Happy birthday Littletree!
Nine years old today! Which means that it’s my ninth birthing day!
Of course there was cake
And a party with balloons
And lots of friends
Fun times :)
And I got a present too – because after all, I’m the one who gave birth, all LIttletree did was survive one more year, and really, that’s more my achievement than hers! ;)
At exactly midnight last night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, the phone rang. My client, calling to tell me her waters had released. She said she wasn’t having any sensations yet, and nothing was really happening, but she wanted to give me a “heads up” and suggested I drive out and sleep there rather than getting woken up and have to rush over at quarter to ridiculous in the morning, or whenever things got really happening.
Good idea! I’d rather drive the 40 minutes to her house up a winding, dirt road at midnight than in the wee hours, so I extricated myself from my cosy bed and went out in the rain to go… only to get my car bogged in the mud in my own driveway! Oh goddess NO!
So after a fair whack of swearing and spinning wheels, and jacking up the van and digging under the tyres and putting a few boards down… I was out. Just before I got the van out of the mud, I stood up and said to Ariad (thank the goddess she was there to help me!), “why am I even bothering, I bet she’s birthing a little girl at this very moment”.
A minute later my phone rang – my client’s partner telling me they’d birthed a little girl, all healthy! Only 40 minutes after the original phone call, no less! So I wouldn’t have gotten there anyway.
They asked me to come out and check to make sure everything was fine, and help with the placenta (which took three hours in the end!). Isn’t she a beauty! Nutritious and restorative too :)
So no birthing photos, but I do have yummy pics from when we did the belly cast when the mama was 39 weeks.
Yay for women’s bodies and babies, yay for beautiful birthing!
I’ve been sitting in on Gloria Lemay’s Midwifery 101 classes, which are a great intro course into midwifery, and joy of joys, she’s announced another series of the same classes starting in January, at a time suitable for those in the European, African, Asian and Australian time zones.
Check it out HERE. The classes are weekly for 20 weeks, starting on the 24th of January, until the 6th of June 2011, and unbelievable value at $140, I highly recommend anyone interested in birthwork to join; students, midwives, doulas, pregnant mamas.
Proceeds from the class are going to support the current legal challenge to birth rights led by Lisa Barrett
I started hosting morning teas for my clients and any pregnant women or new mums in the area to get together and have a birthing-focussed women’s circle.
It’s been really lovely to sit with women and have a natter, and very convenient for me when I have 4 clients all approaching due – this way I get to see them all at once, rather than seeing each one individually every week, and I can answer everyone’s questions at the same time, rather than repeating myself over and over. Even better, the mamas all talk amongst themselves too, so they get to share and connect with each other.
Its great for the mamas who’ve already had their baby to share with the pregnant mamas, and for everyone to be able to talk about their experience, and know they’re not alone. And we all get to fawn over the cute babies, and I get to see them as they grow.
I’ve also been listening in on Gloria Lemay’s new online Midwifery Classes, which are awesome – I highly recommend them to anyone interested in midwifery or birthwork, they’re incredibly affordable and open to anyone. Check it out HERE.
I’ve been busy lately with mamas birthing. It’s been a fantastic journey around trusting birth.
One birth I was at, the mama was so graceful and focussed. Every time I had thoughts about what might go wrong, or the technical things I should be doing or checking, I looked up and saw the picture she had on her wall
Trust
It was so perfect. Just reminded me to trust. Because it was all flowing exactly as it needed to; no complications, no difficulties, and the mama’s and baby’s bodies knew what to do, just as they were designed to.
At some point in her birthing process, the mama said “no more photos”, so I put my newly-acquired life drawing skills to use and drew a picture to capture the beauty of the scene – one powerful, graceful mama, deep in her process, focussed inwardly, in the bathtub with the shower running on her back.
Last night I was at another birth – a second baby boy for Earth Mama and Autumn. We’d discussed making a birth plan during pre-natal visits, but I started thinking a birth plan is somewhat pointless. Earth Mama wasn’t going to hospital, and the staff rarely take birth plans seriously anyway.
This is the birth plan Earth Mama came up with in the end – I LOVE it! And we totally stuck to her plan 100% :D
Stay home – stay safe!
It seems the media is all aflutter with the recent birthing of Dannii Minogue’s baby boy – you can read a standard example of the mainstream media coverage HERE
Honestly, it’s not such a big deal – a baby was born: congratulations to the family! It was a celebrity family: well, yeah, that’s interesting to fans, and would usually get a line in the gossip pages or something, so why all the fuss?
Dannii had a *gasp* home birth. Which is hugely confronting, because we all thought Dannii was a pretty intelligent woman who is likely to be well-informed and make sound choices about such matters. So it challenges our sensibilities – surely only crazed hippie fringe freaks have home births!
And it gets worse – Dannii, under the skilled eye of a trained midwife, transported to birth in hospital when the birthing process became complicated. Well, we can all heave a sigh of relief. See: she needed the hospital.
Except that this proves the safety of home birth with a skilled midwife – it is possible to transfer to hospital if needed, of course, the majority of cases don’t need it, and birth safely and happily at home.
When a woman plans her birth in a hospital, and complications develop leading to a transfer to a larger tertiary-care facility, or a caesarean section, no one is blazing trumpets and newspaper articles saying hospital birth is unsafe (well, I am :P )
The reality is that for the vast majority of women, home birth is a safe option, and a hospital transfer is a viable resource when back-up is needed.
Dr Ted Weaver, the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is reported to have said
“Up to half of all first-time mothers attempting a home birth had to be transferred to hospital due to complications”
Great. He’s a doctor with a fancy title, so we can all ignore the fact that he’s just making up statistics as he goes along, and, in the words of Gloria Lemay: hallucinating his own reality.
Really? Up to half of all first-time mothers attempting home birth transfer? Based on what study? I’m willing to bet it’s based on the “study” of his own personal experience.
Dr Weaver went on to say,
“It is better if first-time mothers don't attempt a home birth or, if they do, they should be counselled about their risks and needs for transfer."
Oh the hypocrisy! When are women ever counselled as to the risks of hospital birth?
I have a real study published in the British Medical Journal showing that outcomes were the same in planned home and hospital births, but interventions were much lower at home and the mothers reported more satisfaction with their births. BMJ 1996 313 1313-8
In European countries where midwifery care is the standard, mortality rates are much lower under the care of midwives than under the care of obstetricians at all levels of predicted risk. Even when unplanned transfers to hospital are taken into account, home birth is still safer than hospital birth. Tew, M (1990) Safer Childbirth, Midwifery, 7(2):55-63
The true issue of home birth is control and responsibility. If you birth in hospital, the risks of complications, interventions, morbidity and mortality are higher than at home with a skilled midwife, but you have no responsibility. If something goes wrong, the doctor says “I’m very sorry, we did all we could”, and that’s the end of it. Taking that much smaller risk that something might go wrong means that the responsibility is taken on by the birthing mother.
If something goes wrong at home, everyone says “you should have been in hospital”. If something goes wrong in the hospital (even though this is more likely), it’s “just one of those things that happen”.
Ultimately, Dannii made a reasonable, responsible choice regarding her own birthing experience. It makes me so angry that the medical establishment is using the media to spin hype and misinformation, which is actually increasing risk for women and babies.
After I got home from my crazy-long drive down to Victoria for the HBA conference, I found out about a weekend workshop on Fear in Childbirth at Jenny Blyth’s property, with Gloria Lemay!
I was lucky enough that there was still a space available, so I cleared the rest of my week to spend as much time as possible with Littletree, and then got back in my car to drive up into Queensland for the weekend.
The workshop was so worth it. Jenny’s property is amazingly beautiful, with a feeling of expansive space.
The weather was great; a perfect setting for the workshop, which was held outdoors on a wooden stage.
I loved walking around the property during breaks, and swimming in the dam
On the Saturday night the outdoor pizza oven was fired up for a super-yummy dinner – pizza for 25 people :)
I learned so much from the workshop – Gloria Lemay is so great, and so hilarious!
It was definitely great to meet her! I can’t believe I spent the weekend with Anne Frye last weekend and Gloria Lemay this weekend.
I came home feeling recharged despite having driven around 4000km since last week. It was so wonderful to spend the weekend doing birthy stuff with a bunch of amazing women, and connecting with other conscious birth workers. And I got to stop in for a visit with the most gorgeous Ariad on the way home :D
Shouldn’t we all be celebrating? Wouldn’t that be nice. Wouldn’t it be lovely if the Australian government weren’t in the pocket of the Obstetrician-headed AMA? Imagine if Australia would uphold the basic human rights of women, and support them to choose where and how and with whom they give birth.
The government says they’re increasing availability and options for maternity care, that midwives will be able to claim under Medicare and get prescribe under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme. There’s a lot of talk going around at the moment about “eligibility”, though it’s been made plain to anyone who reads between the lines that virtually no one will be eligible, and in order to meet criteria, Midwives must prove that they have been thoroughly indoctrinated into medical-minded management, and beholden to a doctor. For a pregnant woman to be eligible for homebirth… well, they more-or-less “risk out” everyone, don’t they.
I keep hearing from people saying they can’t get a midwife to attend a homebirth any more, thanks to the new laws.
The reality is that in no other department of health care does one need permission from a specialist surgeon in order to see a standard practitioner.
If I had a sore throat, I wouldn’t go straight to see an ENT, just to prove that it’s not life-threatening and refer me to a GP. And while that might be a cute analogy, it’s somewhat irrelevant, as BIRTH IS NOT A DISEASE!
In Holland, the country with the best statistics in the world as far as maternity goes (and a lot of other things), pregnant women must first see a midwife for primary care. If she wants to see an obstetrician, a pregnant woman needs a referral from the midwife, and if the services of an obstetrician aren’t medically indicated, she needs to pay out of pocket for those services, while midwifery care is covered under the government health care scheme.
Having Obstetricians attend normal births is a waste of their specialised surgical training. It’s an insult to women’s human rights.
Anyway, before I end up ranting on forever, I’ll just leave you all with the wise words of Carla Hartley:
Birth is Safe. Interference is Risky. TRUST BIRTH.
Happy International Day of the Midwife
This week we had Life Drawing class again – classes were off for the past 6 weeks or so because the teacher was having her baby (a beautiful water birth I attended), but we thought we’d try having another class and Littletree agreed to “babysit”.
Which meant that Littletree sat with the baby at the mama’s side, bouncing her and being cute. We managed to have a good class, despite regular breastfeeding. Here’s my fave picture I did:
It didn’t really take Littletree all that long to get bored, and she decided to join the class and do some pictures. I was slightly reluctant, because usually when she draws pictures she get very perfectionist and cries that she needs help if she doesn’t get it “right”.
But this time I was amazed. She did really well and came up with some fantastic pictures.
Honestly; how many schooled children get to do life drawing? I think it’s such a great learning experience.
Now the problem is going to be getting to go out for Life Drawing on my own, because Littletree will want to join! I’ll have to find another class I can do on my own. LOL
I’ve spent most of the last week since we got home from camp dealing with a nasty cold – Littletree was feeling pretty sick and feverish on the day we came home from camp, and spent most of the next 3 days in bed with a yucky, wet cough. But we took good care of her, and she got better, only for me to catch the cold. I came down with a sore throat, and lost my voice completely, so I wasn’t really up to blogging.
Not to mention, I find the topic on my mind somewhat depressing. Most every other birth-blogger in Australia already said something about this, so I can probably leave it alone, but it is on my mind, even though I have a tendency to procrastinate on thinking about it.
Essentially, the federal government is proposing new laws that will essentially make independent homebirth midwives illegal, and put women’s birthing choices securely in the hands of the medical institution.
Bruse Teakle at The Maternity Coalition put out this press-release, which pretty much sums it up:
Doctors to gain veto powers over midwives and birth choices
Doctors to gain veto powers over midwives and birth choices
On 5 November the Government announced that the “Medicare for midwives” Bills would be amended to require midwives to have “collaborative arrangements” with “medical practitioners” before being eligible for professional indemnity insurance or Medicare rebates.
Doctors must approve each midwife’s entry to private practice:
- Midwives will be required by Commonwealth law to have “collaborative arrangements” with “one or more medical practitioners” before being eligible for Commonwealth-subsidised professional indemnity insurance (PII).
- PII will be a prerequisite for a midwife to enter private practice, under new national registration laws, being enacted state by state.
- Doctors will be able to unilaterally withdrawal from collaborative agreements with a midwife, rendering her uninsured, and legally unable to practice in a private professional capacity.
- This legally mandates medical control over midwives’ ability to register and work in private practice.
- This will be set in Commonwealth law, which can only be changed by Commonwealth Parliament.
- These provisions are contained in the Health Legislation Amendment (Midwives and Nurse Practitioners) Bill 2009.
- Medical practitioners will control the registration status of midwives, despite their being a discrete, separately regulated profession.
- Medical professional organisations could set guidelines for collaborative arrangements, potentially forming defacto regulatory standards for midwifery endorsement and practice.
This gives doctors right of veto over women’s choices in birth care.
(this is an abbreviated quote, the full synopsis can be read HERE)
It basically means that no one can be a midwife; midwives have to have an agreement with a practicing doctor and all clients and births will have to be approved by the doctor and there’s pretty much no reason or incentive for doctors to ever approve anyone for a home birth, even if we thought we needed doctors’ approval. It means that women will not have the right to choose a homebirth without the approval, sanction and control of a doctor – which is hardly a choice at all.
This basically contravenes one of our most basic human rights. I’ve pointed out before that one of the Rights of Women as set out by the UN is that women have the right to have control over, and decide freely and responsibly on all matters relating to their sexual and reproductive health.
Which means that it is a human right for women to be able to make their own choices about how, where and with whom they birth. The Australian government is blatantly spitting in the face of the rights of women!
Oh, that’s right. Australia doesn’t have a bill of rights in its constitution. Which explains how the Australian Medical Association can get away with lobbying parliament to secretly make and pass laws that deny Australian women their human right to have control over their own bodies and their own birthing. Not to mention holding refugee children in detention centres for months on end, or the shocking treatment of Australia’s native peoples. And don’t lets forget that the whole of Australia’s federation was essentially based on wanting to push the White Australia policy, which is the crux of our nation’s love for abusing human rights.
Heck, Australia isn’t even a true democracy; it’s one of only a handful of nations where voting is compulsory. How is it democratic if you can’t even choose not to vote? Easy – you don’t have to actually cast a vote, you just have to show up on polling day and register that you voted. A clever way of controlling and keeping tabs on the population, indeed.
So complaining about the the crime of refusing rights and controlling birthing women is petty when you think about it.
Do I sound angry? Funny about that.
This week I spent four days living in my van down in Byron Bay, doing a 3-day Birthwork Workshop. The workshop was phenomenal, and my head is spinning with all I’ve learned. I can’t wait to work with these new techniques.
The workshop was held in a massive Ger (traditional Mongolian Yurt) – it’s the biggest Ger I’ve ever seen, and so beautifully decorated with crystals and altars.
This was the ceiling inside the Ger, which meant we had beautiful rainbow-speckled light and fresh breezes when they opened up the sunroof.
We learned a lot of techniques about breathing and relaxation, as well as traditional Mexican Rebozo practice. I’ve done a lot of work with rebozos before, but I added a lot to my knowledge.
This is a great one; I’m comfortably supporting the full weight of this woman – such a great trick for labour support!
I also learned a lot about the pelvis, and how to work with the bones and soft tissues to open up the space for the baby. I’m really excited about this stuff, since I focus a lot of my work on releasing past trauma, especially with abuse survivors.
We also practiced traditional Mexican closing ceremony for after the birth, which felt so divine :)
I had a great time, and made a lot of friends. It was wonderful to connect with other midwives and birth attendants, and feel a part of that community, as someone who has something to offer.
Here’s the group portrait at the end:
I also had a lot of fun hanging out around Byron with friends, and sleeping at the beach.
It seemed like not much happened in the first few days after Purple and Littletree left – I spent most of my time at home, studying and cleaning up around the house. I chatted with Littletree on Skype; she’s having fun in Israel, and playing with her cousins. (Here’s a webcam shot from skype)
Last Tuesday, Química came up for a visit – it’s been great to spend some time with her, and she might be moving up here next year.
This week, I had 2 births, one was long – I was with them for 40 hours, which but the mama eventually birthed a beautiful little girl. Then I drove home at 3am from an hour away after the birth to collapse into bed.
The next day, thankfully, I got a bit of rest, tried to catch up a bit on study and work, and was called to another birth the following morning!
Thankfully, this labour was an easy 3 hours, a little girl born underwater without problems.
I was still pretty wiped out by the end of it all, and it was great to come home to Química, who is a massage therapist, and cooked me a wonderful roast dinner :)
Finally, I’m not on-call till after we get back from New Zealand, and I’m starting to work on a bunch of projects around my house and garden. Not to mention some well deserved rest after 2 births in 2 days!
Some bright spark has invented a totally non-invasive machine that will use continuous ultrasound to measure contractions, progress, foetal position, station and presentation, while having a couple of little alligator clips in the woman’s cervix to continuously measure dilation, and has a little probe that is screwed into the unborn baby’s scalp to monitor the foetus’ heart rate and status.
Wow. this is awesome. It basically means that no one working in labour and delivery will ever need to know anything about caring for birthing women, and midwives will become all but obsolete!
NursingBirth, in her recent post, The WORST Idea Since Routine Continuous Fetal Monitoring for Low Risk Mothers gives a pretty good rundown.
I honestly fail to see how anyone could count having 4 electrodes stuck on your abdomen, clips on your cervix and an electrode literally screwed in to your unborn baby’s scalp (which means that the waters must be artificially ruptured and the cervix possibly manually or chemically dilated), as “non-invasive”.
Why on earth would anyone want to expose babies to lengthy doses of ultrasound, the safety of which has never been proven? Here’s what Marsden Wagner, the former head of Maternal and Child Health in the European region in the World Health Organisation has to say about it: http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/ultrasoundwagner.asp
The LaborPro people keep using that “non-invasive” word, but I don’t think it means what they think it means.
Honestly, I think I’m going to be sick.
I got back from my trip to Canberra for the homebirth rally yesterday morning. It was quite a hectic adventure! Incredibly, I managed to drive 2200km, (1400mi) spend 24 hours in Canberra, breakdown and get stuck in nowhereseville overnight and still make it home again in less than 4 days!
Phew!
I had thought I was going to do the drive on my own, but at the last minute one of my clients called up and asked to come with, so I had an 8 months pregnant woman and her 2 year old son with me in the car.
The drive was pretty easy and we took lots of breaks – it’s so nice to have a van with a bed in the back so we could take comfy naps at rest stops.
Canberra was freezing cold – 14C when I’m used to 30! and on the day of the rally it rained (of course). That didn’t stop around 2500 people coming to show support for homebirth.
People gathered in front of the Old Parliament House, by the Aboriginal Tent Embassy where there was a ceremonial fire and some speeches made. Then the crowd marched, banners and placards waving, to the front of the New Parliament House for the demonstration.
The crowd was pretty thick – mostly pregnant mamas, and mamas with babies in slings, or toting children. There were heaps of children and babies toting signs (or with signs pinned to their slings or clothing) saying which room of the house they were born in. This one was particularly cool :)
It was almost impossible to get in near enough to see the stage!
I walked around to the front to snap a photo, but it was still hard to see.
Mostly I was meeting and catching up with friends. It was awesome to meet so many friends from Liberated Learning that I’d never met in real life before! And it was great to catch up with old friends, and see other independent midwives.
I even got to meet Lisa Barrett which was quite an honour
And best of all; Currawong was up on the stage playing her awesome homebirth song.
After the rally, we went for lunch with Artemis of the Eucalypts and her family, and my friend J to the Asian Noodle House in Dickson for the best Laksa ever (yeah, they have weird place names in Canberra – funnier than Dickson, they have a suburb called Downer)!
Then it was back on the road, trying to get home by Tuesday night. However, about an hour out of Canberra, the car broke down. We stopped for petrol and the car wouldn’t start again – totally flat battery.
Thankfully I’m in the NRMA (AAA equivalent), so I called them, and was informed there would be a 90 minute wait for a patrol to come out. I mentioned that I had a pregnant woman and a baby in the car with me, and we were put on priority – someone came within half an hour.
The NRMA guy was very nice, and managed to jump start the car, but he said the battery wasn’t charging at all because the alternator was dead and we’d have to be towed to a mechanic. He called the NRMA tow-truck, and told us there’d be a 2 hour wait.
I called them back and mentioned again the pregnant woman and baby, we were again put on a priority list, and the tow truck came within half an hour. All the time we were waiting, the 2 women working in the petrol station were so nice – gave us hot soup to eat (artificial instant soup, but in the words of the woman who gave it “more nutritious than McDonalds” LOL), old magazines, coffee, and even offered to drive us to town.
Anyway, the tow truck came and took us with the car to a mechanic, and then to a hotel for the night (being that it was after 5pm). Thank goodness I remembered to mention to the NRMA rep who booked us into the hotel that I am travelling with a pregnant woman and baby, so they paid for us to get a bigger room, and to check us in for 2 nights so we wouldn’t have to check out at 10am before the car was ready!
At noon the next day the mechanic said there was nothing at all wrong with the car and we were good to go! Grrrr! Turned out it was a really simple thing – the battery terminals weren’t screwed down tight enough; something the NRMA patrol man should have seen and fixed in 30 seconds.
Oh well – the universe wanted us to stay a night in Mittagong, coincidentally, just up the road from where my friend’s son’s great-grandfather lived, so while we were waiting for the car to be “fixed” she went up to visit him.
Finally, we got on the road again, and made good time; we stopped to sleep at midnight, just 2 hours from home, and got up early in the morning for the last bit of the journey, arriving at 8am.
It was a fun adventure, but it’s good to be home and see Littletree!
The other exciting thing that happened last week was that Chrysalis (from Thailand) came to visit with the beautiful Sahyan.
It was great to see them again, and see how little Sahyan is growing.
We had some outings, went for a picnic
I enjoyed getting about with a baby in a sling again :) He’s really such a sweet, calm little guy – the poster child for gentle, water birth.
And Littletree was so good with him, she’s so good with babies!
We also had a visit from Zell and Zayne (don’t worry, Zell isn’t always looking so scary LOL)
I managed to get this lovely photo of me with a few clients as well :)
We were sad to see them leave, but it was awesome to have a little visit. And hopefully they will come to New Zealand at the end of the year for the World Rainbow Gathering.
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