The Midwife, the Mother and Why I’m Still Standing
As I prepare for the Grandmother of All Rallies, I have found myself thinking a lot about where this all began for me.
Because this isn’t the first time I have stood up and used my voice for birth choice.
Back in 2009, I travelled from the Blue Mountains to Canberra with my family, my partner Rob, our two year old daughter Jade and our nearly one year old son Rhys, who had been born at home.
We stood together on the lawns of Parliament House in the drizzling rain, chanting:
MY BODY. MY BABY. MY CHOICE.
At that time, I was there as a mother.
I had experienced homebirth myself, and I believed passionately that women should have the right to make informed choices about where and with whom they give birth.
I never imagined that all these years later, I would find myself standing up for those same rights again.
But this time, I come to this fight with another perspective.
I come as a midwife and mother of young adults, a daughter and a son.
I have been a midwife for 27 years.
I became a midwife before I became a mother. I have worked across different parts of Australia and in New Zealand, and over those years I have had the privilege of walking alongside many women and families through pregnancy, birth and those early days of becoming a family.
And becoming a mother myself changed something in me.
It gave me another lens through which to understand the women I had always cared for.
I understood in a different way what it means to place your trust in someone during one of the most vulnerable and transformative experiences of your life.
I understood what it means to want to be heard.
To want someone to listen.
To want someone beside you who knows you, understands what matters to you and respects the choices you are making for yourself and your baby.
And over nearly three decades as a midwife, I have learned something else.
There is knowledge that comes from books, policies, guidelines and university education.
And then there is knowledge that comes from experience.
From sitting beside a woman through a long labour.
From watching.
From listening.
From knowing when to wait.
From recognising the subtle changes that tell you something is shifting.
From knowing what normal looks like and recognising when a woman or baby needs something different.
That knowledge is built birth by birth, woman by woman, year after year.
And it is knowledge that is meant to be passed on.
That is one of the things that concerns me so deeply about what is happening to private midwifery and homebirth in Australia right now.
Because when experienced midwives can no longer practise, we don't simply lose the midwife.
We risk losing the knowledge she carries.
We risk losing the opportunity for another midwife to sit beside her, watch her, learn from her, question her, be mentored by her and eventually carry that knowledge forward herself.
And that is why this is so much bigger than me.
It is bigger than one midwife.
It is bigger than one birth.
It is bigger than whether a woman chooses homebirth, hospital birth, caesarean birth, induction, pain relief or anything else.
This is about whether women will continue to have genuine choices – and whether we will have the midwives available to support those choices.
When I look at my own children now, I think about the women they will become friends with, the families they may one day create and the choices that should be available to them.
I think about my daughter.
I think about the girls being born today.
And I wonder what choices will still be available to them when they are ready to have their own babies.
That thought is one of the reasons I am standing up again.
The Grandmother of All Rallies isn't simply about what is happening today.
It is about what we are leaving behind for the women who come after us.
For the women birthing today.
For the women who will birth tomorrow.
And for the girls who are being born today and will one day make their own birth choices.
So, yes, I will stand in the rain again.
I will use my voice again.
I will stand beside women, families and my midwifery colleagues again.
Because some things are simply too important to stand by and watch happen.
BIRTH CHOICES = BIRTH RIGHTS.
BIRTH RIGHTS = HUMAN RIGHTS.
And for me, this has always been personal.
It started with me standing on those lawns in Canberra as a mother.
Today, I stand as a mother and a midwife.
And I am not ready to stop standing.
Sal
Private Homebirth Midwife | 27 years in midwifery
Part One of a three - part series: The Midwife, the Mother and the Future of Homebirth
15th September 2008 - my homebirth in Blackheath, NSW, Australia.
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