealand women birthing
in tertiary/secondary, primary and home settings in the care of case-loading
midwives. In New Zealand women can choose to birth in any of these settings
though the majority (over 84%) birth in tertiary and secondary hospitals. 
Case-loading (especially self employed) midwives can also access all of
these settings are are paid for their services per woman, regardless of
birth setting.  I think I know of most of the major published work on
outcomes for home, primary or midwifery led care but would appreciate any
recommendations.
cheers
Deborah

Abstract
In their daily work case-loading midwives traverse place. They visit
childbearing women or attend childbirth in women’s homes and they may spend
time in clinics or a variety of birthing facilities including smaller
primary birthing units or larger obstetric hospitals.  They spend their days
engaging with childbearing women, their family or supporters and with
obstetric, other professional or midwifery colleagues.  As they move across
place and between people, they traverse a variety of physical places and
discursive spaces.  

Midwives journey into the intimate space of the childbearing woman
attempting to understand their subjective experience and the way that this
pregnancy and childbirth is situated within the landscape of their life
world.   They travel with this understanding as they negotiate other spaces;
the biomedical space of the maternity context and obstetric hospital and the
spaces of their own constructions of childbirth.  This movement points to
the complexity of midwifery practice.  As midwives traverse a variety of
discursive frameworks they must negotiate multiple and sometimes competing
meanings and interests.  The obstetric hospital setting provides midwives
with particular challenges as they work to create, maintain and protect the
birthing space of the women in their care.  Ultimately midwives work to
create a space for birthing that is perhaps unique to each midwife/woman
pairing.  

Using a poststructural feminist approach, this thesis explores the
discursive construction of case-loading midwifery in New Zealand.  The
practice of case-loading midwives within the obstetric hospital provides a
focus, exposing the contested nature of maternity care and illustrating the
way that midwives negotiate this contested terrain.