Birthing at home and birthing on country are the focus of the upcoming panel at the Poinciana Cafe this Saturday April 1 at 3pm.
Ishrana Anna, international activist for delayed cord clamping and founder of Sabwac, is organising the panel and is aiming to create a mother and baby birthing rights and awareness foundation.
‘It is about the choice to have a home birth or to birth on country,’ said Ishrana.
‘Woman is built to birth. The more we intervene the more likely there will be a problem. One intervention can open the door to more interventions.’
The focus of the foundation will be on advocacy and mother and parental support to increase birthing choices. It aims to provide education, support, counselling and legal services in relation to birthing choices.
Ishrana says, ‘Aboriginal elders have been contacted and part of the purpose of this panel is to make a presentation to the grandmothers with respect, in reintroducing and practicing the traditional ways.’
‘Permission for the Aborginal department is being sought for a fully functioning service with true protocol in defining the Aboriginals right to birth on country if an Aboriginal woman chooses.’
There will be a broad panel, including local doula Sita Tara and Heidi Wedd, a qualified midwife who has worked with Indigenous women in Alice Springs.
The panel will be looking at gaining consensus on the birthing rights that will form the basis of advocacy work for legislative change.
For more information contact Ishrana at [email protected].
And the problems is?? Women are already free to birth where-ever they chose. Women have choice more choice then before. The government funds a range of birth options for women to chose from ranging from tertiary hospital birth, through to birthing units with caseload midwives offering 1 on 1 care for the entire pregnancy, birth and postnatal periods and also funds publicly (NSW Govt) funded home births. Alternatively, women can chose to fund their own desired model of care if they wish.
There is a limit what the public purse can pay and we cannot expect the government to pay for all of our lifestyle choices (Hey, I would like a year’s paid sabbatical leave to improve my mental and physical health but that sure is not going to happen).
Yes, there is always room for improvements. But, the system is not broken and women do have choices.
Planned home births have lower caesarean section and instrumental delivery rates, and a seven times lower episiotomy rate than planned hospital births, as might be expected for a cohort of women who are predominantly low risk and multiparous.
However they have a perinatal mortality rate that is similar to that for planned hospital births which is higher than expected for a low risk group, with a sevenfold higher risk of death during the labour and a 27-fold higher risk of death due to the baby being starved of oxygen during the birth.
It is also worth noting that Doulas receive just 6 days of training and 3 supervised births before they are certified
Please choose wisely
If OB’s weren’t such terrible midwives, I think less women would want to give birth at home. I’ve had four in hospital, but the last one was the best, partly because the Doctor didn’t make it in time so I wasn’t forced to give birth on my back. For the life of me, I cannot understand why women in hospital are forced to give birth in the most uncomfortable and least effective position. OB’s do not advise you to not push to hard or to slow down, to decrease the risk of prolapse, which I had with my third. They don’t do a lot of perineal massage. There are techniques that midwives use that we KNOW decrease risks of other complications, which while not life threatening, can be life long headaches, like fallen bladders (which I have).
I KNOW my first birth was complicated, because it was late at night, my doctor was on vacation, and the doctor subbing for him wanted to go home. He forced me to push as soon as I hit 10 centimeters, despite the baby not having descended and not feeling any urge. I pushed for 3 hours and had to beg him to give me one more push to avoid a C-section, which I really did not want as I was counting on the pregnancy and birth to loosen up pelvic scarring from a previous ectopic surgery. My baby ended up with a huge hematoma from being suctioned out, on oxygen, an IV, and was held hostage in the nursery for 3 days while I suffered from hemorrhage so badly it was very difficult for me to visit him. My second birth, my doctor induced me, because once again he was going on vacation. I had declared I was NOT going to push until I felt like it and he was just fine with that. He let me tear naturally and spent quite some time cleaning up the 4 cut episiotomy the first doctor had done.
I understand that OB’s are under tremendous pressure to reduce any and all risk. They are in a difficult position, but mothers are also their customers and I just have to think there is a happy medium to be had here. No one tells you, if you push too hard, too fast you’re going to deal with your pelvis collapsing and your vagina turning inside out at 30 something years old until you die. Even when they did the hysterectomy and vaginal rebuild, the doctor told me I would probably have to have it done again, and yeah, I’m at that stage where it’s getting really uncomfortable again. It might have been nice to have someone there telling me to slow down a little and not bear down quite so hard, instead of a a whole team of people were telling me to push as hard as I could when there was no risk of complication whatsoever, except the one they created.
OB’s are focused on saving the life of the mother and health of the baby. As the doctors already paying the most in malpractice insurance I would hate to advocate suing more OB’s, but it kinda ticks me off that myself and millions of other women live with the very uncomfortable, and not much talked about, reality of pelvic prolapse that I believe could be prevented in many cases, but instead is just accepted as a side effect of childbirth with OB’s not being in any way pressured to reduce it, when I think they probably very easily could if they quit worrying about how it’s so much more comfortable to sit on a stool before a woman in stirrups and just tell her to push as hard as she possibly can.
UGH!
We need more women OB’s and more OB’s with the patience to incorporate some of the tried and true methods used by midwives that make them attractive to the home birth crowd. I no longer have the equipment, but after my last birth sans doctor, I’d seriously consider it.