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Many Benefits of Birth at Home

By REBECCA GARDINER

Monday, 02 July 2007

• Howick and Pakuranga Times

ONLY two per cent of Kiwi women do it, but one Bucklands Beach mother says she’d do it all again in a flash.

A little more than nine weeks ago, Rachel Springett gave birth to a healthy baby boy in the comfort of her own home.

While the vast majority of New Zealand women opt for hospital births, Ms Springett chose to have her third child at home.

The decision was an easy one for the former Howick Primary schoolteacher, who was already mum to two teenage daughters before the arrival of baby Tane.

“It’s really empowering,” she says. “You have more control to be able to be yourself and you’re more likely to trust your instincts. [Labour] has become so medicalised. It’s such a natural thing but women often don’t trust themselves.”

She describes the day as “perfect” and says she’d recommend homebirth to anyone.

“Having the familiar background made me relax so much more. It just made me feel ‘this is right’. I totally trusted the midwifes. They talked me through it the whole time. I never felt unsafe. The hospital’s just 15 minutes away so it was there as a backup.”

Ms Springett says giving birth at home was also an eye-opener for her partner Wayde and two daughters.

“Society has lost that passing down of mothering skills. My girls learnt so much,” she says.

“[My partner] thought it was a real plus — he wasn’t just hanging around going ‘oh my god’.”

Mother-of-three Lesley Hinson has been a New Zealand registered midwife since 1986 and is a strong advocate of planned homebirths.

Along with several other midwives, she recently led an information evening at Howick’s Crawford Medical Centre for those interested in homebirth.

In New Zealand, homebirths aren’t “the norm” and many women just “go with the flow”, says Ms Hinson.

“We’re all victims of the society we live in. We’re all conditioned to what we grew up with.

“Society gets the image that every baby needs to be born with all the emergency equipment around it. If we don’t promote [homebirth] they don’t think about it.”

She says homebirth is an option for a woman who’s had an uncomplicated pregnancy, has previously given birth and is in good health.

“Some people choose homebirths because they want that privacy. What most women like is that their husband doesn’t need to go anywhere. They’re more relaxed in their own place.”

Midwives are trained to deal with emergencies and don’t hesitate to refer their patients to hospital if there’s a problem during labour, adds Ms Hinson.

“We don’t hang around, but I can’t remember the last time I had to transfer a baby in.”

Although she’s an advocate of planned homebirth, Ms Hinson stresses the final decision of where to have their baby is up to the woman concerned.

“Homebirth is not the average person’s plan, depending on who you know and what you’ve been exposed to. If I meet people and they choose to go into hospital then that’s fine.

“Every woman’s different and every baby’s different. Our group is promoting planned homebirths. We give people information and they make their choices,” says Ms Hinson.

The next information evening on planned homebirths is in August.

For details, contact Joyce on 537-1808, or Clare 533-0233.

DIY delivery

ADRIANA BARTON

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

May 15, 2007 at 8:41 AM EDT

BURNABY, B.C. — When Nicole Becker felt the pangs of late labour in January, she lit candles in the bathroom of her two-bedroom flat in Burnaby, B.C., and filled the tub. Only her husband and the couple's four-year-old son looked on as baby George slid into the water. "It was my dream birth," Ms. Becker says.

Ms. Becker planned throughout her pregnancy to give birth without a midwife, doctor or other birth attendant. After using a doula for her first child's home birth, Ms. Becker decided that the job of a good midwife is to "let the process happen," she says. So with George she decided to go solo.

Choosing to deliver without skilled help remains a controversial and uncommon choice. But now, spurred by the Internet, unassisted childbirth is reaching a broader range of women than ever before.

On sites such as Birthjunkie.com, Mothering.com and Trustbirth.com, women trade tips on such topics as how to measure the uterus to calculate the due date and how to figure out if the baby is breech. One of the most popular sites, Unassistedchildbirth.com, now has 30,000 to 40,000 visitors each month.

Jodie Boychuk gave birth unassisted at home to her second child, Eloise, in 2005, after a difficult recovery from the cesarean birth of her first child. (Charla Jones/The Globe and Mail)

Many women join one of nearly 100 Yahoo groups that list unassisted childbirth in their subject lines, including UCbirthnews, an online newsletter with over 1,110 members. They also browse online for books, videos and do-it-yourself resources such as Unhindered Childbirth - The Online Childbirth Class (at Unhinderedliving.com) as well as inflatable birthing pools.

"People who wouldn't have considered this years ago are considering it now," says Laura Shanley of Boulder, Colo., who wrote the influential book Unassisted Childbirth in 1994 and runs the website Unassistedchildbirth.com.

Until recently, "I was hearing more from hippie types, people more on the fringe," says Ms. Shanley, who gave birth to five children without medical attention - including one breech presentation. "I do think it's getting more into the mainstream."

But most doctors and registered midwives strongly oppose the practice. Skilled attendants play a crucial role in identifying problems such as hemorrhages and fetal distress before they become emergencies, they say.

In a few cases, child welfare authorities in Canada and the United States have investigated parents who planned unassisted births.

Although there are no large or recent studies on the outcomes of planned unassisted childbirth, the evidence stacked against the practice is "overwhelming," according to Vyta Senikas, associate executive vice-president for the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada.

Dr. Senikas questions the rationale for choosing unassisted childbirth. "By all means, choose the home," she says, "but have a skilled attendant there."

Childbirth is a natural process, she adds, "but you can die and you can end up having problems."

Advocates of unassisted birth say that any medical interference, no matter how well-meaning, can disrupt the instinctive and hormonal processes of labour, triggering a stress response that halts the birth's progress. They believe that widespread use of interventions that slow labour can contribute to higher rates of C-section.

Adherents base their beliefs on the writings of authors such as French obstetrician Michel Odent, who wrote Birth Reborn in 1984. Although he does not specifically advocate unassisted childbirth, Dr. Odent says that in his practice, women who weren't observed in their labour had faster and easier births.

There is no way of knowing for sure how many Canadians are choosing to give birth unattended, since neither the federal nor provincial governments collect statistics on planned unassisted childbirth. But the rate is probably much lower than home births attended by registered midwives, which accounted for just 1.5 per cent of all deliveries in British Columbia and Ontario in 2005 and 2006.

Jodie Boychuk of Dunnville, Ont., says she chose an unassisted birth for her second child because of the difficult recovery following the cesarean delivery of her first daughter. In September, 2005, her second daughter was born at home into the hands of her husband, Richard. The labour was smooth and the 8½-pound baby was healthy, Ms. Boychuk says.

But the practice remains controversial enough to impel some midwives and authorities to intervene. When Ms. Boychuk declined the services of a registered midwife during her second pregnancy, the midwife - who questioned the safety of even an attended home birth after a cesarean - promptly called the Children's Aid Society.

A two-week investigation ensued, but it was dropped because unassisted childbirth is not illegal.

Even the staunchest advocates of the practice acknowledge that it's not for everyone.

Sarah Buckley, an Australian physician trained in obstetrics and author of the book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering, says a woman must be healthy and educated about birth to deliver unassisted.

As well, she says, the woman should be relaxed enough to avoid triggering the fight-or-flight response that can delay the birth, and should have a backup plan such as transferring to a hospital.

Registered midwives agree that too much medical intervention can impede labour - but they "cannot support the concept of unassisted, unattended births" due to the risks, says Elana Johnson, president of the board of directors of the Association of Ontario Midwives.

For Ms. Becker of Burnaby, the birth of her baby in January is still fresh in her mind. It was a joyful occasion to share with her husband and her son Max, she explains, and most of all, "it was just us."

Alabama Mothers Deserve Midwives

North Carolina mothers say Amen!!!

Going it alone

Why would anyone choose to give birth without a doctor, midwife or even her partner in attendance? Viv Groskop reports on the growing trend for freebirth

Wednesday May 9, 2007
The Guardian

To me, giving birth is as personal as having sex," says Sarah, 24, from Essex. "You don't want someone else sitting there watching you." Sarah chose to "freebirth" her first child, now two, at home. Freebirthing involves giving birth alone, without a midwife and often even a partner or friend in attendance - Sarah delivered while her husband was in the next room. "I didn't have any experience of pain," she says, "there was just this really strong sensation that muscles were working. Then the baby's head appeared."

To prepare for the three-hour labour, Sarah had read everything she could on the subject, and says she "would have known instinctively if anything was wrong. As his head started to come out, I thought, I know the cord is around his neck." She flipped the cord over his head and, "He just flew out." As he was born, she says, she was laughing with joy.

Although rare in the UK, there is a growing online community of freebirthers or "UC-ers" (unassisted childbirthers) in the US who are celebrating "the primacy of autonomous birth". Laura Shanley, 49, from Boulder, Colorado, author of Unassisted Childbirth (Greenwood Press, £14.95) and veteran of five unassisted births, believes that "women are the true experts of birth. Birth is sexual and spiritual, magical and miraculous", she says, "but not when it's managed, controlled and manipulated by the medical establishment." Her website motto? "If you want the job done right, do it yourself."

"People think it's pretty crazy," admits Laura Field, 31, from Atlanta, Georgia, whose second child, Grace, nine months, was born at home, unassisted, after four hours. "Some people think you must be superwoman. Others think it's reckless. You get every reaction from awe to horror. I just feel like it was the most normal thing. It felt somehow life-changing and extremely ordinary at the same time." She is a member of a local group of 15 women who have had unassisted births. "There are a few extremists who are really anti-medicine but they are in the minority," she says, "To me it wasn't 'unassisted or else'. If you have good back-up plans - you know the warning signs to watch for and you are really in touch with what is going on - it is safe. I had back-up midwives and knew which hospital I would go to if necessary."

Mary Siever, 36, from Alberta, Canada, has free-birthed three children at home. "I think hospitals and doctors have their place, I just don't think they have their place in birth," she says. "I've noticed a lot more people are getting interested in it now. People are trusting themselves more or maybe they are trusting the doctors in hospitals less. I wanted personal control and responsibility. For others, it may be that they had a horrible experience in hospital and don't want that again."

Bornfree, the biggest internet forum for freebirthers, has more than 1,000 members worldwide, mostly in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In the past 10 years Laura Shanley has heard from "a couple of dozen" British mothers who want to go it alone and Sarah knows of two others who chose to give birth without assistance.

Although it is never going to be a majority movement, the issue of the over-medicalisation of birth is pushing freebirth on to the mainstream agenda in the US. A slogan war has broken out, with natural birth websites selling T-shirts which read "Pizza boys deliver. Women birth", while the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists gave out bumper stickers at a meeting last year, bearing the opposite message: "Home delivery is for pizza."

Home birth per se is not illegal in North America, but in 13 states there are legal issues for midwives attending home births. Denied the chance of an attended home birth, some women would simply rather do it on their own than go into hospital. "Women who feel they are being shoehorned into hospitals, and who don't like what happens to them when they get there, see freebirth as a viable option," says Tina Cassidy, author of Birth: A History (Chatto & Windus, £12.99), who is based in Boston. "It's a fringe thing but it's a signifier of something bigger: women now feel they have no control in the birth process."

What is telling, says Cassidy, is that there is virtually no historical precedent for this movement: "Since the beginning of time women have turned to other women for help in childbirth. There are one or two very small tribes where giving birth alone is a means of status - but even within those cultures people rush to the woman's side afterwards to make sure she and the baby are OK." That women are considering going it alone is a wake-up call for the medical profession in the US, she says, where one in three births now ends in a caesarean section. "I'm not an advocate for or against freebirth. But you can understand why people would go underground. They think, I'm just having a baby. What is the big deal?"

Because freebirth is such a fringe movement there have been no studies on it. However, a report in the magazine New Scientist recently quoted a survey undertaken in a religious community in the state of Indiana, where there were more than 300 unattended births in the 1980s. The neonatal death rate was calculated as 19 per 1,000 live births, compared with seven per 1,000 for the rest of Indiana.

There is some concern that the number of freebirthers in Britian may rise, because so many women feel their choices over how they give birth are limited, says Beverley Beech, chairwoman of the Association for Improvement in Maternity Services. While the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, has promised that every woman will be able to choose an attended home birth by 2009, the service is currently a postcode lottery. Plus, the government is planning to introduce new - and prohibitively expensive - insurance requirements for independent midwives who currently provide private backup to women who have found it difficult to arrange an attended home birth on the NHS. "If this law comes in, either [independent] midwives will practise illegally or we will have a lot more women who will choose to give birth alone," says Beech. "We have been having discussions about providing a support group for these women so we can provide somebody to be with them."

Freebirth fans contend that it can be better to be alone anyway. On one blog a woman writes of "the thrill of the catch" - what it feels like to seize your baby emerging from your body. Self-delivery is not necessarily something women should strive for, she adds, but something they should know they are capable of. There is much online discussion about "lotus birth" - when the umbilical cord is not cut but left to disintegrate naturally, usually within three days of birth.

One pioneer of the freebirth movement is Dr Sarah Buckley, a respected Australian GP who lectures on home birth and is described by the French natural birth guru, Michel Odent, as "driving the history of childbirth towards a radical and inspiring new direction". Buckley had her fourth child unassisted at home near Brisbane and writes: "It was a great gift for me, with my medical training, to liberate myself ... from expert thinking."

The movement's unofficial leading light, Laura Shanley, explains: "I look at birth as a sexual creative act and you have to be free to birth in your own time and your own way. Even if you are with a midwife, she has to follow certain rules and your body can't do what it needs to do within its own time."

During her five pregnancies, Shanley shunned all monitoring, including scans. The first indication she had that her second child, Willie, was in the breech position was when she was giving birth at home alone and reached down to feel his feet coming out first. Her fourth child, Nicholas, was born prematurely unassisted at home and died almost instantly from a congenital heart condition. Shanley later sought reassurance that the outcome would have been the same in hospital (she was told that medical intervention would have made no difference).

The controversial NHS doctor who writes an award-winning blog under the pseudonym "Dr Crippen" has proposed that at some future point women will be sued by their (damaged) offspring for having had a home birth (let alone an unattended one). Freebirth advocates argue that a woman's choice of how she gives birth is a human rights issue. They say that most births proceed normally and going to hospital only increases the chances of intervention and complications. Even during a home birth, a midwife can intervene in a way the mother doesn't agree with. Is this a selfish attitude? Not necessarily, says Cassidy: "I don't buy that 'selfish' thing. I've heard horrible stories of women haemorrhaging to death in hospital and babies' faces being cut with scalpels during C-sections.

"Women have been giving birth since the beginning of time and birth is very rarely complicated. So is it selfish to stay at home? Or is it selfish to go to hospital?"

My story: 'I shed the placenta and had a bath with my son'

I always planned to have children but I could never imagine giving birth in a hospital, or with any kind of official in attendance. The only way I had ever been able to picture myself giving birth was alone, or with an old crone in silent attendance. At night in the woods by a stream was my preference, but my own front room and bath was, when my time came, the best available option.

As the day approached and pressure from the NHS to "plug-in" mounted, my partner became increasingly fearful and I increasingly resolute. Talk of stillbirth - designed to drive me to hospital - only heightened my distrust of those who saw fit to try and worry me at such a vulnerable time. I had, by this time, had my fill of the local midwives, all but one of whom had treated me with a complete lack of empathy, and the idea of inviting a random team of two of these frankly cold women into my small home seemed laughable.

The evening before I went into labour I had my spirits boosted by the book Spiritual Midwifery, not because I felt in any way connected to the free-loving, be-necklaced and hairy-partnered women pictured within, but because the pages and pages of homebirth statistics in the back made for optimistic reading. I read the book in the bath before going to bed and went to sleep thoroughly optimistic, When I got up in the night I found a trace of blood, which convinced me my labour had begun. I got up and while I was running a bath, I spread all the lovely white sheets the midwives had provided over the floor in the front room. My contractions were minutes apart within the hour and as the pain quickly intensified I woke my partner, who went straight back to bed on the basis that it would be a "busy day tomorrow". I was soon oscillating between agony and ecstasy, with only time to stagger the five yards between bath and white sheets, at which time I started to panic that I didn't know where my much-read-about cervix was.

I woke my partner, who went out looking for a newly qualified midwife who happened to be staying with a neighbour, and he returned with a drunk woman who reeked of cigarettes, which put me right off my contractions. I sent her away after agreeing with the general consensus that I was unlikely to give birth until the following day. As soon as she left I felt the baby's head emerging, and after much screaming but less than four hours of labour I gave birth to a very skinny boy on some very bloody sheets. I painfully shed the placenta and had a bath with my son before going back to bed. He is now four, and fine, and very wonderful, by the way.

In my second pregnancy I avoided all contact with the NHS and had no antenatal care whatsoever. After 10 hours of extremely painful labour at home, alone throughout, I gave up and called an ambulance. Less than an hour later, on my back in hospital, I gave birth, vaginally, to premature twins. In terms of the amount of medical intervention I had to have, it was the opposite of my hopes and dreams, but I had never imagined having twins - and what a lovely surprise that was. Besides, dialling 999 was always my back-up plan, being only 10 minutes from the nearest hospital. The twins are now big and bonny.
Name withheld

Jeannie Babb Taylor: May 2052

05/09/07
Jeannie Babb Taylor

“You’re fortunate to be living in this era,” says Nonna, brown eyes twinkling above the dimples in her wrinkled cheeks.

Rachel sips at the red raspberry leaf tea, the cup clinking against the saucer as she sets it down to respond. Her grandmother is already talking again.

“When I gave birth to your mother,” she goes on, “I was not allowed to eat or drink.”

Rachel’s eyebrows shoot up. “The whole time?”

“That’s right. Back in those days, all babies were born in hospitals — even healthy babies. Laboring mothers weren’t allowed a single sip of water.

“I was so thirsty my tongue was swollen and sticking to the roof of my mouth. After many hours, I was given ice chips, but even that was taken away when I was caught swallowing some of the ice to stave off the gnawing hunger.”

“That’s horrible,” Todd interjects, dropping down to perch on the Victorian loveseat beside his wife. “Having a baby is like . . . running a marathon. What athlete would attempt such a feat dehydrated on an empty stomach?”

Nonna chuckles at his analogy. “You’re right, of course. But you see, laboring women were not treated like athletes. We were treated like sick patients, like there was something wrong with us. According to the doctors, our ‘condition’ was best treated with narcotics, opioids, and surgical intervention.

“By 2005, the c-section rate went through the roof, with nearly one out of three mothers sliced open for delivery. From the doctors’ point of view, laboring women were all potential targets for expensive surgery. That’s why they starved us.”

Rachel scowls, rubbing puffy hands over the swollen full-moon belly.

“But labor can go on for hours — or even days,” she notes.

“Especially when you’re lying down with feet in stirrups, pushing uphill,” the old woman acknowledges.

“That’s absurd,” Todd murmurs. “Why not let gravity work?”

Rachel shakes her head. “That position was designed to benefit doctors, not women.”

“You’re right,” Nonna answers. “It placed us at a great psychological disadvantage, too. It allowed medical staff to treat us as objects, paying attention only to the ‘business end,’ as if we had no face, no heart, and no mind.”

“I’m so glad no caregiver would think of using stirrups today,” Rachel sighs, rubbing her belly again. “It’s a wonder women were able to push at all.”

“The doctors had ways of speeding up labor artificially,” Nonna answers. “But the drugs sometimes caused uterine rupture, killing the baby or causing permanent brain damage.

"One drug, Cytotec, was not even FDA-approved for obstetrical use. Eventually they had to stop using it.”

Rachel smiles, her face transformed. “So they went back to the natural ways?” she guesses.

“Not at first,” her grandmother answers. “At first they skipped the contraction drugs and resorted to the knife much sooner.”

Rachel looks down, distracted for a moment by the contracting of her own womb.

“I’ll go heat the rice bag,” Todd offers, trotting to Nonna’s kitchen with the handmade cloth pouch. Nonna watches him round the corner, thinking how glad she is for Rachel.

At last Rachel’s attention comes back to her grandmother’s wizened face. “Why did the women allow it?” she asks.

Nonna sighs, holding out empty hands. “We just didn’t know better. Our own mothers were knocked out for birth. We thought we were making progress just by being awake. Some women realized things should be different, but it was a constant fight.

“I chose a hospital that was supposed to be supportive of natural birth. They still pulled the ice chip stunt. Before I registered, they said they allowed ‘rooming in’ so I would not be separated from my baby girl.

“But right after birth, they whisked her away! I begged for her, but they kept her ‘under observation’ for four hours. They also gave her sugar water against my wishes, and pushed to inject her with vaccines just hours after birth.”

“That’s horrid,” Rachel clucks. “Why didn’t women just stay away from hospitals? Have their babies at home?”

“Well, in Georgia it was illegal.”

Rachel laughs. “How can birthing a child break a law?”

“Oh, it was not homebirth that was prohibited, so long as we did it alone! It was homebirth midwives they outlawed.”

“So women could birth at home — but only without help?”

Nonna nods. “Things were different back in 2007 when your mother was born,” she says. “For one thing, eight out of 10 lawmakers were men. There had never even been a woman President. Women only earned 70 cents on the dollar.

“We didn’t have the kind of power you gals have!”

She beams at her granddaughter, so young and confident. “My next child — your Uncle Tim — was born at home with an ‘illegal’ midwife.”

“Wow,” Rachel whispers, throwing a glance at Todd as he tucks the warm rice bag into the small of her back, “There was a black market for midwifery?”

“Certainly. There were always women who refused to be mistreated, and there were always midwives willing to skirt the law to give excellent care. The legal risks were high for those midwives. Once in a while, a baby dies during birth. It happens sometimes, no matter where women give birth.

“In a hospital, these deaths were considered a statistical eventuality. In the early 2000s, no one was charged for hospital deaths, even when the damage was clearly caused by uterine-rupturing drugs or overuse of painkillers.

“It was extremely rare for a baby to die in a homebirth setting — but when it did happen the midwives were charged with manslaughter. In other cases, overdue women were jailed for refusing to have a c-section.

“It was actually against the law to disobey a doctor’s orders! Eventually it was the women who turned the tide.”

“Through lawsuits?” Todd guesses.

“That was part of it.” Nonna nods thoughtfully. “The studies showed clearly that it was doctors’ drugs and fasting that caused most of the ‘danger signals’ (like blood pressure drops and changes in babies’ heart rates) that led to the c-sections. But that went unreported for 20 years!

“It was not until women stood up for themselves that things changed. Women reporters talked about the studies on the six-o’clock news. Women journalists wrote about the prohibition of home midwifery and the barriers to natural childbirth. Women doctors watched the signs instead of the clock. Businesswomen opened natural birthing centers. Women were elected to office and they legalized home-birth midwifery in Georgia, and later nationwide.

“Most of all, laboring women refused to let their needs be sacrificed to hospital protocols and doctors’ schedules. We had to insist on change!”

Nonna sets down her teacup. “We insisted on dignity. We did not let doctors push us into inductions or surgeries just to accommodate their schedules. Women who still used hospitals refused the wheelchair and the gown that were presented at check-in.

“Women refused to be starved, or to have their veins punctured with unnecessary IVs. Mothers refused to let doctors break their waters or insert electronic monitors in the baby’s scalp.

“When we pushed our babies into the world with our own fierce power, then we refused to let them out of our sight.”

Nonna smiles. “Eventually even the medical community came to recognize that birth is an act of motherhood, not an act of medical science. Today a laboring woman is not regarded as a body on a table, as if she and the baby needed some doctor to ‘deliver’ them from each other. Today women are honored as life-bringers.”

Jeannie Babb Taylor is a local business leader and author. She also teaches Sunday school, educates her children at home, and engages in Georgia politics. To contact Jeannie, E-mail jeannie@babb.com.

Midwives and doctors get along just fine

As a certified nurse-midwife, I am grateful for the attention given to midwifery by your article regarding midwives and upcoming legislation (Midwives fighting for legitimacy..., April 29). I beg to differ -- legitimacy cannot be legislated. Legitimacy grows with a reputation built on education, accountability and safe practice.

The article suggested an adversarial relationship between midwives and doctors. As certified nurse-midwives we work closely with supportive OB/GYN doctors, and the women we care for benefit from collaborative practice.

Our goal is safe and satisfying care. Most of us attend births in hospitals or birth centers, although some CNM's do homebirths.

Certified nurse-midwives are more than "...licensed nurses with additional training in midwifery." We enter our midwifery education programs with a bachelor's degree in nursing, and enter midwifery practice after extensive clinical experience and a master's degree. Our programs provide us with the pharmacology background to safely provide medications and write prescriptions.

Certified nurse-midwives are mid-level healthcare providers. We function independently at the same level as nurse practitioners and physician assistants. We care for women across their entire lifespan -- not just during pregnancy, but also for gynecological and menopausal care. CNM's are able to bill health insurance companies for the cost of care in the same way as doctors or other health professionals. Homebirth midwives are unable to bill insurance companies.

It's important that women understand the difference between certified nurse-midwives (CNM) and homebirth midwives (LM, CPM) regardless of the initials involved.

Erma Evans

Oakland

jeevans5@adelphia.net

Aims: Government must provide more resources

11 May 2007

Aims: Government must provide more resources
The government must put more resources into funding for midwifery if it was truly to offer free choice for how a woman gives birth, according to the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (Aims).

Chairperson of Aims Beverley Beech said that while maternity services continued to be underfunded and overworked there was no real possibility of being able to offer every mother-to-be the option of having her baby at home.

"Until this government puts some resources in, it's going to continue to be difficult. There is a very serious shortage of midwives. And it means that women, in the meantime, are getting very substandard care as a result of this shortage," Ms Beech stressed.

She also said that any expectant mums who wanted a homebirth should be determined to make her wishes known to her health practitioners and to remain persistent if she was advised to have her baby elsewhere.

""[Home births] are an option for every woman. And it's the woman who makes the decision," she said.

State’s midwives finally get their day

May 1st, 2007 — Bekah

Wisconsin State Journal
Lampert Smith: State’s midwives finally get their day
SUSAN LAMPERT SMITH
608-252-6121
ssmith@madison.com
Jane Crawford Peterson has delivered 1,300 babies, all of them beautiful, but her last one was special.

Not only did baby Phillip, who arrived Thursday, make a nice, even number, he was the first one delivered in a home by a midwife licensed by the state of Wisconsin.

Today marks the end of 25 years of hard labor on the part of midwives who have been working to have their profession, and home births, recognized by the state of Wisconsin. The law that goes into effect today legalizes home birth and licenses midwives such as Peterson who do not hold nursing degrees.

Peterson, who lives near Iola and has been helping bring babies into the world for 27 years, is the proud holder of Wisconsin’s license No. 1. She received her license a few weeks in advance of today’s law enactment.

Today, Regulation and Licensing Secretary Celia Jackson and about 200 midwives are expected to gather at Ebling Library Health Sciences Learning Center at UW Hospital to celebrate; Gov. Jim Doyle has declared May 5 “International Midwives’ Day” in Wisconsin.

The law had an unusual birth, as it was sponsored by conservative Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, yet also championed by liberals such as Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton.

“We had old hippies, young hippies, Amish, Mennonites and religious conservatives,” Peterson said. “People who never stand together on the same coin were standing together on this.”

The law brings Wisconsin in line with 24 other states that recognize and license lay midwives who attend home births. It is good news for mothers and babies, for the uninsured and for groups such as the Amish who typically give birth outside hospitals. In 2005, about 1,100 Wisconsin babies were born outside a hospital; that number will undoubtedly grow under the new law.

The move should also help certified nurse midwives, nurses who hold master’s degrees and can already deliver babies under the auspices of a hospital or physician. The law frees them from having to have a written agreement with a health care authority, allows them to mentor and train lay midwives and recognizes home birth.

“What’s elegant about the law is that it pulls together the sisterhood of midwives,” said Ingrid Andersson, a certified nurse midwife who practices in Madison.

Andersson said Southwest Wisconsin Technical College in Fennimore is launching a new program to train and certify midwives. The law also allows practicing midwives, such as Amish midwives, to become licensed by training with licensed midwives, then sitting for the state exam.

Anyone who wants to know why midwives are an important part of the health-care system should stop by the Ebling Library and take a look at two exhibits.

One tracks the history of midwives in Wisconsin, beginning with a group of stern-looking German ladies from a century ago and ending with the hippie midwives who brought the profession back in the 1970s after it was essentially outlawed in 1953. The Wisconsin exhibit was put together by UW-Madison history of medicine undergraduate Kala Kluender.

The other, which features lovely black and white stills from the 1952 film, “All My Babies,” follows the footsteps of Mary Coley, a Georgia midwife who attended the poor families of rural Georgia. Her capable hands caught hundreds of babies who were born healthy thanks to her advice on nutrition and hygiene.

Micaela Sullivan-Fowler, the library’s curator, said the midwives who attended the exhibits’ opening loved both exhibits.

“It was the most extraordinary moment of affirmation,” she said. “There were tears, there was much hugging, they were happy that their place in history has been affirmed.”

Many of Wisconsin’s midwives will return to today’s celebration.

So in the words of Iola midwife Peterson, “we’re hoping for no babies” tonight.

Posted in Alternatives, State News, Birth.

Ricki Lake On The Business Of Being Born

Ricki Lake

READ MORE: New York, Ricki Lake

Actress and former talk show host Ricki Lake has turned executive producer for the documentary The Business of Being Born, which will debut at the Tribeca Film Festival. Huffington Post asked her some questions.

What's it like to premiere your film at the Tribeca Film Festival?
Right now my life feels completely surreal. I am so excited and honored to be a part of this amazing festival. The fact that most of the movie takes place in New York and that downtown New York is where I gave birth makes it even that much more meaningful to me. This is my debut as an executive producer.

Why did you want to produce this film?
I wanted to make this movie after my two very different birth experiences with my children. I felt like I had an opportunity to explore and question birthing practices in this country and perhaps be an advocate for mothers' rights and better maternity care.

How did your personal birth experiences influence you?
After the birth of my sons, particularly my home birth with my second son, I thought I wanted to become a midwife. Then I looked at all the years of schooling and training that I would have to do and felt that the time could be better spent doing a documentary on the subject of birth.

How intimate does the film get?
I am naked at 195 pounds giving birth in my own bathtub. It can't get any more intimate than that!

What do you hope people take away from the film?
A lot! I hope this film educates people and empowers them to really know their choices in childbirth. We do not want to make any woman feel bad about the outcome of her birth, or the choices she made (or will make).

Did you videotape personal birth experiences at the time?
As previously referenced, yes I did. For the record, I never filmed my birth with the goal of showing it to anyone, let alone the general public. I simply wanted it documented for me.

Other than your film, what are your plans for Tribeca?
I am thrilled to be in New York for most of the festival and I am very excited to take part in everything I can. I will be attending all of the screenings of The Business of Being Born, and I will be doing a Q&A after every screening.

What are your favorite parts of New York?
I love NY! The West Village is my favorite neighborhood in the world. I hope to see a couple of Broadway shows, eat great food, take my children to the MOMA and visit all of my friends. I can't wait.