That the majority of people are too busy to understand the complexities and evidence behind the choice to birth a baby at home doesn’t surprise me. But it never ceases to astound me how quick people are to judge women who make this choice or who, indeed, feel they have no choice. Why do people believe what some pubescent journalist fresh out of uni says when nine times out of ten the information is at best superficial, at worst down right lies? And they certainly don’t improve their reporting accuracy as they get older…

Take the case of an opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph today http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25298631-5001030,00.html.

The journalist, Fiona Connolly, claims “Home births are selfish, irresponsible, anti-reason and anti-progress.” She also has the audacity to compare birth in a poverty-stricken, war-torn Somali village with homebirth in the safe, leafy suburbs of Australia. Connolly fails to consider that women who homebirth in Australia DO have access to all the modern technology and a trained professional to assist them. Somali women in remote villages do not. I’m not really sure where the reason comes in to this argument.

What strikes me about this ill-informed piece was what was missing. What about the perinatal mortality rates of New Zealand and the UK and the Netherlands, all of which have state-sanctioned homebirth programs? Their perinatal mortality rates are not only comparable to or better than Australia’s but their intervention rates are better. Perinatal mortality rates in Australia are 10.1 per 10,000 live births. It is the same in New Zealand (despite their vastly smaller population which tends to skew statistics to look worse than they actually are). The UK’s perinatal mortality rate is 8 per 10,000 live births and the Netherlands 9 per 10,000 live births.

To support her point that all homebirthers care about are candles and home cooked meals, Connolly quotes various celebrities who have gushed over their homebirth experiences. But by pulling these quotes from the Homebirth Australia website she failed to do her homework and find out that Elle Macpherson birthed with the assistance of a private obstetrician in a birth centre. And where was the flippant quote from the great Australian thinker and journalist George Negus who’s wife Kristy was also a homebirther? Is Connolly seriously calling educated and philanthropic people like George and Kristy “selfish, irresponsible anti-reason and anti-progress?”

Another interesting nugget in Connolly’s rant is that she mistakenly believes that narcotics somehow make birth safer and that women who homebirth don’t have access to antibiotics, oxygen and oxytocic drugs. This is far from the truth. Most homebirthers are well aware of the need to obtain an oxygen tank, and oxytocic drugs from the local pharmacy prior to birth and organise this with their local GP (because midwives are prevented from prescribing these in Australia despite it being within their scope of practice). That said, most women who birth at home choose to avoid drugs and unnecessary antibiotics, not just because they want a beautiful birth experience but because they are informed and educated about the harm these can do to their babies. The fact is, we aren’t in a war torn country with no access to medical care when it is needed. Women who genuinely need antibiotics are referred by their midwife to a GP or to the hospital for treatment. But let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good homebirther-bashing.

That women have lost babies in childbirth is sad and tragic but we are not in a position to judge whether or not being at a hospital would have made any difference in any of these cases. We are also not in a position to judge whether being at home might have saved the woman who died from an amniotic fluid embolism or who’s baby’s throat was accidentally cut during surgical delivery. On mercifully rare occasions terrible things happen in childbirth in whatever environment a woman births in—be it home or hospital–but telling every woman that she should have no choice but to birth her baby in a hospital is not only irresponsible it is misogynistic and misguided.

Australia: Law et al, 2008 (AIHW)

New Zealand: NZHIS, 2006

UK: CEMACH, 2008 & NHS Information Centre 2008

Netherlands: Statline, 2008 (Statistical Yearbook 2004)

NB: It is important to note that different countries record perinatal statistics differently. The WHO standard is to report deaths from 22 weeks gestation. Most countries, however, seem to record rates from either 24 or 28 weeks. In order to present a more consistent picture, the 24 weeks has been used where possible.

I have often felt isolated from the world of motherhood, despite my immersion in it. There are rituals, and rites of passage that most mothers take for granted… like the first words your child speaks or the first outing to the community fair or visit with Santa at the local shopping mall. Our lives revolve around three full-on little boys, one of them who has been diagnosed with Autism. So life is different for us.

Being a parent of a child with Autism is not like being a parent of a child with some visible disability. My child looks normal. It’s only when another child enters his space uninvited or he opens his mouth to speak or his obsessive compulsive behaviour plays out that people see a different side to him. In the first instance, other mothers look shocked and react quite defensively when their child is hit or kicked or worse. In most cases, a quick explanation of my child’s disability suffices to diffuse the situation. In some cases it does not. I’ve had people tell me to control my child, teach him manners (like that means anything to an Autistic child) and I’ve even had a police officer threaten to arrest me for being a negligent mother because my child nearly strayed into the path of an oncoming car in a shopping centre car park. He had told me to buckle my child into our hot car while I loaded the groceries in. What he didn’t know was that my child had a compulsion to jump into the boot while I did that task and would have untangled himself from any Houdini-locked device in a flash despite my best efforts. I’ve had old ladies lecture me on the virtues of leaving my children at home while I do the grocery shopping and I’ve had people yell at my child and reduce him to a catatonic state because they misunderstood his disability for misbehaviour.

Isolation comes in many forms. When Daniel was little I had to pull him out of playgroups, activities and limit outings to manageable events. A sad day for me was being told by another mother that I should stop attending the mother’s group I helped to found in my local area because my child was too aggressive. It was tactfully put to me that my child was ‘obviously stressed and not coping’ and that maybe a smaller group would be ‘more appropriate’. She was concerned for the safety of other children–I got it–but it hurt nonetheless. We were forced out of a network of friends when I badly needed support.

Since that time I have found solace in my friendships with other mothers of Autistic children. My friend Jamie* at my sons’ school summed it up when she said: “I don’t talk to the other mothers outside class. They all sit there and compare their children’s performance and I just don’t fit in. They really don’t give a sh*t!” And that about sums up the experience of motherhood for most of us.

Last year I was privileged to get to know a small group of other mums through Autism Queensland’s (AQ) early intervention program. We met at the school gate each morning (ummm, actually it was more like a locked fortress really) and chatted while our children attempted to play with each other… or was that beat each other up?… It was hard to tell sometimes. Nevertheless, we formed a lovely supportive circle and were there to give hugs and pass the tissues when one of us inevitably was having a crap day. I miss them dearly.

Another opportunity I had to connect with other mothers in my world was at AQ’s Mother’s Camp. It was there I met my beautiful sole sister Jennifer*. At that time I was still coming to terms with and grieving over my child’s disability and many of the mothers at camp had been there done that. Jennifer was about the only person who seemed to meet me where I was at. In some ways, I felt like the other mothers tried to out do each other with their tales of woe in a “who has the most stuffed up life?” competition. Jennifer and I had long conversations about spirituality, childbirth (she was pregnant at the time), shed tears over the movie Sense and Sensibility and spent time appreciating all the little gifts that life had on offer for us.

When I was in hospital recently, Jennifer phoned me to give me some encouragement and shared that her new baby was very sick with a rare form of Leukaemia. However, she was so gracious about it and so strong. It made me want to be stronger and humbled me deeply. I can’t wait to see her again!

I am grateful for the mums and children I have come to know through my journey and grateful for the understanding that comes with experience. However, I still feel jealous of mums who can take their children out to see a show or to a fair, who can feed them regular food without worrying about an additive-induced meltdown, who can do school holiday activities without having to worry about whether or not their child will beat up some poor unsuspecting pre-schooler that happens to stray into their path and without having to worry about vigilantly watching their child all the time in case they run off into the distance, run into traffic or drown in the nearest body of water.

Is it too much to ask to want to do all those things that most mothers take for granted?

*Names changed to protect my friends’ privacy.