Hi Racheal, Great you've joined the list - we welcome your voice. I am a lay midwife and know many others around Australia. Come to this year's Homebirth Conference at Byron Bay and meet with us and many other devoted homebirth midwives both registered and lay,and also John Stevenson who trained many midwives in Melbourne in the 80's. Discussions about midwifery education are always interesting - Australia still has only one point of entry into midwifery, ie via nursing first, and although Direct Entry Midwifery is definitely closer and preferred, will this training still be based in the obstetric model of midwifery as we find in institutions today, or will there be a shift to well-women model which is the ideal?? Will this model of care be overseen and controlled by the medical fraternity or will midwives finally be self governing ??? Will this be based in heirachy, or wisdom?? Who knows?? The conference is called Honouring Diversity Sharing Wisdom to do exactly that - honour the diversity of all the parents who choose to birth at home and also the diversity of the care givers who support their choice.Homebirth Australia acknowledges people's right to choose where, how and with whom they give birth. Germaine Greer, our guest speaker for our conference said recently: "This has got to be insanity. We've all been taught something that is untrue; that the technology will take care of it. The whole female part of procreation seen as virtually expendable. I think that within 20 years people will be thinking of it (giving birth) as, well, on the decline. So women who want to have children naturally will appear an absurd minority; the earth mothers, and they'll be laughed at" See you there, Sue Cookson (02) 6685 6190 ---------- -- This mailing list is sponsored by ACE Graphics. Visit <http://www.acegraphics.com.au> to subscribe or unsubscribe.
