GFOM attends DONA conference

Thank you to DONA International who invited GA Friends of Midwives to set up a booth at the 15th Annual DONA International Conference in Atlanta this weekend! Today I collected about ten more signatures from Georgia woman who want to donate their time and energy to the GFOM cause. I talked with countless doulas, a couple of midwives and even a mom or two who had a homebirth in Georgia several years ago about GFOM's efforts to increase access to midwives in the home setting. We shared our outrage about how women's choices in childbirth are dwindling away as now even nurse midwives are struggling to practice even inside hospitals! Keynote speakers this year included Dr. Bob Sears, Penny Simkin (author of Pregnancy, Childbirth & the Newborn), Marshall & Phyllis Klaus (authors of Your Amazing Newborn) and Suzanne Arms (author of Immaculate Deception). I attended a breakout session given by Suzanne Arms with http://www.birthingthefuture.com/ called "Birth & the Mother-Baby Bond." Suzanne's talk was so powerful, many of us were moved to tears as we heard her say things like, "Every time a baby is born, there is another chance we have to turn the missles around and end the war."
Is homebirth not the way to end the war on women's bodies, the war on medicalized childbirth, the war on skyrocketing healthcare costs that has not much to show for it but sicker babies and mothers? We who support legal access to homebirth midwives, we who give birth at home are the ones who are truly protecting the normalcy of birth. As Suzanne said, we are one quarter of one percent who are protecting the normalcy of birth. And with each normal birth, we pass on a legacy to our children of normal birth. Even as the culture we live in supports medicalized childbirth, our culture cannot survive if we continue to treat mothers and babies the way they are treated in a medical setting.
Those of us who choose homebirth do so for a myriad of reasons. Perhaps one of the most crucial reasons is so that we can stay with our babies after they're born. At a homebirth, there is no separation, no meddling, no unnecessary anything. In fact I spoke with a CPM today who spoke of the husband of one of her recent clients who gave birth at home after having given birth in a hosptial the first time around. The dad wondered why the midwife didn't take the baby from the mother to measure it, weigh it, blah blah blah. When was she going to do all that stuff? In the hospital, it had happened immediately. The midwife reassured him that it would all be done in time, but there was no reason to meddle and that the most important thing she could do at that moment was to keep the baby with his mama. Period. It's the simplist thing really, that has the most significant impact on that baby's feeling of security and that mother's feeling of empowerment. I can meet my baby's needs. Touch it. Sniff it. Taste it. I am enough for my baby. I am exactly what it needs.

Look for a list of ways you can volunteer to help GFOM! We still need postage for mailing out invitations to GA midwives to the High Tea during BOLD next month. We still need acvocacy stuff to sell- t shirts, bumber stickers, etc. We need you to come help us set up for an event or stay late and help us clean up. For more on BOLD, go to http://www.boldatlanta.org/ See you there!