As a home birthing woman / family within your electorate I am so pleased to see you supporting our right to choose where and with whom we will birth our babes. Thank you for speaking out on our behalf.

Home birth CAN be just as safe IF NOT SAFER than hospital birth for low risk women with appropriately qualified (midwife) support. Pushing homebirth underground, forcing those who would choose it to go unassisted, is a VERY backwards move, especially when you look at this issue on a global scale.

Homebirth WILL NOT go away as a desired choice for some birthing women, and the (incredibly experienced and Private Practice Midwives are an essential part of our current Maternity Services options. In my opinion, they are the gold standard in Private birthing care.

Thanks Jamie for stepping up and providing this opportunity for community discussion of this issue. We are also within your electorate.

I think it is important to highlight what the vast majority, ie the hospital birthers, are loosing here.

For the Hospital Birthers:

Would you have liked to have a care provider personally follow you & your family through your whole pregnancy & postnatal period?

How about the same person, someone you hand picked for the position, interviewed even, who visited you (& your partner/family) in your own home?

How about if these visits were a relaxed (yet professional) 2 hours over a cuppa, where you could ask anything you wanted, and have it answered & discussed in as much depth as you wanted?

How many of these visits would you like, how about 14 home visits during the pregnancy then another 14 in the six weeks after birth? Wow! What sort of relationship do you think might develop over that time?

How about if you could also chat on the phone/email between visits whenever you wanted? How might that have helped with your confidence & stress levels during pregnancy and after birth as you navigated those first weeks of sleeping, feeding etc.

What if you could even have that same person do it all over again for your other pregnancies?

What if this same person could support you wherever you wanted to birth, even if you wanted to birth in a hospital?

You must be kidding right?

YES I am kidding, because this legislation will take that right away from you, a hospital birther. This legislation will make it illegal for a professional, qualified, experienced (currently registered) Independent Midwife to come to your home and provide prenatal and/or antenatal midwifery care for you.

Maybe you never thought of choosing to add this level of professional maternity care to your birth plan, maybe you didn’t even know it was available. This choice is being taken away from you & your daughters, just as it is being taken away from us.

We value this sort of care very highly!

We also like the option to have the birth at home too, unless indicated otherwise. If we go to hospital we know that our hand picked, professionally qualified & experienced Independent Midwife has invested many months, visits & hours getting to know us all very well so that we can be supported through whatever the hospital birth may entail. At hospital, and we get back home, there s/he will be, day after day, week after week as we get to know our baby & integrate the birthing experience.

ALL OF THIS will be taken away as a choice, not just attendance at the potential homebirth!

Thank you Jamie for listening, for researching this topic rather than just going with hearsay, assumptions and the status quo.

Thank you for representing the women in your electorate so valiantly.

As a Midwife in your electorate I fully support Homebirth as safe and rewarding choice for women and their families.

Thank you for being clear on the evidence and the issues.

I hope you will stand strong on our behalf, when this issue is discussed again.

It would be easy to rally a significant number of people together to meet with you on this issue or supply you with any more information you might require.

Please do your very best to ensure a womans choice to home birth in the care of supported Midwives are not left out of this very important picture. We fully supprt you in doing so.

Like you have said choice is a VERY important part of any womans wellbeing. Let us not go backwards on this one.

Thankyou for your support, All women deserve the right to make birth choices, and as a community, we need to facilitate this. Good to see our politicians supporting this issue

I have had 2 very successful homebirths. I live rurally and birth fast. For my husband to drive at 100km during kangaroo hour with a labouring woman in the car is incredibly dangerous. As our nearest hospital that accepts birthing is 200km away it is likely I would birth in the car. Home birth gave me a much safer option. I was able to travel no where and wait for a qualified, professional midwife to come to me.
We have had birthing services taken away from our local hospital and now another choice is being taken away.
I am absolutely gobsmacked that Labor is even considering such a backwards policy. Shame on you Labor! You wont be getting my vote.

As a member in your electorate Jamie I am pleased to see you open to this debate. It does not need to be medical care that women need during pregnancy, but medical and midwifery carers working together. Your electorate has a reasonable percentage of families that birth at home with independent midwives. This option that will not be available with planned legislation.

I support midwives all the way. The changes proposed are ludicrous and seriously undermine the choice for women. Talk about going backwards!!!

Thankyou for your support on this issue Jamie.

Maternity care is a very important issue for our community and not all families are having their needs met in our current system. The option of continuity of care with a midwife is not available to all in our community (despite the overwhelming research to support its benefits) and women should have the right to hand-pick thier own midwife if they are willing to seek this out (just as some do with private obstetricians).

Women and families should choose the type of environment they want to birth ... often this is an environment where they feel supported, respected and able to be in control of the decisions that arise. One where they will be informed of what is happening by a trusted professional who will be there to protect the normal process of labour and the safety of the woman and baby, providing skilled support and referral when needed if complications arise. An environment that is private and intimate to facilitate their labour and birth, and one that will give them the magical experience that they could only hope for. Whether this location is at a hospital or at home should be the woman's choice.

Research shows that homebirth for low risk women with a skilled midwife has better outcomes than hospital birth with midwives or obstetricians so surely this is a choice that should be protected and promoted in our community, rather than outlawing these skilled midwives from attending homebirth and thus putting women and babies in danger.

This issue is an ongoing one. The bandaid fix that the labour government offered last month will end in 2011- it won't fix the problem and the problem (birthing women who want the option of homebirth with a private midwife) will not go away. So in a couple of years we will have to once again fight for the rights of families in our community to have access to a service that should be thier right. Keep up your support Jamie, this is one issue that is worth working for!

We had two very succesfull homebirths, couldnt imagine it any other way. Expert midwife assisting and a physically and mentaly prepared mother in her perfect surrounds, (no fluro lights) it is a womans right to choose.