Introduction
The 30th National Homebirth Conference of Homebirth Australia [HBA] was held in Melbourne Town Hall in May 2015 titled Icons of Homebirth- Pearls of Wisdom.
...................................art work by Chrissy Butler
If time and energy permit I hope one day to expand the story even further.
My spoken presentation by its nature was a bit different to this written one and any comments or corrections would be most welcome.
Trudie de Keijzer MW: Jilly Lynch CE: Carolyn Noble CA: Henny Ligtermoet CA: Belinda Clissold CA:
Betty Campbell CE: Terri Stockdale MW: DrJohn Stevenson: Dr Peter Lucas: Carol Eliott LMW:
Pat Brodie MW: Joie van Renen LMW : Maggie Lecky Thompson MW: Mary Murphy MW: Jo Hunter MW
Geneth Frame MW: Joan Brandt MW: Edith Gosling MW: Joy Argent LMW: Jessie McCloud MW;
[MW=midwife: CE=Childbirth Educator: CA=Consumer Activist: LMW=LayMV]
Firstly a big thank you to these activists and the many hundreds of others who I could not fit in this photo; all laboured so hard to keep homebirth on the agenda.
I am sure my fellow consumers, independent midwives and Aboriginal sisters would all recall our history with variations and I hope all their stories are told one day.
Some of the Sydney Midwives of the1970’s+ Sue Sagewood, Janine Issa, Akal Kaur Khalsa, Jeanine Stevenson,.?..Maggie Lecky-Thompson
Women from Utopia, Darwin Conference 1992 .
This is a thumbnail sketch and spans over 40 years but I hope it gives some idea of our triumphs, struggles wins and losses.
The struggles wins and losses are still very fresh for me but for most of you who are reading this it was a generation or two ago but I hope it still has some relevance.
Looking back there is much to celebrate as well as regret.
I leave the learning and judgements to the reader my activist days are numbered, marching and waving banners are in the past, now for me it is down to the power of the net.
This is a personal story intertwined with the many consumer activists movements of the era.
This memoir starts in 1969 with the birth of our first daughter and rounds off in 2008 with the birth of last grandchild.
We have 3 children and 4 grandchildren all seen here with a little red wooden cube which now sits on my desk, an ever reminder of their births and so many wonderful years.
I tend to photograph everything that moves and collect any document that interests me.
My friends often comment that I’m a hoarder but that trait comes in handy at times like this.
This shot was taken in 1984. I’m filing some of that hoard or as I prefer to name it, the home birth archive, an invaluable resource given my ageing memory and new pacemaker. My childbirth journey started as my travel years ended. Our treks over 5 years in a VW Kombi included crossing North Africa and the marathon of Overland London to Bombay.
[ the later trip is now in blog form titled Overland 1966 London Bombay]
http://our-elaine.tumblr.com/
1962 near Nice France just weeks after buying the Kombi and before it was fully fitted out.
Our children describe us as original hippies but we were really earnest students studying the art and architecture of wonderful exotic places.
Back in Australia we resumed teaching and readied for parenthood. I was in no way prepared for how the birth of our first child would affect the rest of my life.
I like most of my peers had never seen a baby born and was innocent of birth practices. In those days it was all a bit ‘hush-hush’.
Like a newborn I had no idea what to expect.
I only knew the birth would be in our large very new Bankstown District Hospital with my GP Dr Abromovich.
Thirty years before, my Mum birthed me in a tiny ‘cottage hospital’ in Lakemba with the owner midwife Euphema Murphy.
and 25 years before that my grandmother had birthed her twins on the kitchen table in their Sydney suburban home in Rockdale with the family doctor who was attending his first birth!
Bruce & Florence Hord with Edna [my mum] and twins Norman & Keith.
Being used to study I was keen to prepare for this new experience but self-help Childbirth books were almost non existent.
The New Childbirth was based on the earlier work of Grantley Dick-Read and Lamaze and declared “easier childbearing through control of fear and pain” known as Pschoprophylaxis.
I thought, odd name but I’d give it a go.
The New Childbirth by Erna Wright UK 1964 Tandem Press is still in print !
The illustrated labour positions seen here are of no surprise to those of you who have birthed in the past few decades but in 1969 there was a routine and expectations about how you would give birth the hospital system was in control and the likelihood of you being able to sit up during labour or get out of bed let alone lift your newborn baby up onto your chest was remote.
As fortune would have it, my local physiotherapist Betty Campbell was conducting childbirth classes based on this book, hospital classes only prepared you for their medical routines, whereas we were learning skills to help ourselves with the aim of minimum or no unnecessary intervention.
Betty and Hunter Campbell at the CEA [childbirth Education Association] 25th anniversary in 9.9.1998 Sydney.
During the very hands on classes new mothers would come and tell their birth stories. I found it very fascinating and ultimately empowering.









