Homebirth Awareness Week: Celebrate or Commiserate?

NEWS RELEASE by Homebirth Australia
Monday October 26 2009
by Justine Caines
Homebirth Awareness Week: Celebrate or Commiserate?
Minister’s Weakness and Bureaucrats ignorance continues
This week marks Homebirth Awareness week. Homebirth Australia fears that this time next year Australian women will not have the option of homebirth.

“It is hard to understand the hysteria around homebirth in Australia. Our maternity hospitals are full to the brim, many of them churning women out conveyor belt style and yet this is considered safe, hardly! said Justine Caines Secretary of Homebirth Australia and mother of seven home born children.”

Mainstream Australian maternity care is not about women, women are rarely consulted in the development of services, they are the main player and yet they have been silenced by practitioners who insist they ‘know better’ said Ms Caines.

Homebirth on the other hand is different. Women make decisions about their care, they invite a midwife into their home, rather than be forced to meet the needs of practitioners and organisational convenience which happens when giving birth in a hospital” said Ms Caines

“The outcomes from homebirth are also considerably better*. Women experience more personalised care and fewer interventions, they also enter motherhood happier and more content.” said Ms Caines

Something that is considered a normal reasonable choice in the U.K, The Netherlands, New Zealand, and Canada is under threat of extinction in Australia. Bureaucrats advising the Minister do not even understand homebirth and they refuse to seek information from key stakeholders

“Asking an Obstetrician about homebirth is like seeking advice from a midwife on caesarean surgery.” said Ms Caines

“Health Minister Nicola Roxon plans to fund midwifery care under Medicare, something sorely needed. She has however excluded homebirth. She did this against all evidence and the express wishes of the women of Australia across two enquiries, one that broke a Senate record on the number of submissions received.” said Ms Caines

The question remains; Will politicians continue to be more responsive to those with deep vested interest in maternity services? It is time to step upand listen to women, the very people for whom these so called reforms are proposed.” asked Ms Caines

* Victorian example of homebirth outcomes vs Hospital

2010_Pregnancy_and_Parenting_network

Jane Palmer wrote:

Pregnancy and Parenting Network

27 Hart Street

Dundas Valley NSW 2117

Phone (02) 9873 1750

Email: jane@pregnancy.com.au

Website: www.pregnancy.com.au

Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond & New Beginnings Midwifery Practice

Invites you to our pregnancy and parenting network on the following dates for 2009 & 2010

Thursday	29th October 2009	Natural choices for pregnancy and birth
Thursday	26th November 2009	Ideas for Toddlers & Christmas Celebrations
Thursday	21st January 2010	Pregnancy Testing
Thursday	18th February 2010	Unexpected outcomes
Thursday	18th March 2010	Vaccination
Thursday	22nd April 2010	Birth Stories
Thursday	20th May 2010	Pregnancy Experiences
Thursday	17th June 2010	Waterbirth
Thursday	22nd July 2010	Returning to Paid Employment and childcare
Thursday	19th August 2010	Pregnancy and Parenting for older mothers
Thursday	16th September2010	Introducing solids, nutrition, food additives and food intolerances
Thursday	14th October 2010	Open Forum
Thursday	11th November 2010	Birth Techniques
Thursday	9th December 2010	Childhood Development, play, preschool and school options & Christmas Celebrations

No booking is necessary. Please note that the group get togethers are roughly 4 weeks apart. The open forum provides the group an opportunity to discuss any topic and a guest speaker may be invited. The group is held at Jane’s place (27 Hart Street, Dundas Valley) from 10am until 12pm. These get togethers are casual and provide you with opportunity to talk about all sorts of issues in a safe, supportive and relaxing environment. Please bring a plate of food to share (anything you can manage).

As always, mums, dads, friends and kids are all welcome! See you there!

Love Jane and Robyn

Home or Hospital?

Channel 7 Sunday Night's program has just done a feature on Homebirth. To see the video footage visit http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night

Anna's birth of Ben is just beautiful. The lack of midwifery voice and the latest research is disappointing.

This is however is one of the better portrayals of homebirth in mainstream media.

Video footage of the "Mother of All Rallies"

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Homebirth Rally 7th Sept 09

Here are a few photos we took of the Homebirth Rally in Canberra today the 7th of September 2009. There were thousands of people who braved the cold and the rain to campaign for the rights of homebirthing women.

Annoucement by Homebirth Australia

Dear homebirth supporter

This afternoon we were sent through a joint communique from Australian Health Ministers.

Below is an excerpt from the communique

Homebirth

Health Ministers agreed to a transitional clause in the current draft National Registration and Accreditation Scheme legislation which provides a two year exemption until June 2012 from holding indemnity insurance for privately practising midwives who are unable to obtain professional indemnity insurance for attending a homebirth.

Additional requirements to access the exemption will include;

• A requirement to provide full disclosure and informed consent that
• they do not have professional indemnity insurance.
• Reporting each homebirth
• Participating in a quality and safety framework which will be
• developed after consultation led by Victoria through the finalisation of the registration and accreditation process.

These provisions will only apply to midwives working in jurisdictions which do not prohibit such practice as at the date of the implementation of the scheme.

ABC News link
Homebirth midwives get indemnity exemption

This only makes our rally even more necessary. An exemption for 2 years just isn't good enough. Do we REALLY want to go through all this again in 2 years time? It's simply a bandaid solution and will be the demise of private practice homebirth midwifery. This bandaid will take us past Nicola Roxon's term of office, therefore in 2 years time it could be someone else's problem to deal with and it could be someone who we will yet again have to heavily lobby and educate so that they can be up to scratch with the issues at hand.

So what does this give us?
A framework that must be abided by in order to be eligible for exemption from insurance, which is led by Victoria. We have been told by Nicola Roxon's office that this is due to Victoria leading the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme. However, we have concerns that Victoria may also lead the development of a framework within which private practice midwives will have to work, in order to be eligible for an exemption. Some members of Maternity Coalition and Australian Private Midwives Association recently attended a meeting with the Victorian Health Minister Daniel Andrews and they reported back that "The Minister summarized the implications that the current Bills before parliament will have for women and midwives. He stated that midwives cannot continue uninsured as they are and that if they wanted to work it would need to be as part of a team at a public hospital providing homebirth".

He was asked whether he recognized the right of women to choose place of birth and what they would do in the instance of July 2010 if the issue is not resolved, "Well they will be faced with the difficult choice of choosing from what is available".

We have grave concerns that this will be the beginning of the end for private practice homebirth midwifery.

On radio this afternoon Nicola Roxon alluded to the fact that during the 2 year exemption, data would be collected and hospital based programs could be developed or a suitable indemnity product found. This gives us absolutely no confidence or guarantee and we are exceedingly worried that this will be the death knell of homebirth.

We have no insurance, yet again dismissing consumers of homebirth as so small in number that it doesn't really matter.

We have no funding, yet again financially disadvantaging women who choose to birth at home with a midwife.

Our message at the rally remains very clear.

ALL WOMEN - EQUAL RIGHTS

See you in Canberra

Warm regards

Homebirth Australia

Home birth with midwife as safe as hospital birth

Patricia A. Janssen PhD, Lee Saxell MA and colleagues
August 31, 2009

The debate about the safety of home births continues in the literature, professional policy and practice. This study looks at one health region in British Columbia and compared outcomes of planned home births attended by registered midwives to planned hospital births attended by midwives or doctors.

Here we have another example of research in the support of homebirth. This latest study found that women birthing at home had less interventions such as epidurals, forceps, vacuum extractions and caesarean births and they also had less adverse outcomes such as haemorrhage and infection. The researchers found that baby's born at home were less likely to suffer birth trauma, need to be resuscitated and less liley to have meconium aspiration. More proof of what we already known - HOMEBIRTH is a safe option for women.

Full article

COMMENTARY: The safety of home birth: Is the evidence good enough?