It’s a woman’s right to choose how she births

For further information, contact Melissa Maimann at Essential Birth Consulting.

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Changes that will effectively outlaw supported home births are paternalistic.

IN FIVE months’ time, if my pregnancy progresses without complication, I will birth my second child at home, attended by two registered private midwives. If I’d become pregnant a mere six months later, this carefully researched, intensely personal decision would have been far more tenuous.

From the middle of next year, if the draft legislation establishing a new national registration scheme for health professionals becomes law, midwives will be required to hold indemnity insurance and midwives in private practice — those who typically attend home births — will be unable to access this insurance. This means that, with the exception a few small home-birth support programs run out of public hospitals, home birthing will effectively be outlawed.

… Dr Hilary Joyce, the new president of the National Association of Specialist Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, dismissed the significance of this ban by pointing out that only a small percentage of women in Australia choose to give birth at home …

She misses the point. It’s not about numbers. It’s about choice. The government has no right to remove choices from people. Registered midwives, independent of the hospital system, are available to attend home births. Women, some of whom prefer their care to be independent of the hospital system, wish to contract these midwives to attend their births. There is demand, and there is supply. A market exists. The government’s failure to provide insurance for midwives is against the laws of economics.

The assumption underlying her argument — that minority rights are unimportant and can be casually overridden — is both offensive and antithetical …

… The legislative squeezing-out of home birth represents a serious regression in this reform process. Given that the new laws will effectively make private midwife-assisted home birth illegal, the Federal Government is acting to deprive most women of the ability to make a fundamental choice about their own bodies; the choice to birth in a non-medicalised environment.

Birthing is an extremely intimate, uniquely visceral, sometimes terrifying physical experience. There is much that will inevitably be out of a woman’s control during her confinement, so allowing her to birth in the place in which she is most comfortable is fundamental to maintaining both her personal dignity and her sense of ownership over the experience.

Just as adequate abortion rights are important for all women, not just those with unwanted pregnancies, so the fundamental right to birth in the way one chooses is an issue for us all. In this respect the proposed legislation is a setback for all women, not just those who would take up the option of a home birth if it was offered to them.

… Many assume that this is the crux of the matter; that home births are simply unsafe. But the facts suggest otherwise. International studies, and experience in countries such as the Netherlands and Britain, have conclusively demonstrated that for uncomplicated pregnancies, home births carried out with proper support are just as safe as hospital births.

… Such a paternalistic provision, effectively telling women what is and isn’t good for them, cuts to the heart of women’s collective dignity and autonomy. While women were once routinely patronised in this way, the contemporary assumption is that those bad old days are behind us. Sadly, this does not appear to be the case when it comes to birthing.

Melissa Maimann, Essential Birth Consulting 0400 418 448

Tags: birth, Birth choices, Home birth, Maternity Services Review, midwife, Midwifery, Midwifery services, Normal Birth, women's rights

Dobbing in drs will breed culture of fear

For further information, contact Melissa Maimann at Essential Birth Consulting.

National Registration brings with a requirement that health professionals and employers must report other professionals who are deemed to be placing rhe public at risk of harm, for example by being intoxicated while at work, or for departing from accepted standards of safe care.

This article questions the wisdom of this requirement.

A proposed national accreditation scheme … will make it mandatory for practitioners to report others they fear are placing the public at risk.

Reportable conduct includes a physical or mental impairment affecting a doctor’s ability to practise or a departure from accepted professional standards, as well as drug and alcohol abuse or sexual misconduct.

… “A statutory duty to report is likely to create a punitive atmosphere and a culture of fear among practitioners … and potentially drive problems underground,” …

The association wants spouses, practising doctors and health advisory services exempted from any potential mandatory reporting laws.

That’s an interesting request. This part of the legislation has supposedly come into effect after the cases incolving Dr Graeme Reeves and Dr Jayant Patel. It is no longer acceptable to sit by while a colleague harms patients. Why should doctors be exempt from the requirement, while all other health professionals need to comply?

… Claire Moore said there remained an overriding public belief that doctors protected one another, especially in the wake of surgeon Jayant Patel’s case at Bundaberg.

The public needed to be reassured there were adequate safeguards in place to protect patients, she said.

Melissa Maimann, Essential Birth Consulting 0400 418 448

Tags: Obstetrics, women's rights

Pilot Study Removes Standard Hospital Bed As Focal Point Of Labor

For further information, contact Melissa Maimann at Essential Birth Consulting.

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A … study that re-conceptualized the hospital labour room by removing the standard, clinical bed and adding relaxation-promoting equipment had a 28 per cent drop in infusions of artificial oxytocin, a powerful drug used to advance slow labours.

I’m not surprised. Stress and adrenaline lower the level of natural oxytocin and create the “need” for the artificial form of the hormone. If the environment feels safe for the woman, her oxytocin levels will rise and she will not need the synthetic form to be dripped into her veins. Home usually provides the most relaxing environment for labour.

… In addition, more than 65 percent of the labouring women in the ambient room, compared to 13 per cent in the standard labour room, reported they spent less than half their hospital labour in the standard labour bed.

…. Hodnett devised a set of simple, but radical modifications to the standard hospital labour room, with the intention of surrounding the women and their caregivers with specific types of auditory, visual and tactile stimuli.

“The removal of the standard hospital bed sent a message that this was not the only place a woman could labour,” says Hodnett. A portable, double-sized mattress with several large, comfortable cushions was set up in the corner of the ambient room. Fluorescent lighting was dimmed, and DVDs of ocean beaches, waterfalls and other soothing vistas were projected onto a wall. A wide variety of music was also made available.

… “This study raises questions about the assumptions underlying the design of the typical hospital labour room,” says Hodnett. “The birth environment seems to affect the behaviour of everyone in it – the laboring women as well as those who provide care for her.

Melissa Maimann, Essential Birth Consulting 0400 418 448

Tags: birth, Complicated pregnancy or birth, hospital birth, midwife, Midwifery, Midwifery services, Normal Birth, Public and private hospitals