New legislation in Australia aimed at tidying up insurance for the midwifery model is about to make home births virtually illegal. If home births were unsafe then you could understand this move, but they are not. Home births are simply less common in this country, at this time.
Yet, all too often, those who favour home birth are presented as a fringe group of maternal kooks, the sort of women who recklessly put ideology before health and safety. Of course, there is a long tradition of dismissing troublesome, non-compliant women as kooky, and of deriding their views as irrational or even childish; a tradition that is implicitly continued in the proposed scheme.
(From Monica Dux’s excellent article in defence of home births).
I have had two births, both of them in a hospital (although one of these was in a birth centre). I am a strong advocate of home birth, though I have never chosen it for myself. Dux’s article reminded me of a work lunch thrown in my honour before this baby was born. I was sitting at the management end of the table, surrounded quite naturally by men, and we were talking vaguely about my pending birth. I told them how amused my partner and I were by our hospital’s policy of prohibiting men from being naked during their partner’s labour. Amused because a birthing suite was the last place my partner felt like getting his kit off, and amused because enough men had got naked during births to warrant a formal policy, and amused by the slightly panicked way nurses informed us of the policy.
The men at the table were surprised. All but one of them has children, and all but one of those fathers has children born in the last couple of years, however they all thought fathers routinely wore surgical gowns during labour as a precaution for mothers and babies. Why? Because all of their babies had been born via cesarean. It dawned on me then.. among this group, vaginal birth itself was radical.
You have to be very careful defining what is radical and what is mainstream when it comes to legislation, especially when legislation is going to limit choices.
blue milk 
however they all thought fathers routinely wore surgical gowns during labour as a precaution for mothers and babies. Why? Because all of their babies had been born via cesarean.
!!!!!
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.
Having looked through a few old books (as well as some up to date ones) before the birth of our son my partner and I (and all of our giggling friends) were discussing the possibility of my partner wearing budgie smugglers in the birth centre. While my prudish boyfriend was voted “partner least likely to get naked in public”, I can see how it happens, you’re supporting your partner in the shower or bath, you don’t have a change of clothes and can’t get these ones wet, and she’s naked… I also have a collection of stories from women who devoted god knows how many hours to acquiring socks and large cheap t-shirts to wear in labour to maintain their modesty, and then never ever wore them.
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.
Another symptom of the medicalization of birth. Restrictions, restrictions, restrictions….
I lived in The Netherlands for a while and for the Dutch homebirths are standard procedure, the system seems to works fine and is also a lot cheaper than a hospital delivery. If an emergency should arise then the midwife can always decide to go to hospital. I think its wonderful being able to have your baby at home, being pregnant is not an illness and therefore shouldn’t be over medicalized.
I had lunch yesterday with a colleague who had two homebirths – in the UK. The second one was undiagnosed breech, and they took her to hospital afterwards for a few hours until she discharged herself.
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).
My first hospital birth experience (18 years ago) was an exhausting, depressing battle
I refused to be induced, and they were outraged, telling me over and over i was putting the baby at risk, telling me I had pre eclampsia.
Yet the only person ( a midwife) who agreed to sit down and explain test results to me actually said that
I was not really high risk at all, my blood pressure was raised, and that was something that definitely needed to be monitored, but there were no other problematic test results that would indicate pre-eclampsia.
I trusted her, because she was calm, she listened and unlike the doctors she didnt immediately start to bully me into anything.
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’ !
[…] Because reproductive rights include birth rights […]
“It dawned on me then.. among this group, vaginal birth itself was radical.”
Very Brave New World.
Wow.
Thank you for this. So many of us have struggled for the right to abortion and now we’re struggling for the right to birth as we see fit. It’s all the same issue – control over our own bodies. Only in a patriarchy is it a radical notion that women should exercise bodily autonomy.
http://www.blognow.com.au/lookingglassalice/146487/Holding_activism_lightly_in_the_face_of_violence.html
I can’t imagine giving birth at home, because I just can’t get my head around cleaning up afterwards. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t make home birth radical (and possibly indicates I have my own issues!). There may be other things at work, but it just looks like an organisation of doctors who don’t want to lose control to me.
Did you see the guy in the UK that wants to ban men (not doctors of course) from births because they make births longer and harder? He describes himself as having “been in charge” of x many births. One wonders who it really is making the births longer and harder….
I wrote about this one too: http://ordinaryincandescence.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/an-open-letter-to-nicola-roxon-minister-for-health/
My birth was in a small country hospital, which I picked for being close to me but also low-intervention. It’s the sort of place which can’t handle pre-term birth, having no NICU at all, and where I’d have had to wait up to several hours for an epidural depending on the time of night.
But it was a hospital, with an obstetrician and an operating theatre and the rest. But the reactions from other mothers when they learned the location! What if something goes wrong? I kept hearing, as if not going to a private mid-city hospital was the same thing as heading out to a field with nothing but a bucket of water and an old towel for assistance.
So, yeah. In a society where choosing a small lowtech hospital is considered radical, we’re dead in the water, aren’t we?
[…] I am not a homebirther, both my children were born in hospitals (the first in a birth centre). I support homebirth because birth rights are reproductive rights. […]
[…] I’ve said before.. here’s the thing about home birth, like abortion the real issue is not whether you would […]