ALP: The Freebirth Government

Dear Prime Minister Rudd and Health Minister Roxon,

I write to congratulate you on the great step forward you have taken on behalf of birthing women everywhere in Australia. Few politicians to date have shown such trust in women's innate power to birth their babies in an unhindered environment, as you have.

Most parties involved in debates about Australia's maternity system argue that birthing women need the presence of a medical professional during labour. The vast majority of Australian homebirthers have previously employed an independent midwife to attend to their medical needs during pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period to ensure if anything goes wrong during their homebirth they have skilled hands at the ready. You have taken a bold step forward on behalf of these women, giving them them the final push they needed to embrace unassisted birthing and finally experience the true power of unhindered labour.

By finally passing the controversial midwives bill which will give doctors veto power over "independent" midwives and prevent the overwhelming majority of these midwives from practicing (thanks to an inability to access indemnity insurance for homebirths) you have turned hundreds of homebirthers into freebirthers.

I understand that presently your government is receiving a lot of criticism from midwives, homebirthers and The Greens party for the work you have done to encourage Australian women to stop fearing their power and start freebirthing. But these critics lack your wisdom and fail to realise that evolution has perfectly designed women for birthing without the presence of skilled care providers, like midwives in private practice.

Yours sincerely,

A fellow freebirth advocate

For More:

Major Parties Unite Against Midwives and Homebirths

Senate Passes Controversial Birth Bill

*ALP (for international readers) is the Australian Labour Party, the geniuses currently in power.

Rhea Dempsey on The Labour By-Pass Era

Today I had the pleasure of attending a Rhea Dempsey talk, hosted by Peninsula Birth Support. The discussion theme was "roles at birth" but it flowed on to related topics and included the women present sharing their own experiences.

Some of the great insights we gained from Rhea included:

• The current birth culture in Australia is on where labour is optional. Rhea refers to it as "the labour bypass era".
• For women who do want to experience a normal physiological labour in this era they need to be savvy in birth, particularly during moments of the crisis of confidence
• We have lost a lot of our human physicality. She joked that the body part that gets the best workout in our culture is the thumb, the remote control digit. In circumstances like these childbirth is a "hyper-leap into outer space!"
• Rhea highlighted the fact that a lot of people approach birth with the belief that pain thresholds are static, when in fact a woman's threshold for pain can increase and decrease at different times. The idea in birth is to make sure the support circle present will help boost her threshold for pain when a crisis of confidence hits.
• Within the medical/obstetric model of birth pain is seen as suffering and the role of attendants is to "save" the mother by intervening. In contrast, in the midwifery model of birth pain is seen as potency. Midwives celebrate pain and the crisis of confidence because they are signs that birth is progressing beautifully. They see their role as working with the pain and supporting the woman through it to achieve the normal physiological birth she desires.
• Finally we talked about the role of fathers at birth and Rhea suggested that when a woman has the ideal support circle and the space is being held the father can be free to be the lover, holding, touching, kissing the mother of his child as she labours.

It was a really informative and nourishing afternoon. We're looking forward to inviting Rhea back in the second half of the year to hear more about her knowledge on "archetypes at birth".

Next month Peninsula Birth Support is having Eastside Midwives speak about prenatal testing on April 23rd at 12:30pm at Orwil Street Community House.

Rhea Dempsey on "Roles at Birth"

Rhea Dempsey is a birth attendant and counsellor with over thirty years experience working in women's birth spaces. This Friday (March 12) she is speaking about "roles at birth" at a Peninsula Birth Support gathering at Orwil Street Community House, Frankston. From their blog:

"For anyone with an interest in childbirth and questions about what role partners, lovers, mothers, sisters, cousins, midwives, doulas etc. should play in a woman's birth space, we have a real treat for you!"

For more information see Peninsula Birth Support's Facebook group and the Event page or email them at MCpeninsula@gmail.com.

"Peninsula Birth Support is a Branch of Maternity Coalition, a national umbrella organisation committed to the advancement of best-practice maternity care for all Australian women and their families. Our aim is to provide information about pregnancy and childbirth to the community and facilitate open discussion in a mothers group style setting." From their blog.

Happy IWD

For Australian women today marks their final International Women's Day (IWD) during which they have the freedom to choose where they give birth and who provides their health care during that time in their lives. This time next year the government will be making such choices for women and Independent Midwifery shall be a thing of the past.

I have spent my IWD enjoying the company of a good friend whose homebirth I attended last year. I've been privileged enough to become very close to this family and watch her children grow, almost daily. We have become second mothers to one another's children which means double the cuddles for everyone in our little community:

With the little girl whose birth I attended last year

For more on the progress (or regression, should we say) of the Australian maternity reforms, see:
Part 1 - Private Midwifery Services
Part 2 - Village Midwife
Part 3 - Midwives Victoria