Haiku Friday

referenced by longing,
a mind, a heart, a soul, can
reach for dreams and grow.

wow. women rock

Thanks for the link Laura Jane. Wow. Hows that moment in the waterbirth! What an incredible snapshot of a natural birth. This has to be my pet peeve in life. The complete hijacking of birth by modern ...everything.

Haiku Friday

politics and birth.
whose rights we talkin' about?
Im mad to the bone.

its all about autonomy

That was the bit that really got up my nose, the straw that broke the camels whatsit and where it started getting a bit crazy. This post descibes some of the dinner conversation had with GPs which i posted about a few days back.

Well, what also got up my nose early on was the fact that they were all just oozing such a sense of entitled and unchallenged priviledge. So when they started ordering expensive wine from the menu and then judging it with sniffs and swirls (i was paying and they not once asked me if i would like to choose the wine -what would i know about wine- they assumed that responsibility for themsleves and before i knew it...ordered!)and beginning to diss off at midwives and irresponsible homebirths i just waded in. All that priviledge and expectation of being unchallenged had to be resisted! Upon hearing what i percieve to be 'mistruth' and ignorance speaking, I felt like i really couldnt sit with my own integrity intact and not say a word. I felt/knew we were equals, different professions, but equals non the less and i had as much right to wade in on the discussion as they did and i wasnt just going to shut up when they came back with a counter claim. Give them the last word just bcause...they were doctors? Hell, i teach critical reading and thinking, epidemiology and public health and i have a very up to date knowledge of the literature around birthing statistics and the homebirth debate and im a woman with 3 births under my belt. Game on!

What was very obvious, very quickly, was their underlying paradigm that women shouldnt have a choice in birthing "the day that homebirths become approved is the day i give up obstetric practice" i mean what was that all about? Loss of control??? I nearly said 'well that might not be such a bad thing then' but i didnt. But when confronted with the truth of their position 'seems you believe that women shouldnt be free to choose where they birth and should be made to give birth in a hospital?' they weren't comfortable with that either. Conflicted paradigms and unresolved principles...i struggle to get students to recognise their contradictions in logic all the time when im teaching, not with a bunch of comfortable professionals...

We moved through maternal and neonatal death rates being higher for homebirths, then when i didnt concurr and cited some contemporary literature (i dont think they appreciated journal, author and date references in a social situation) they suggsted instead we should be looking at neonatal morbidity, i didnt concurr. We moved onto the 'no time to deal with an emergency' argument and women being selfish and midwives encouraging irresponsible behaviour, i didnt concurr, repeating often that homebirth midwives are professionals, just as they were, trained in birth (doh)know when to transfer and have more experience in deliveries than most community GPs. Kapow! To top it off i suggested that women essentially have a right to choose the birthing care they want!

I think the big silent moment came when i suggested that contrary to their opinion that it was the midwives fault that there was no seamless relationship with hospitals in times of transfer from home to hospital "they dont want consultant support, its just outrageous" but that the system made it very difficult to have such a relationship. I spoke of negative reactions towards women and her midwife under circumstances of home to hospital transfer and that it just might not be due to midwife attitudes of 'defiant and egocetric irresponsibility' but possibly due to the adversarial and judgemental behaviour of specialists and the system that discourages such a relationship. The system does not support independent midwives and its not the midwives fault that she is not supported , she wants it, yet she must bear the brunt of not having it!

It was an interesting night. I never shy away from a good debate but only when i feel i have a leg to stand on. I felt i had about five in this case. What was really interesting for me was that the deeper languages of love, privacy, intimacy and respect for the process of natural birth and motherhood had no place at the table.

how to win friends and influence people

what not to do when out for a work dinner supposedly discussing 1.3 million of dental assessment stuff with a bunch of local male GPs who begin lamenting the loss of opportunity for obstetric care for GPs with obstetric speciality to reckless, incompetent, ego driven midwives and who then start talking about homebirthing and 'those' women who do it, in a not very favourable fashion...

respond like i did.

Criminal behaviour

Ive been meaning to do a post on this for a while now. its ridiculous. outrageous. Medicalised birth as the only lawful option if you want support during labour? Thats what we're looking at if the new maternity 'reforms' come into play.

women have been birthing, well... forever. I know. its the bleeding obvious. But its like death, highly regulated and god forbid if anyone should step out of the square hole and be a round peg and do it without a doctor. Yes , you could have a midwife in attendance in hospital, but who 'controls' the midwife? So, at the end of the day it amounts to the same thing. Professionals who are highly trained to deal with problems in labour trying to maintain control over a normal process; birth. A point so very well put by a group of obstetricians themselves interviewed in The Business of Being Born who, when asked how many natural deliveries they had been present at, aka no interventions given, they replied ...none. ZIP. ZILCH.NAUGHT. Wouldn't know what a normal birth process looked like if they fell over it. Comforting thought huh?


Brave is not the woman who chooses to birth at home, brave is the woman who gallantly tries to have a natural birth in the presence of an obstetrician, and their handmaidens, the hospital midwives. Its the medical snowball effect. Happens all the time , over and over, womens choices about their bodies restricted and controlled. Nearly 50% of Australian babies are now surgically removed from their mothers and its not because these women '"arent very good at giving birth". The really stupid thing, like jaw dropping on the ground stupid, is that the evidence, the multi trial EVIDENCE shows that home birth is as safe as hospital birth for low risk women (of which most women are) and hospital birth is more dangerous than home if you include morbidity to the baby and mother from hospital interventions in your calculations. The research also shows that to obtain the best birthing outcomes, midwifery care is your best option.


At some level i equate this kind of control with the efforts of multinational companies trying to control seed stock or water ownership. Its one of lifes fundamentals that just shouldnt be 'owned' this way. Women have a right to birth where they need to and with the support they need. By making it illegal for a midwife to attend, to be with a woman, at a home birth unless she is insured but then making that insurance impossible to obtain. Well thats just pure skullduggery flying in the face of evidence.