Janet Fraser

I am a 25 year old married woman, of Irish ancestry, living what most would see as a very conventional life – we own our home, both work in corporate jobs, drive European cars.  So, of course, people fall of their chairs in disbelief that someone as ‘normal’ as me would want a ‘hippie’ birth.

So.  With all that I have written, I imagine that it is abundantly clear why I will choose a home birth.  I just hope that I am able to do this legally, with an experienced midwife of my choosing there to support me through the beautiful event.

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I have a bachelor of arts, with honours in political science. I’m a white, married, heterosexual. I am the mother of one homeborn daughter. She was born shortly after my 25th birthday, in the presence of her father and two doulas. Her siblings (of which we hope to have four) will be born at home as well.

I knew that homebirth was for me before I knew who would father my children! I had an interest in motherhood and reproduction and in particular feminist studies of these experiences. During my studies I found a wonderful homebirth community of which I became a part. I couldn’t imagine birthing in a hospital. My energy would be diverted from the work my body was doing to struggling against protocol and staff interests. I wanted to be free to do what felt right in the moment, to lose myself to birth and I could not do that in a clinical environment where the threat of intervention loomed.

At first I assumed that I, like most homebirthers, would hire a skilled midwife to attend me during birth “just in case” something went wrong. But when my partner and I started trying to conceive I realised that I was not comfortable with the idea of having any medical professionals in my birth space. We chose to homebirth without a midwife (freebirth) before our child was conceived. I was concerned that my focus would be on the midwife and “what ifs” should I homebirth with a midwife. I wanted to let go of my fears and focus on nothing but what my body was telling me in the moment.

My partner was very pro-freebirth. His main concern was that a midwife might suggest an unnecessary transfer to hospital, as we heard this had happened to others. We both agreed that no one should have the power to use the “H” word (hospital) in the birth space except for me: the birthing woman. Instead we hired two doulas (non-medical birth attendants) to wait on us. I had no examinations or tests performed on me while I laboured.

We definitely made the right choice. I experienced a 59 hour posterior labour in the comfort of my home. There was no need to rush. There was no threat of augmentation or caesarean, which I certainly would have ended up with had I been in the hospital system (a friend had a labour similar to mine at my local hospital and she was allowed 20 hours, then cut open, her baby and her birth taken from her).

My partner and our doulas worked in shifts to be by my side: massaging me, hand feeding me grapes like an Egyptian Queen, offering me water, holding heat packs to my back, whispering words of encouragement. My partner was a wonderful presence. When he held me I felt the pain of my labour decrease. He would whisper in my ear “you’re doing it”, never “you can do it”, every time he said it I felt so loved, my hard work acknowledged and I felt powerful!

It was the most intimate experience for us. My favourite memories from the birth were of my partner and I, alone, swaying in one anothers’ arms in our candlelit lounge room. My partner was such a perfect doula to me that we plan not to hire doulas next time.

After the birth I rang my father to let him know his granddaughter had been born. He was so thrilled, he told me he was excited not just about another addition to our family, but that I had got the birth I had prepared for. We realised that not only was I the first to homebirth as far back as we could remember, but I was the first to have a drug free birth as well.

At the time of the birth I was a full time student living on a scholarship and my partner’s income. My partner was on a $40K per annum salary. We paid for our homebirth by using the lump sum “baby bonus” the Australian government was offering at the time. Our doulas patiently waited for months after the birth to receive payment, for which we were really grateful. It cost us approximately $2000. In future, if we were going to hire people to attend one of my homebirths we would pay them in installments from the first meeting in early pregnancy until the last postpartum visit to avoid owing money months after the birth.
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You can read the full story of my daughter’s home/water/lotus birth (complete with photos and links to articles and sites about birth) here: http://harrietsfreebirth.blogspot.com

I live in Brisbane, I identify as a white Australian, I am married, a stay at home parent and I have had one homebirth. I chose to birth at home because that is where I felt the most comfortable, safest, where I felt I would be truly sovereign, and where I could bond with my new baby uninterrupted.

My homebirth was my first birth (I was 28) and I plan to homebirth future babies. We don’t have publicly funded homebirth in Australia so we paid the nearly $4000 out of our own pocket to have an independent midwife in attendance.

I’ve not experienced birth trauma, caesarean, nor any variation of normal such as breech. My homebirth was very straightforward. My mother had all her children by caesarean (which she hated), my grandmothers birthed in hospitals, and one of my grandmothers was born at home. Everyone else in my family births in hospital (so far!).