Sitting in a public hospital’s antenatal waiting room feels like a cattle call. There you sit, expectant mother, full of questions surrounded by at least 30 women just like you. As you wait, questions mounting, you know you’ll be lucky to have 15 minutes with a midwife you may never see again.
When I was expecting my first son this system let me down. I was scared and every time I went to the hospital it was a different person examining me. Whenever I tried to confess my fears I was told I was being ‘silly’. But how could I not be scared of giving birth when all I was being told was what could go wrong?
The whole experience left me disempowered, anxious and honestly, alone.
If money allowed it I could go private, but knowing Australia’s high caesarean and intervention rates occur in these hospitals I was glad I couldn’t afford it. Then a colleague’s story of her obstetrician ‘booking her in’ for a c-section before he went on holidays really put me off.
Since my son’s birth I have heard many pregnancy and birth stories. As a journalist I’ve written about home birth and talked to both sides of the debate. In all the discussions I had I found women who choose homebirth to be the most informed about our maternity system.
What really worried me was a lot of them had turned away from hospitals after being poorly treated by registrars, our obstetricians of tomorrow.
Sadly, homebirth is a contentious subject in Australia. Mainstream media and the Australian Medical Association have a lot to say about it while feminists remain silent.
Arguing for (or against) birthrights are just as important as arguing for reproductive rights. Both correlate to a woman making decisions over her body, and her baby. The challenge for us now is how our current maternity system deals with this.
Midwifery spokesperson Hannah Dahlen has gone on the public record and said we are dealing with a ‘broken maternity system’. To get an idea on this you just need to look at the alarming stats in the Federal government’s Maternity Services Review.
Australia has some of the highest rates of caesarean section in the world and is second only to the United States for the highest rate of intervention during childbirth. Looking at research from Queensland you could argue there are some obstetricians making a lot of money out of low risk births.
This is not something to be proud of.
And yes, as I have been told many times, the best outcome for any birth is a healthy baby. But with the number of women identifying with birth trauma growing we can no longer just talk about mortality rates.
We need to dig deeper and broaden the debate.
Last year was a turning point in feminism in Australia. Now with gender issues like pay and reproductive rights being brought back in to the spotlight let’s not forget our birthing rights too.
About the Author: Louise Pascale
Louise began her rollercoaster of a career over 15 years ago in children’s TV. So inspired by the youngsters she went on study Film and TV production.
While at uni she prostituted herself to a global ad agency to pay the bills and upon graduation ran away to the UK. There she worked for Sky TV and Channel 4. After directing a documentary in Bali on the first terrorist attack she returned to Oz to work as a documentary and online producer.
In 2008 Louise went back to her first love, journalism. While pregnant and on maternity leave she completed her postgraduate degree and today is a freelance journalist and runs her own production company.
You can follow her on @loupascale and check out her writing at louisepascale.com.au Related Posts
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Thank you for putting this on the agenda and talking about something that I feel feminism has ignored for too long. Birth IS a feminist issue.
I’ve been a doula for six years – worked with many women most of them birthing in the hospital system. Unfortunately it isn’t uncommon for women to come away from the birth of their first baby feeling completely traumatised and alone after their experience. We can and must do more to listen to what women want, to help them get the information they need to make decisions, and to respect those decisions once they HAVE been made. There is far too much coercion and outright lying going on to a group who are extremely vulnerable and often easily frightened.
There are many fantastic OB’s and midwives trying to make a difference in this messy system and those professionals will always have my support. But honestly, some of the the things I have seen done to women, or heard said to women over the years…it would make your hair stand on end.
Our maternity system is supposed to be centred around women’s needs, but sometimes you can argue that is not the case. Women need to demand a better system and not just tolerate a ‘messy’ one. Thanks for your comment.
Talk about timing, your ears must have been burning Louise. Just yesterday I rang my OB to cancel all subsequent appointments and have my file transferred to a birthing centre. Not that I was unhappy with him at all, he was absolutely lovely and professional throughout my pregnancy but it was the very brief visit to the maternity ward that got me feeling like a sick woman being admitted for a major operation.
I have had a thankfully very uneventful pregnancy and have always wanted the best opportunity to have a natural birth but had no idea whatsoever of the options I had. I just thought – I’m pregnant, I have private health insurance, my GP said to seek out an OB – and bam, there I was. Having ventured further into this journey of pregnanthood I’ve discovered birth centres and home births as other options that had never crossed my mind and finally, just over 3 weeks till bubs arrives, I’ve found that it’s not to late to change. I spoke to the midwife at the birth centre who said that the caesarean rate at the centre was generally around 5%, 8% max. I researched the private hospital I was to attend and it was over 45%! Sure this includes elective surgeries and genuine emergencies but how about the ones where women come out of it wondering if a c-section was really necessary. The problem is, in very few circumstances, is a mother in labour going to question their midwife or OB who is the ‘expert’.
I’m not questioning anyone else’s decision on how they birth their baby. Women will do what they feel is best for their child. Mine is my choice and mine only. Not even my husband’s, although he is totally supportive.
I feel it comes down to education and empowering women to make the choices that they feel are right for them and their baby and sometimes (more often then not) trusting those instincts. I don’t know how I’ll fair at the birth centre but I do know that it’ll give me every opportunity to have the birth I feel my body was made to able to do and that I want for myself and my baby.
I wonder how many women would have made a different choice with their birth with what they know now. What information would have been invaluable to you as a first time mother?
Thanks so much Cheryl for sharing your story. It’s amazing what a bit of research can uncover. If more women did this we may actually see lower c-section rates.
When I was pregnant what would have been invaluable to me was knowing ALL of my birthing options, in and out of the system. We talk about holistic care, but really that’s what it means.
All the best for the birth.