Last supper

To celebrate our time on Gili Air and say goodbye to all the families leaving, we had a big dinner at the Organic restaurant on the beach – even though about half the families had already left, we still had to book a table for 19!

It was an awesome night

And I got a surprise… everyone chipped in to buy me a dress; the most gorgeous dress ever!

It was totally unexpected to get a properly wrapped present, and to feel the gratitude of all the families who came for the Unschooling Adventure. Of course, the dress is one I’d seen in a shop already, and I’d said that I thought it to be stunning, but they didn’t have it in green; only maroon, dark blue or grey.

But it turned out that the shopkeeper, a lovely woman named Annti, heard that I am a midwife, and she needed some advice about her newborn daughter, so I went to her place to help her out. Then somehow a bunch of the other unschooling mums conspired with Annti to have me a dress made specially in green. It’s the most stunning shade of turquoise, and I love it.

And it was great to spend some time with my friends

We’re so sad to be leaving Gili Air, but the buzz is already building for the 2014 Indonesian Unschool Advennture.

Yay for friends

I’ve been slowly coming out of my shell a bit more in the past week, getting out and seeing friends and doing fun stuff.

Last weekend was Rinka’s 40th birthday party, so I made myself get out of the house and go socialise. It was great to see friends and have a catch-up

Also great to see some old clients and see how their babies are growing

And how young love blooms in two of the babies I’ve caught.

And best of all, just awesome to be out in the bush, around a campfire and having a laugh :)

All in all, I’m feeling much better after the last weeks of gloom.

Beautiful Belly, Perfect Placenta, Midwife Mayhem

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!

Midwifery 101 with Gloria Lemay

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

Presents!

At Littletree’s request, we had a sort of Christmas celebration here… though we did it in honour of Mithras.

Since we now live in a village with established friends and neighbours, Littletree had accumulated a hefty stash of presents under her “tree” (well, I think compared to the average Christmas-celebrating Aussie family, it was pretty minimal, but for us it seemed huge).

I think there was about a dozen presents, though admittedly four of them were from me ;) Littletree was hugely impressed, especially considering the only time she’s ever gotten Christmas presents before was two years ago, when she got two presents (last year we managed to avoid the whole affair by being at the World Rainbow Gathering in New Zealand).

Littletree’s Christmas wish list contained: a photo album; a yacht; a trip to India; and funky t-shirts. We already got her some t-shirts at the op shop last week, and we’re going to India next year… a yacht was out of my budget, so I got her a photo album, and a gift card to have photos developed. She was so happy to get that! I also got her a small box of her favourite chocolates and a coconut

Her godmother sent a chemistry set

 

Our neighbour gave Littletree a Ganesha colouring book

A friend from rainbow sent us all little hanging decorations made from origami cranes

And she also got a few assorted trinkets from her friends in the neighbourhood.

I even got a present! The ever-gorgeous Lady Demelza sent down a magical box full of goodies, including this awesome bumper sticker for me:

Women & midwives united – PEACE AT BIRTH – PEACE ON EARTH – bringing honour & trust back to birth

An excellent sentiment :) Merry Season to everyone!

Midwifery Monday

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.

Blue Mountains Rainbow Gathering

We’re all home from the rainbow adventure now and well unpacked. The gathering was spectacular! One of the most stunningly beautiful sites; and not just beautiful, but logistically perfect and easy – clean water, nice land, soft grass, no ticks, mozzies or leeches, easy access while not being too close to any towns… and awesome people!

Littletree and I drove down slowly, stopping on the way to see the Solar System Drive that you can read about HERE.

There were so many rainbows on the way there, it was almost like magical providence leading us home

We were lucky enough to get there early, before the road was blocked, so I could drive right in to the site to unload our tipi and the poles and everything (cars aren’t allowed to enter the rainbow site after the opening day), and since we’d decided to sleep the night on the road just before coming into the site, we arrived early morning and had plenty of time to find our perfect campsite and set up and get the car out before the day was over. Our faithful van Sunshine served us like a true champion :)

I had help from a couple of people to get the tipi up and was quickly rewarded by yet another rainbow

So we were settled in and ready to work on helping set up the gathering and build infrastructure

The gathering was so full of wonderful friends. I barely saw Littletree as she roamed freely with a bunch of other kids exploring the forest. They all made bows and arrows

and played all sorts of cool games

and made faerie crowns

and did face painting

and attracted butterflies

It’s such a supportive environment for children – no cars or roads to worry about, dozens of supportive grown-ups available, and freedom to roam and explore :D

A local theatre group, Living Light, joined the gathering to give a preview of their performance

I spent a fair bit of time in the kitchen, though not as much as I have in the past, which is pretty good

and we opened up our tipi for chai nights where I made doughnuts for everyone. I pumped out a few hundred organic chocolate-filled doughnuts, and cinnamon ring doughnuts. mmmm

I also did a lot of crochet – I added six new hearts to Littetree’s blanket, I held a couple of crochet workshops

 

and I even made a rainbow heart that slowly morphs into a square to be part of a patchwork community blanket; a free-form heart that becomes a square was no easy feat, I don’t think I did too badly, considering this was my first attempt.

Since there were several pregnant mamas,

I held several midwifery circles and did ante-natal check-ups

I swam every day in the creek

sang and danced in the magic hat parade

played capoeira and partied around the drum circle by main fire

enjoyed the sunset against the mountains

and watched the full moon rise

It was such an enriching, revitalising experience. To be in nature, to hold hands and chant AUM with 100 people before every meal, to sit in talking circles, and feel supported by my family. I was sad to leave, but I left knowing the consensus for the next rainbow in Australia will be just 2 months away, in January! details HERE

Of course, there’s no way I could fit the whole experience of rainbow into one (or even two) blog posts, and I took many photos, which you can browse on my flicker page HERE.

Beautiful Birthing

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!

Home Birth – Risk Safety and Responsibility

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.

Zeke, Ky and the Mountain Stream

I came home from my ‘Midwifery Monday’ (I have all my clients’ prenatal home visits scheduled on Mondays) to find a big envelope in the mail… it was a gift for Littletree: a copy of Zeke, Ky and the Mountain Stream by Gwynneth Beasley.

Gwynneth herself sent us the book, which is really exciting. Littletree was (as always) very excited to get something in the mail, and she loves this book – so far we read it every day, sometimes twice.

Zeke, Ky and the Mountain Stream is about a homeschooling family who learn the power of the mind to shape reality – if you believe in yourself; you can do anything. And it’s set at the same campgrounds we went to with the Liberated Learning Unschooling Camp last year.

Awesome!

Weekend Workshop with Gloria Lemay

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

Back from the HBA Conference

I got home early this morning from my awesome adventure down south for the Homebirth Australia Conference. In the last 6 days, I’ve driven around 3200km (2000mi) and attended a 2.5 day conference.

Of course, I made great time, and rushed home to see Littletree, which was great, but now I’m paying for it with having come down with the flu. Purple has made me a wonderful, spicy tomato soup with lots of garlic and my homemade chicken stock.

Anyway, I left after lunch on Wednesday, and stopped for a rest at about 8pm. I slept a few hours, and woke up around midnight, feeling refreshed, and FREEZING – it was 2 degrees (35F)! So I drove onwards… The van was whining a bit, and I realised the battery was draining with the lights and heater on after a few hours, so I stopped to sleep again, making sure I parked in a rest area where there were other cars, lest I couldn’t start again in the morning.

When I woke up, the van started, no problem, so I drove into the next town; Coonabarabran (The astronomy capital of Australia) and stopped to fill the petrol tank.

Coonabarabran has Australia’s largest telescope, and the worlds largest scale model of the solar system – it is spread out over about 200km! I have to bring Littletree out there one day!

My poor van, Sunshine, wouldn’t start again – flat battery.

At least I was lucky enough to have made it to the town! and more luck: I had broken down right in front of the NRMA (roadside assistance club)! The NRMA guy came to jump start me, and I said I didn’t think it was charging, and it was probably a problem with the alternator belt.

The NRMA mechanics looked at it, decided indeed, there was a problem with the alternator. While I waited, I browsed Coonabarabran, and found this awesome dolls house for Littletree in the OpShop, for only $5!

Back at the NRMA, it took about 5 hours to work out that the problem wasn’t the belt, but the alternator, which they pronounced dead. Apparently, a replacement alternator could be found in Dubbo; 2 hours south, but not until the next day.

I politely declined the offer of a (NRMA-paid-for) hotel room and a 24 hour delay, and got them to charge my battery – I then set out for Dubbo with the number of the place that had the alternator, not daring to switch off the engine for anything, to find an auto electrician who could fix it.

In Dubbo, I pulled into the first auto electrician I saw on the road, and begged them to help me… Maccas Auto Electrical – true legends! They not only agreed – at 3pm – to do the job, the apprentice quickly worked out that my alternator was not dead, but just the belt (oh the irony!), and replaced it for me.

On the road again by 5pm! No thanks to the NRMA!

Anyway, even despite the 8-hour-breakdown, I arrived to Echuca by 11am the next day. Since I had nothing much to do till the conference registration/ cocktail evening started, I browsed around the op-shops and walked around, and finally, went out to the resort where the conference was to mooch about till starting time.

Another moment of Luck! Anne Frye, who is somewhat of a midwifery-guru to me, having authored my bible: Holistic Midwifery, was also mooching around with not much to do.

Like a total idiot, I went up to her and blathered “OMG you’re Anne Frye! I’m such a big fan!”, She was really nice and we ended up chatting, and we sat together at dinner the next evening as well :D

The way home was somewhat uneventful. I drove all day yesterday (which was my birthday), stopping for stretching breaks in all the little towns, browsing in the op shops – I scored some great stuff; small remote towns always have the best op shops! I passed 177777.7km on my odometer

and was treated to a spectacular birthday sunset, complete with sunset rainbow

It’s nice to be home.