RE: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article

[Tania Smallwood]

Hi Kelly, Janet, and everyone, I’m thrilled to think that we have yet another strong woman-centred consumer advocate in Kelly, and I also admire her energy and enthusiasm.  Can we all please keep in mind that there are lots of women (and men too) who have spent a considerable amount of money, and time, dedicating their lives to exactly this already…and whether they have chosen a difficult and tedious path, or an easy and obvious one, they deserve the respect of all of us…we are all in this for the same reasons!  We all want the same thing!  This is such a multifaceted problem, it’s political, it’s historical, it’s personal for so many of us, I appeal to everyone to please, keep the big picture in mind.  We are all in this together.  We all want women to have the enlightenment to trust themselves, for midwives to be seen by the population and the Government as the most appropriate providers of maternity care to the majority of women, and for them all to have wonderful empowering births.  There are lots of things we can do to help this happen, and I think there is benefit in having the ongoing battles being fought and won over time, as well as having speed and energy pushing things forward.  I for one, think that we need to realize that if we want longevity in this fight, and given the history both here and overseas, we’re going to need it, we need to take comfort in the small wins, as well as keep in focus the larger battles.  Every woman who is touched by a positive story of birth, every woman who makes a positive change to her own situation, every woman who has a ‘better birth’ is worth acknowledging as being a small, but significant step in the right direction.  I have worked as a Registered Nurse, in Psychiatry, and also as a Midwife, and I have never gotten used to the amount of internal bickering and horizontal violence that is perpetrated by women, towards other women.  I can tell you from my experiences in these fields that Doctors do not sit around, discussing each others practice, bitching and moaning about whether they agree with someone’s philosophies.  They might be unprofessional bastards some of the time, but they are united in their common goals, and in their public persona.  As we fight internally about the best way to get women to see the light, they are there shining it brightly and the women are drawn to it clearly!  I don’t think for a minute we should, as midwives and birth activists, see ourselves as having to sell out and become an entity that has no integrity or spirit in order to get the message across.  But I do think that we all need to take a leaf out of some other professions books, and show a bit of respect to those that have gone before us, and encouragement for those that will pave the way ahead.  Eating our young is no way to carry on the cause; it just further perpetuates the fragmentation that already exists.  Let’s welcome Kelly, Janet, and everyone else who has the energy to do things a bit differently, and also keep our feet firmly planted on the ground, so we can continue to carry on getting the word out there in any way we can. Tania      From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stephen & Felicity Sent: Friday, 22 September 2006 1:09 PM To: ozmidwifery@acegraphics.com.au Subject: Re: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article   I'm glad you're having such an awakening and feeling so motivated, Kelly; it's something many of us felt and began to act on a long time ago - welcome to the club, it's populated by many decades of women who continue to work hard to heal birth in our culture - which is a long, slow battle.  We're all pretty aware of the situation and we're all working to the best of our own capacitys to improve it (some of us at no profit, by finance or publicity or otherwise, to ourselves).  Some of your suggestions have been really worthwhile and quite exciting, but I have to admit that I'm losing my enthusiasm for them amid the sea of self promotional rhetoric that accompanies them - OzMid is not a promotional tool for BellyBelly and some posts on this list related to it have felt like advertising Spam in my InBox.  I have to say I find your assumptions about Janet Fraser in particular to be offensive.  Do you actually know the totality of what Janet does in her professional and personal capacity, or the widespread and rapidly growing effect Joyous Birth is having Australia wide, both in the mainstream and otherwise? It's nothing like one woman espousing her own views to the converted, and how utterly rude to dismiss the lifework of one of your sisters as being such.  Every contribution counts and whilst I think I understand the point you're trying to make about reaching the mainstream, it's dangerous to begin tempering our message to better enable us to begin "marketing" it to the majority gratuitously - women and babies are not a market and our integrity is not for sale.  I fear the overstepping of that invisible line that would transform us into nothing too different from the Obs and Hospys - big business, marketed to the masses (for instance, in my personal experience, your forum/site needs to compromise a lot in order to appeal to the larger membership you enjoy; this results in some less than optimal advertising and advice, and the sad loss of some wonderful contributions and items.  Do the ends justify the means? That's a decision we each need to make, and your contribution is still significant, though not necessarily in the form I would personally choose for myself).  What is the point of a message reaching more people if the message has had to be diluted and perhaps changed in order to get there?  Nothing is simple and these aspects need to be considered.  It is the various voices of all of us that shed light on darker areas of the topic; some more straightforward and uncompromising contributions may seem difficult to hear but they're usually the most valuable and evidence-based in my experience, and I enjoy them thoroughly.   ----- Original Message -----     I don’t think this got through last night… Best Regards, Kelly Zantey Creator, BellyBelly.com.au Gentle Solutions From Conception to Parenthood BellyBelly Birth Support - http://www.bellybelly.com.au/birth-support -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. 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