standing up for a basic human right

Yes, grinning innanely, in love, just hours after birth and just a step away from my special patch of floor where i birthed the Bean.(doesnt look very beany...more like a watermelon! 11.5 pounds or 5.5kgs of watermelon at home-it can be done! lol)
If you have ever thought home birth was an option, ever thought there may be something to be gained, had, by birthing at home, if you've ever imagined another way, then take some action now and support your right, your partners right, your sisters right,your daughters right, your friends right, a womans right to birth how she needs too.

Laws are notoriously hard to overturn and impending policy change is about to make a womans choice to birth her children safely at home impossible through the mechanism of exhorbitant insurance by way of lack of government indemnity and the link between insurance and midwife registration. midwives will be able to attend homebirths as a 'guest' but will have no recourse to a legal and respectful hospital transfer if required. This blog post written by my last homebirth midwife tells it well.
Homebirth Australia is organising a rally in Canberra on September 7 at 11.30am if you can make it, but they have also come up with what i think is a stroke of genius for those who can't attend but want to show their support on the day; a virtual rally ticket where "your pledge of $25 goes towards the printing and assembling of your head shot and message, as well as towards our continuing campaign to keep homebirth with a midwife a viable option for Australian families” and your ugly mug can be placed on Parliament House lawns.This act will help try to keep Homebirth a legal and viable option for Australian women who choose another way to birth. Attend the rally or buy a ticket to have a virtual attendance. Imagine having a law that mandated you had to take all mammalian pets to the veterinary surgery for them to birth their young? Sounds crazy like that huh?

Haiku Friday

Oh fuck, I feel shame.
Systemic racism kills
Duty of care... FAIL!

a good larf

Chatting at home with Simon last night about a colleague who is going through the family court at the moment reminded me of the drama that is seperating one life unit into two. It also rekindled a memory of the depths ex partners can go to to seek revenge on a spouse, to try and equal the pain of the heart. This story is funny and despite the agony at the time i did manage a very good larf.

The crux of the amusement stems from the fact that my ex husbands name is Simon and my then boyfriend (now my husband) is also named Simon and that additionally, my surname is X and my boyfriend (now husband) also has the surname X. My ex husband has a different surname.

The circumstance that i found myself in is that i recieved a letter from the government stating that a certain department had been trying to contact me, unsuccessfully, by phone and had also twice sent someone around to my house to 'interview' me. I had remained uncontactable, hence the letter and would i please call this department for an interview about my current living arrangements.

???
So i call.

The woman who is in charge of my 'case' informs me that they have had an 'anonymous' tip off that i am in fact co-habiting with someone yet recieving extra government allowance allocated for people parenting solo. Could I please confirm that my ex husband had moved back into the house. What the!? That sounds horriffic! NO!

I tell her that but she also informs me that the tip off has included details about a vehicle being seen frequently at the house etc and being there for a few days. I say 'well my ex husband drop the kids off every week but he doesnt even come inside the house and that this tip off is a bit of a mystery to me coz there is no way on earth we are back in a relationship together'.

She asks me a few more questions... my mind is racing around trying to figure out who on earth would make a 'tip off' like this; that my ex and i are back together...its ludicrous! Nuts. A really awful notion! The only person who i think would make a tip off about me being in a relationship (and hence 'concerned' about co-habitation with another man) would be my ex husband but he is the one being tipped off! Im confused. Then the lightbulb goes off. I ask her a few questions about the names she has in front of her...

Is the reported name of involved person Simon? "yes"
Is the surname reported X? "yes"
I tell her that Simon X is not my ex husband, despite the name, that he is my boyfriend and the name of the person doing the tip off would be my ex husband Simon? "Umm I cant reveal that."

I tell her that what has happenned is that someone in the department has seen the names involved and become confused and has assumed that the boyfriend is the exhusband and the ex husband is the boyfriend. It gets really special here as the natural effect of such confusion is that the ex husband has now also implicated himself inadvertently as a co-conspirator in this 'defrauding'. He has, by his own doing, sent the goverment dudes around to his place to answer the same questions i am getting and go through the burecratic nightmare that was required to prove his innocence! Priceless. Boy , did that woman and i have a belly laugh on the phone that day. I really, really would have loved to have been a fly on the wall the day the ex realised what a totally botched job he had made of his attempt to make life difficult for me.

There was no defrauding on my part. Sleepovers dont count. I could have told him that. Ahhh, revenge gone wrong. Sweet enough for me.

Haiku Friday

the Gates stuffed up. Whoops!
technology has limits
nature knows its true

life changing viewing

I was spurred by memories, stirred by elburros post at team effort asking for recommendations of documentaries for her son, to write this post. I recommended the qatsi trilogy;
kowaanisqatsi -life out of balance,
powaqqatsi - life in transformation and
naqoyqatsi - life as war

powerful cinematography about issues of globalisation, urban life and technology versus the environment and all driven by incredible soundtracks by Phillip Glass. I was haunted by these 'movies' as a late teen and they definitely encouraged my passions for low impact living, cultural empathy and activism. They really are breathtaking; some of the most powerful imagery and sound you'll ever see. More than documentaries, these movies are a piece of art.

Haiku Friday

chorizo, chevre
duck and boar; a string bag full
of lifes small pleasures.

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.

Adnyamathanha Decision

On Tuesday , the Federal Court of Australia handed down a decision on a lands title claim for the Adnyamathanha people in the affirmative. It's for traditional land measuring 46,000 sq. kilometres,



representing by far the biggest successful lands title claim by an indigenous people in South Australian history, encapsulating all of the Flinders Ranges and The Gammon Ranges.




I love this image below of the bench and presiding judge with all its institutional flavour and the justaposition with nature and the ochre ground.



Our friend has been working as legal counsel on this case for 7 years and is, according to him, his most rewarding legal outcome to date. He travelled to Adnyamathanha with his wife and buddy this week (who kindly shared the photos with me) to be present for the handing down of this historical decision and the handing over of native title.


I didnt see any press on it.