Home Made Home Birth Advocacy Items

In the lead up to the mother of all rallies in Canberra, some of my local homebirth friends have been getting together to help make some banners and t-shirts for the protest. When the rally has been and gone I will miss these creative days, they were a lot of fun. Our crew consisted of:

• One Mum who had a fairly great hospital birth a couple of years ago but can't wait to homebirth number two with a midwife.
• Another Mum who had a fairly good hospital birth a couple of years ago and recently homebirthed her second child. She also hired a midwife but ended up accidentally freebirthing.
• A Mum who homebirthed four of her five children, with the support of a midwife (her first, hospital, birth was not good).
• A Mother of one little freebirthed child, who plans to freebirth all her children.
• A Dad of one little freebirthed child, who can't wait to do it all again and again and again and again :)
• And of course, all our children!

First we all helped make the banner brainchild of the mum looking forward to giving birth at home in the future:

Then we made some t-shirts featuring iron-on slogans we created on the computer:

As you can see I created a shirt to reclaim the media's use of the phrase "backyard birth" to refer to homebirth without a midwife. As a freebirther I grow weary of the assumption that birthing without a care provider is dangerous and I am offended at the implication that it is in the same category as illegal/unsafe abortion.

My daughter and I also purchased some homebirth advocating clothing before our t-shirt making day:

One very talented Mama created this banner:

Finally we all helped make a banner featuring my appropriation of the dirty dancing quote "nobody puts Baby in a corner":

We've had a very productive couple of weeks and can't wait to see each other on the steps of Parliament come September 7!