At 40+3, at 3am on the 3rd of July, the night/morning of the new moon, I woke to contractions 10 minutes apart. Speaking to my baby, I let her know that I was excited to meet her soon, asking that she go gently, that we work together to ensure she was born beautifully and gently, at home.
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Going to the bathroom, I took my last ever belly-selfie and listened to my hypnobirthing soundtrack. Back in bed I shifted through the discomfort and built a pillow fort to allow me to lean forward. Calm, but unable to rest, I got up to drink and wee several times. Every time I walked by the clock it showed repeated numbers – 3:33, 4:44, 5:55 – just as I’d seen throughout this pregnancy. I decided to get up and sat in my birth space, rocking back and forth with my forehead on the cold window. The space was beautifully prepared, both physically and spiritually – I could feel my tribe of women holding me in this space.

By 10am I felt nauseous; I was working during contractions, but still fine in between! Juz was telling me to stop doula-ing myself! I asked him to set up the pool, maybe that would help me zone in? Jo rang and we chatted through a couple of contractions; we decided she should come and check on us, and we messaged Jacquie and Ru too. Jo and Tash (student midwife) arrived at 11:11am and Jo confirmed that bub was engaged and happy. Jacquie and Jacqui arrived soon after, both bailed up by our dog, Obi. Then Ru arrived. Everyone was here! But I was sure it was too early!
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I sat on the fit ball, Jo holding a heat pack on my back, Juz holding my hands/heat pack on the front. I felt so supported and loved! But I felt that this wasn’t doing anything! I sat and cried; big fat tears dripping onto my bare belly. “I just want to meet my baby!” Obi licked me, sitting by my side. I asked Jo why it wasn’t progressing; she suggested I get out of my head. I asked her with bitterness, “And how exactly do you propose I do that?” I don’t remember her response, the question was rhetorical.

“How much longer?” “As long as it takes.”
“I’m done!” “One at a time.”
“I need an epidural.” “No, you don’t.”

Each contraction felt worse than the one before! I needed a time limit, answers, SOMETHING! It was relentless. Willow (5.5yo), Hamish (2.5yo) and Juz were providing me water and massages. I was screaming, “Owwww, nooooo, noooo!” until Ru held my hand, massaged me and helped turn it into a “Yesssss-aaaa-owwwww!”
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I was getting grunty at the end of contractions – ‘Good, we’re getting somewhere!’, but the grunty urges never got longer or stronger. “Jo, can I just start pushing? I need this baby out!” Jo suggested I see if I could feel baby’s head. I reached into my vagina and couldn’t feel anything noteworthy; just a squishy mess. “Where is this bloody baby!?!” I cried.

I was done; I asked Jo what we should do. I’d been in transition for what felt like days! Jo mentioned she could check where we were at. “Yes, let’s check!” As I stood, some bloody show came out – ‘Excellent! That happened when fully dilated with Hamish, this’ll be the same!’ I waddled into the bedroom believing I’d be 9‑10 cm. But I was 7 cm (Jo added I was stretching to 9 cm, apparently I blocked that out!). I despaired – this was too much! Jo reassured me it could go quickly from here, “Let’s just keep going.”
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I got back in the pool, hating the world, angry at my body, screaming I’d done this before and could do it again! “Come ON baby, go gently!!!” I kept glaring at everyone through weak, cruddy contractions. My mum rang but couldn’t get through, so dropped by. I’d debated whether to have her there, now I was being given the chance to decide. I knew this was too intense for her, it felt too intense for me! I let her be sent home.

I was asked to try 20-30 minutes of contractions without pushing; cue horse‑lips, screaming, tantruming and kicking and punching the lounge! I calculated (still in my head, then) that 20 minutes would around 5 contractions; I did 4. Constant words of encouragement were everywhere now! I asked for the catheter to be removed. “Jo, can you check again?” Surely this was almost over!
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The lip was still there. “I can’t DO this anymore!” I wanted the pool! More screaming, horse-lips, bum-in-the-air contractions and I started involuntarily grunting at the end. The next contraction, despite doing horse‑lips, my body pushed! “I NEED THE POOL!!” I hopped in, collapsing to my knees. Relief! Then the next contraction came and so did babe’s head – whoa!! I heard Jo ask, “Is that bub’s head?” “Yep.” “Ru, get in here!”

I wanted to birth the placenta in the pool, but had to get out for the bleeding. I waddled to the lounge. Hamish watched closely (“Whoa, mum!”) as I birthed the placenta with some gentle help from Jo. I ate toast and honey tea as I soaked in the beautiful bub I’d just birthed, surrounded by the love and support of my incredible birth team.
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Jo measured Evalie and tied the cord, Willow cut the cord, Hamish cut our mother’s blessing bands and then we ate birth‑day cake that Jacquie made with the kids while I laboured. We dressed Evalie and I showered (no pain!) and got into bed. Everyone said their goodbyes while Jacquie brought dinner. The kids were so overtired and excited! We chatted through how I felt and I couldn’t stop beaming – I was so proud, happy, and in awe of our perfectly complete family!

​I got up and felt empty. It was a sensation that I don’t remember feeling with Maverick. I felt completely hollow and it made me feel sick. I made my way to the couch and held my baby to my chest and he began to feed. Once again there was so much relief that I wasn’t having any pain. Sarah arrived around this time. She saw me on the lounge but continued through to the birth area and saw the others emptying the pool. She said that she thought it was another false alarm until they told her I was on the couch with the baby!

I was so ravenous all of a sudden. Someone made me vegemite toast and it was the most amazing meal I’ve ever had! ​

​Baby was fine, just very small. Jac gave us a tour of the very cute, small placenta while I ate all the food. I think I had the toast, 2 muesli bars and an apple in about a 5 minute period.

Jac checked to see if I had torn.. not even a graze! Baby was 2.5kg and was 48cm long!

It was so amazing to be surrounded by the people I love and to be in the comfort of my own home. The next few hours were simply bliss. Matt took Mav to bed, Abby went to bed. My mother in law went home. Jacqui and Mel put down the pool and packed away their stuff. I sat with Aimee and Sarah for another hour or so and talked about everything that had just happened. It was so beautiful, just being with women in that space.

My birth was not what I had planned for or what I had expected. I feel that I was in my own head quite a bit, overanalysing. The support of the people around me though, grounded me, even momentarily. I do not have any regrets about the choices I made because I know that they were the best choices for me in that moment. I never felt pressured into anything!

Our little Logan showed me that I have strength and courage that I never thought I had. He showed me patience and love that knows no limits. It was empowering and painful and transcending and staggering. It obliterated every part of me and then just as quickly made me whole again, expanding my heart in the process.

It was birth.
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Are you a member of Homebirth NSW but unsure how to access our members-only content?

Here's what to do (click here to watch a fly-through of this process):

1. Log onto homebirthnsw.org.au
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• free e-access to dozens of issues of Birthings magazine
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Homebirthing during COVID, reasons for transfer and the benefits of the unparalleled standard of continuity of midwifery care.

Welcome to our Homebirth NSW blog! This edition is all about some of the fantastic questions asked during our Midwife Q&A live event. Our aim is to create blogs covering many of the questions so that answers are not only easy to find online, but quick and simple to share with anyone such as birth partners, family members and friends. This way, if you are planning a homebirth or hoping to educate a birth partner or family member, you can simply read and share answers straight from the incredibly experienced and knowledgeable private midwives themselves! 

It’s important to note that although many privately practising midwives work within similar parameters, they are autonomous and can only speak for their own individual practise so some answers may vary between midwives. 

A HUGE thank you to Jo Hunter and Janine O’Brien for taking the time to be a part of this event and answer so many questions about homebirth! As the author of this blog, I’d like to acknowledge that I am using information shared from Jo and Janine in the live Q&A which can be found by clicking this link. 

Let’s dive in! 

Question: Has COVID changed anything you need to do re homebirthing?

The short answer? Nope! The only changes are those that have been highlighted for the general community such as being more vigilant with hand washing and mindful of possible symptoms. The amount of support people is the woman’s choice and at her discretion. As Janine states, “often what makes homebirth special is not having people coming at you wearing masks and plastic”. Having a homebirth in a pandemic has the added benefit of being free of hospital policy in regards to masks, support people and of course avoiding the many infections and bugs that reside in hospitals even when a pandemic is not upon us. 

Question: What would be the reasons for transfer to a hospital birth during pregnancy or during labour?

This is such a good question! Most families planning a homebirth will want to be aware of anything that might mean a change of plans in regards to birth place. During pregnancy, circumstances arising such as preeclampsia, placenta previa (the placenta covering the cervix), known breech position or twins might be some reasons for transferring to a planned hospital birth.

Private midwives are experts of physiological birth, and as such they are highly skilled at recognising when labour is deviating from normal, even more so because they know the women they support on a deep relationship-based level and will very likely notice anything that’s moving away from what might be normal for that individual woman. Reasons for transfer might be fetal distress, prolonged rupture of membranes, choice for pain relief, or thick stained meconium. 

Transferring for immediate medical assistance is incredibly rare. Jo Hunter states in the Q&A that she has a 7% transfer rate, which gives a pretty clear picture on how often it’s necessary given the majority of this percentage is not for urgent reasons! Of course, women are not choosing to have a homebirth at all costs, and in fact having continuity of care with a known midwife creates a relationship whereby women are safer as their care provider knows them individually and will only suggest interfering with normal birth when truly necessary. Which leads us to the next question! 

Question: What is the biggest difference between hospital and homebirth? 

Aside from being in your own home with your pets, your own bed, no bright lights or noisy chatter in your birth space that is? Easy, continuity of midwifery care. Accessing this type of care in a hospital is possible, yet it’s attached to many, many policy puppeteered strings. Having a privately practising midwife means your midwife has the autonomy to support women who would otherwise be ‘risked out’ of midwifery care or choosing a homebirth through a hospital program. When a midwife knows the woman, and the woman knows her in a genuinely caring and supportive relationship, that woman is going to feel able to let go and trust her birth team during labour. 

Having a hospital birth usually means that your midwife is whoever happens to be on shift that day, so it really is luck of the draw. And even then, shifts end and change over happens, bringing yet more new faces into your special birth space. Planning a homebirth with a known privately practising midwife means you really are choosing who you want to be there based on who you connect with, feel safe with and feel at ease with. 
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As Jo refers to in the Q&A, all great hospital initiatives have been derived from the homebirth model. Men at birth, siblings at birth, water birth, the environmental factors; all happening at homebirth long before hospitals caught up. Of course, homebirth with a private midwife isn’t always feasible for women, that’s why here at Homebirth NSW we do what we do, advocating and spreading awareness so that one day all women can have all choices at their finger tips!

Author of this blog: Claire Heenan 

Photo credit to Rebecca Lawrence

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What made a midwife, an actress, and a doula/birth photographer decide to come together and make a documentary about Australia’s maternity system
​Good question.

If we skipped to the end of the article the answer would be… care. Three women who knew what the gold standard of care is for pregnant and birthing women… and between them having delivered it (the care, of course, not the babies- they were birthed), having been on the receiving end of it, and in my case, as a doula, having witnessed all of the alternatives.

Rewind to 2008 when Jo Hunter co-organised the Sydney Homebirth Conference and the Australian premiere of the documentary, the Business of Being Born (BoBB). Whilst the BoBB was a game-changer of a film, it was American and therefore a lot of people dismissed it as being irrelevant to us. Creating an Australian birth documentary was an idea and a pipe dream in her head. Fast forward to about 2015 when Jo and I met and became friends, she told me of her idea and showed me a homebirth film from the 1980’s called Labour of Love. The film was funded by the ABC and was a quaint, simple and quite delightful film which followed three homebirth midwives in Sydney and the Blue Mountains. It seemed like such a good resource to share in regards to birth, and particularly homebirth, but as lovely as it was, it was very dated (including lots of lovely pubic hair!). So we started dreaming of the possibility of making Labour of Love II. A current, Australian birth film. We went so far as to get permission from the filmmaker to do this (although she was slightly bemused that we wanted to go to the effort of making a homebirth film - having been there herself and knowing the time, money and effort that goes into such a thing).

We became a little perplexed by how on earth we would go about making a film between the two of us, so the idea remained a dream. Later that year Zoe Naylor booked Jo to be her midwife for the birth of her second baby in 2016. Zoe had birthed her first baby in hospital and this time was looking for care with more depth. A little closer to the birth Zoe also called me - as she had decided she wanted to have her birth filmed. She was germinating an idea about a TV series and wanted to have the footage available to use for that. The birth team was set.
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Zoe’s birth of Beau was a magical evening and she was astounded by how different she felt having received true, one to one continuity of midwifery care. In the conversations that followed, Jo showed Zoe The Business of Being Born, and told her of our dream to make an Australian birth documentary. Zoe was in. Together we decided it was time to find out why so many women were coming out of their births traumatised, why birth related PTSD is on the rise, and why we have a postnatal depression epidemic.

At this stage I was in the second trimester of my first pregnancy, so what better trio to start making a documentary - a newborn mother of two, a pregnant woman and one of Australia’s busiest homebirth midwives. The urgency was real.

The mission became clear...to ask the question- what would it take for women to emerge from their births physically well and emotionally safe?

I had cameras which were enough to start filming, so we bought sound and lighting equipment, learnt where the ON buttons were and hit up Hannah Dahlen to be our first interviewee. By this stage I was 35 weeks pregnant and Beau was 4 months old.

Our timing could not have been better… in two weeks time the Normal Labour and Birth Conference was coming to Australia, and Hannah was organising it. Jo and I were to be attending the conference and after her interview Hannah said, “If you’re really making this documentary you need to make the most of these people being in the country. I will connect you with anyone you want.” We flew into action, Hannah played cupid and we found ourselves for the entirety of the conference in a private room, with the likes of Lesley Page, Sheena Byrom, Soo Downe and Melissa Cheney rotating through to share their expertise.

This was October 2016. One week later I gave birth to my first baby, at home, with Jo as my midwife. Hands down best day of my life.

We had about a 6 week hiatus and from there things snowballed. We were back at it-interviewing whoever we thought could lend their opinion to answer our burning question. We fitted these filming sessions in between birthing women, young families, running businesses, writing a thesis, speaking at conferences and many, many other things. We spoke to the likes of Sarah Buckley, Rachel Reed, Rhea Dempsey, Nicky Leap, Pat Brodie, Andrew Bisits, Andrew Pesce, Kirsten Small, Jane Hardwicke Collings, Sheryl Sidery, Bashi Hazard as well as following several women in their pregnancies and births both at home and in hospital, and
interviewing many other women and partners. We travelled with our babies in tow, often with one of Jo’s teenage daughters with us to look after the little ones whilst we filmed. We breastfed through interviews, filmed women sitting on their beds with our babies lying asleep next to them, just out of frame, and conducted interviews in Air BNB’s after bedtime with the kids asleep in the next room. Again, the urgency was real.

During this whirlwind of interviews, we met Olympian Selina Scoble while in Brisbane. Initially we interviewed her for her story as a 40 year old first time mother with various risk factors, and how she was being treated in the system. But our relationship with Selina quickly escalated and she became a key member of the Birth Time team. She is our behind the scenes goddess who is constantly tinkering away at all the little unseen things- our emails and website, accounts and merchandise as well as helping to plan and execute our next big moves.

Our filming took us to some incredible places, none more incredible than to Alice Springs in July 2018. By this stage our babies were old enough to be left with their fathers for a few days so we jetted off to Alice with the two co-chairs of the Birthing on Country Project- Mel Briggs and Cherisse Buzzacott, to film the story of these two women working together, and to visit Cherisse’s home country.

We also started hosting live events, as a way of bringing the birthing community together to boost education, moral, and a sense of togetherness. We have hosted three events to date - Feminism and Human Rights in Childbirth with Hannah Dahlen and Bashi Hazard, An Evening with Rhea Dempsey, and Birthing on Country with a panel of the key players from the project. All of these events are available to watch online through our website.

Early 2019 after over 60 interviews, we decided it was finally time to draw a line under the filming side of our project and start to carve this body of work into something digestible. It was decided that our beautiful friend and honorary sister Ryan Harrison and i would take on the first pass of this mammoth task. Ryan and I spent the next 5 months locked in his studio bachelor pad with his dog, Biscuit and lots of dark chocolate, watching and scribing every single interview, and pulling together themes and threads which ran through 2.5 years of interviews. At times it felt like an insurmountable project, but by the end of the 5 months we had a 1 hour 45 minute film which was so dense with information, it felt like being hit over the head with a baseball bat.

Simultaneously while this was going on, Zoe was on a fast learning track of the executive producers role. She threw herself into learning the ins and outs of the film industry from the angle of funding and government tax offsets- otherwise known as “how the hell you find enough money to finish a film”, because post production in films is the money equivalent of a postpartum hemorrhage. Since then we have agreed on, and then pulled out of a deal with a post production house, and as well as never quite agreed on and consequently pulled out of a distribution deal, all because we weren’t feeling respected and listened to, and they wanted more than we were willing to give. We have likened our experience to a birthing woman in the system more than once in this process.

In October last year we revisited the hour forty five baseball bat of a film- Zoe, Jo and I locked ourselves away together for 36 hours and re-edited it to a much more palatable 1 hour 20 feature length documentary.
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We call Jo our Captain. Our chief breath taker. Whenever we need direction on something, whenever we need a decision finalised, we turn to her. Her wealth of knowledge having worked as a birth worker, activist and private midwife for over 20 years has been the bedrock of this project. Being held in such high regard in the birth world is what has given us access to the incredible array of people that have come on board our project.

Through Zoe’s wizardry on the finance and relationships front we have landed ourselves in the incredible hands of Spectrum Films at Fox Studios for all of our post production, we have original animation and composition created by amazing artists, we have a new distribution deal and our film will be finished next month.

And then comes the slightly heartbreaking part of the story- which someday we are sure will be viewed as simply a bump in the road… we were set to release our film at the end of April, tour the country with screenings and Q&A’s in 13 locations, and start the next chapter for what we have planned to change the landscape for birthing women. But alas, the world has ground to a halt. So, like any good midwife would, we sit with what is, not with what we want to be (thank you Jane Hardwicke Collings) and we wait for when this baby of ours is good and ready to be born.

To stay up to date on all things “Birth Time” make sure you head to https://www.birthtime.world and sign up to their newsletter, get shopping or make a doantion.

Homebirth NSW 
How are you going? We truly hope you are well, safe and breathing a sigh of relief as restrictions ease a little. Been missing those cafe babyccinos? Maybe your kids have created SO MUCH ART and there's no more fridge door room for their creative genius. Well, good news, we want your kids' art! 

KIDS ART COMPETITION 
Is your child the next Picasso? Fancy their artwork being the cover of our next Birthings Magazine? Of course you do! What an incredibly beautiful keepsake it would be to have your own child's drawing, collage or painting of your family's homebirth as the cover of our timeless Birthings Magazine. Surely that's a future family heirloom, am I right?! Not to mention, the money we raise will go towards our efforts in advocating for ease of access to homebirth. It's all about intrinsic motivation these days, and what more reward would a kid love than having their artwork gain them fame by it appearing on an awesome magazine? Wait, maybe that's extrinsic motivation, oh well! Better than ANOTHER Bluey sticker book. 

 All entries by gold coin donation via Paypal to treasurer@homebirthnsw.org.au 
SUBMISSIONS BY 01 SEPTEMBER 2020
Send artwork to fundraising@homebirthnsw.org.au






Did you know that last week was National Volunteer Week?
Here at Homebirth NSW, we are all volunteers who work hard and devote our time to changing the limitations and restrictions women face when it comes to choosing a homebirth. The theme of Volunteer Week was 'changing communities, changing lives'. The options available to families and the way women feel about their birth experience is foundational to building communities and changing lives! Homebirth NSW wanted to offer a huge thank you in particular to the incredible Virginia Maddock for her 11 (and a quarter!) years of dedication to our committee. As Virginia leaves our management committee, she has been presented with a lifetime membership with Homebirth NSW! Thank you so very much, Virginia, for:
 
• taking on almost every different committee position at different times
• attending and organising numerous rallies
• being involved with sooo many Birthings magazines
• running stalls at various conferences and events

...and much much more! Virginia runs her own amazing business too and you can check out all she offers here: Natural Beginnings - Holistic Health, Doula and Placenta Services. 

Our advertisers and partners - Your logo could be here!
Advertising with us is a great way to support homebirth advocacy whilst reaching a wider audience for your business! To find out more about how you can become an advertiser, friend and/or sponsor, simply reply to this email and we will send you everything you need to know! 

Homebirth Q & A - We recorded it! 
Did you miss out on the amazing opportunity to listen in or ask your questions at our Homebirth Q&A session? Now you can check it out at whatever time works for you! We have it recorded and ready for you, just click here. Two highly experienced, wonderful privately practising midwives speaking all things birth in the comfort of your own home? Did your Sunday just get a million times better or what?! Join Janine O'Brien and Jo Hunter as they share some invaluable insights! Janine and Jo answer all the homebirth questions you could think of! I learned so much from listening to this! 
 
Thank you so much to our members for being a part of our community and supporting our advocacy work!  We can't wait to see the beautiful homebirth artworks your kids create. Stay safe and reach out to us if you have any questions at all about homebirth and Homebirth NSW. 

Claire Heenan (Communications)

Homebirth NSW 
Your voice matters. Your experience in choosing where to birth matters. Your responses to our survey are a step towards advocating for what birthing families want. 

Have your say & help expand homebirth services nationally 
             
We have a game-changing, short survey live now, and would love it if you could add your voice.
Please click here to tell us about your experience accessing and planning a homebirth in your area, wherever you are in Australia.
Whether you ended up choosing a planned homebirth or not, your response matters! We want to hear from anyone who has actively considered a homebirth in the past, even if you didn't ultimately choose homebirth. We're interested in exposing the limitations and barriers to homebirth, as well as any perceived shortfalls of the hospital maternity system versus homebirth. 
We'll use the results to highlight the issues in our advocacy efforts, working towards more choice and more availability of homebirth for women and families in all parts of Australia. That's gotta be worth 10 minutes of your time, right?! 
By telling your story through surveys like this we hope to see:

• public-funded homebirth programs introduced in more hospitals across Australia
• existing public-funded homebirth programs expanded to cater to more women and babies
• medicare rebates for intrapartum care provided by Privately Practising Midwives, to make homebirth more affordable
• increased understanding and normalisation of homebirth as a safe and highly satisfying birth choice.

The survey takes no more than 10 minutes to complete and is completely confidential.
Thanks for participating, your responses are deeply valued: click here!

Claire Heenan (Media & Communications) and Kathryn Bell (Secretary & Intern supervisor)