I would say one of the primary requirements for a woman giving birth is an environment where she feels safe. I find it unbelievable that if I do not trust a doctor who I have never met, especially if that doctor disregards what I am saying on our first meeting that I am ‘kooky’ or ‘irrational’ !

It made me realise that its only a fringe option here because it has been driven that way. The only other vaguely radical thing she does that I know of is catch the train to work even though she’s a senior executive (sadly a radical option in Sydney).

There’s some romance but the book is largely about survival, and about love, but love for family as much as romantic love. The two main characters are both girls, one 15, one 9, so we have friendship and “I am taking care of you” and it’s just so much better than any other YA for girls I have ever seen. You can read it in a night, it’s not long. If it turns out I have daughters, I’ll give it to them, for sure, but I’m making everybody that loves me read it.

It saddens and angers me, over and over and over a-bloody-gain, that those who’ve heard about my experience of childbirth tend to dismiss my stitches-free and almost intervention-free birth (I tried the gas, it was crap, and I’d rate getting in the car during labour as an intervention too) as radical fringe. If I was having another baby I’d want to do it at home, part of me wanted to last time but I didn’t have the money or circle of brave supporters. My mother had enough trouble with the birth centre: “They kicked you out after one night!”, “No, I asked to leave, and they visited until I asked them not to, and they rang a few days after that in case I’d changed my mind”.

An old friend of mine just gave birth in Canada. It didn’t work out the way she’d hoped (at home) but she feels confident that everything possible was tried before the caesarian was deemed necessary. She was treated respectfully, she was ‘allowed’ to make decisions about her own body. That is all we want, and it shouldn’t be a big deal.

!!!!!

Even my obstetrician wasn’t wearing a gown. But this was back in NZ, where birth does seem to be less medicalised, sort of. The independent midwives movement is much stronger, and because ACC (no fault injury cover) covers absolutely everything, there’s no barrier to homebirths either, if that’s what a woman chooses.

I have never before thought of my high intervention births (everything bar c-sections and episiotomies really) as radical.