This issue is close to my heart because my three babies were all born in the warmth and love and peaceful comfort of our own home and I wouldn't have had it any other way. No bright lights for them, no loud noises or cold hands of strangers, no separation from their mother, no needles or scales or baths and no travelling home strapped into a car seat. They had instant skin-to-skin contact, bonding with their mother, the gentle familiarity of voices they knew, the quiet stillness of home, and the joy of being instantly enveloped in the love of their parents and siblings, with no other distraction.
When is the world going to realise that these things MATTER? Birth is an amazing momentous event in our lives, why shouldn't we take the time to approach it with awe and reverence and respect? People who work with birth need to honour every mother and baby as divine beings, not as just more names on a chart during the shift.
The moment babies' take their very first breath on this earth is sacred. If we cannot welcome new life into the world without gentleness and respect then we do our civilisation a great injustice. When our society begins to treat birth with the reverence it deserves then we will really begin to move forward.
Those of us that believe that this is how birth should be choose homebirth because that is how we can best achieve this peaceful entry into the world. Of course there are lots of other great reasons as well!
There has been a lot discussed in the media about the safety of homebirth, and a lot of untrue statements have been thrown around. These comments come from a position of ignorance and fear. People make up these ridiculous claims to support their beliefs because they need to validate the way they feel about something they really don't understand. But truly if one actually took the time to sort through the literature on homebirth, they would find that there is very strong evidence to show homebirth is a safe practice. For goodness sake, we have been doing it for thousands of years - hospital births have really only been popular for the last 2 or 3 generations!
Oh, I hear you say, but some would argue that women and children used to die in childbirth. Yes they did, and sadly, they sometimes still do, but that is why we have professionals (independent midwives in the case of homebirths) to monitor mothers and babies and to provide expertise and to recommend hospitalisation or other courses of action as are necessary. I also must make the point that a lot of problems that do arise for mothers and babies in hospital occur as a result of inverventions/policies of the hospital - this is a fact many people do not realise.
I don't mean to demonise hospitals here. Obviously I don't choose to birth in hospital but I would not hesitate to use them if necessary, so yes, I am grateful for their existence and I respect other women's right to give birth in the place of their choosing. And the real issue at the heart of homebirth in Australia at the moment is exactly that - the right to choose! We need to have all options available to us in birth, and homebirth is one of many models of care. It has proven to be successful in other countries and we are fighting for it to remain a choice for women in Australia. It should be up to a woman to decide where she is most comfortable giving birth.
Anyway, I'm probably just blogging on to the already converted, so I'll stop raving now and post my photos from the rally! Unfortunately I didn't get as many great shots as I should have, but I didn't like taking my camera out in the rain!
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