By Anne-Laure Petit-Hénon
Published on
May 5, 24 at 11:28
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If you are a woman who consumes social networks, particularly real on Instagram, you have surely already come across this type of information videos around the women’s health. The themes are varied: childbirth, periods or even gynecological follow-up. Explanatory content, clearly for educational purposes.
Not so surprising, because most of the people producing this content are… midwives.
This is the case ofAnna Roy (240,000 followers on Instagram) or even Charline Gayault (nearly 200,000 followers on Instagram). For -.frthese midwives, stars of social networks, tell how they have become indispensable to women, often in distress.
“We find ourselves with people in tears”
The distress of women is part of the daily life of Anna Roy and Charline Gayault. As part of their activity as midwives, they find themselves confronted with patients, sometimes in distress situationnotably due to a glaring lack of information.
When I worked at the hospital, I was struck by the number of women who came to the emergency room because they were worried about things they had read on the Internet. All information found there is not verified or sourced.
An experience shared by Anna Roy, including on social networks. In the private messages or comments that she can read there, she too meets people in need.
Sometimes it takes more than a month to see a midwife. We find ourselves with people in distress, in tears, who have no medical support. This is where we see the degradation of the health system.
Both see the same cause: a lack of information around women’s health. A lack of information that they try to compensate for on social networks, among others.
Overcome a lack of information
Charline Gayault made this observation very early on. While she was in middle school, she created an anonymous Skyblog about issues related to sexuality and puberty, such as periods and contraception.
I was the first to have my period in my group of friends and I saw how taboo this subject was and frankly it irritated me! At that age, sexuality is taboo when in reality, that’s all we think about.
A blog that she was “ashamed of” at the time, but which ultimately paved the way for her Instagram account, created in 2019. “It’s hopeless. And the more we advance, the more we realize the number of people who do not have information. »
For example, women do not know that they can do preventive gynecological follow-up with a midwife, so they do not have no tracking at all.
This is what motivates Charline Gayault, with assertive activism, like Anna Roy, to “transmit as much information as possible” to as many people as possible. “I arrived on the networks with a lot of naivety and humility, telling myself that if it only affected 100 people, it was always 100 people more,” recalls Charline Gayault, who today counts 198,000 subscribers.
Dealing with hidden consultations
A community that she considers “great”, even if she had to “mourn” no longer reading all the comments or all the messages received. “I tell myself that what I’m doing is already good. I do it for free, it’s not a consultation. And my community is understanding. » And rather than responding individually to all messages, Charline Gayault prefers to make a video for as many people as possible.
But sometimes she is confronted with requests for hidden consultations: reading examination results, asking to see the sex of a baby on an ultrasound, etc. ” Actually, it makes me sad, because for these people it is nothing, but for us, making a diagnosis is a responsibility. And it upsets me because some people don’t see everything I give in addition to my work. »
For example, a person wrote to me one evening because one of her friends no longer felt her baby moving and she wanted to know if she should go to the emergency room. I get involved. When it’s a patient, I can ask for news. You can’t put this on the shoulders of someone you don’t know.
Anna Roy is faced with the same problem. “But I continue to respond, to give indications. I know I’m too nice, this is what my colleagues also tell me. But I can’t do it, because people are desperate. »
Because this is what the two professionals feel: people calling for an internet diagnosis are above all lost. Requests which are also the counterpart of a health system sometimes absent in certain geographic sectors or in certain specialties. All these requests illustrate a lack of information in a context of increasingly heavy medical desertification.
Situations that are not always easy to experience for midwives either, but which are not a hindrance for these two professionals.
Additional activities to reach as many people as possible
However, producing content for networks is an extra activity of their work as liberal midwives, but which the two professionals have long since integrated.
Both work part-time, and in their free time, Charline Gayault, like Anna Roy, produce content for social networks.
As if that wasn’t enough, they are also TV columnists (Orgasmic on Suits you for one, The Kindergarten House on France 2 for the other) and write books.
Several relays to reach as many women as possible. Additional activities that are not really profitable. But then, what pushes them to continue?
Anna Roy is not at her trial run. Her first book is 2015. And she writes regularly like All about the rules in 2021, Postpartum lasts 3 years in 2023 and Baby clash, becoming parents without gutting each other This year.
I prefer books to social media because I have more space. But whatever the channel, I try to give as much information as possible. In fact, if I continue, it is because each time, there are repercussions in civil society, people seize them.
And she confides that she has not yet been able to talk about everything she wanted around women’s health, like menopause for example.
“Actually, I really like it. » On the side of Charline Gayault, also author of Great guide to my peaceful pregnancy, his activity on the networks starts from passion, even if it becomes professional. “I always imagined myself with two professions: one scientific and one artistic. Finally, networks became my artistic activity and I really like it, creating content to attract attention and pass messages. »
The networks and the firm suit me well. I like to be calm, in a confidential and face-to-face space at the office, and at the same time, make videos that can reach thousands of people.
Complementary activities therefore for the same goal: to transmit valuable information to women about their body and their health.
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