Sasa - that was another aspect that got to me, about the state of Oz maternity services...there is absolutely NO evidence that says Australia is even in the top 5 countries for giving birth in safety! It's not just Pesce, it's a lot of Labor pollies spinning out this blatant mistruth. It is simply NOT true. I'm not saying it's a terrible place to give birth, but it's not the best by a long shot. The c-section rate, for one, belies this all by itself. Not to mention other measures of good outcomes (breastfeeding initiation and retention rates, PND outcomes, infant wellbeing beyond the post-partum period etc) that indicate a country with a good maternity service. It's either deluded self-belief or a bald-faced lie. Sadly, though, so many people just accept it as truth and Pesce knows this. He knows it because his profession is based on paying the OB and trusting what that person says - in many cases, disengaging from instinct and paying someone else to use theirs instead.
Why not interview someone like Dr Peter Lucas, who must be the last remaining GP obs who attends homebirths in Melbourne? As a medico, wouldn't he provide more 'balance'? I guess they just needed to have people 'for' and 'against' and not get anyone who transcended perceived boundaries...maybe they think viewers can't handle true balance.
Mayaness, that's exactly what I meant, they should have had a professional on the other side of the argument, too. I found that the argument could have been perceived as "hospital birth is safe but clinical while HB is very dangerous, but more enjoyable" which plays quite nicely into the hands of those who say that HB is a selfish desire of some women who put their own "experience" above their baby's safety. Many people believe what the authority figure says without questioning it, unfortunately. Which is how we got to this state of affairs in the first place.
And although I can't seem to find those stats, I was under the impression that even in regards to maternal and infant mortality there were quite a few countries (like Japan) that had better stats than Australia.
Absolutely! Talk to someone who is a trained Dr but still knows something about homebirth! Someone like Andrew Bisits who's the head OB at a hospital which offers homebirthing services.
Never ceases to amaze me that accusation of wanting a HB for 'selfish' reasons! Why else do women have epidurals (in the cases where it's not medically necessary) and pain relief? For themselves - it's not a decision made with the concerns about effects on the newborn taken into consideration, is it?
Was it Pesce in that Senate hearing who said the 'downside' to HB is that women can't access pain relief drugs? If it wasn't him (could have been a Labor MP)it was someone else that week who said it and I laughed so much at the arrogance of that statement! We're 'selfish' then, because we value this way of our children coming into the world and being at our own hormonal optimum to receive that child. Why would a woman choose to ignore the pain relief drugs that men so thoughtfully invented and used to enforce upon birthing women in hospitals? Geez, we must be so shortsighted!
Oh, well, these issues can't ever be covered in a short piece on commercial TV. I'm just glad they had Anna's story with the good outcome, instead of fishing for a bad Australian outcome.
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