I just love going to midwifery conferences as the women are always so down-to-earth and just gorgeous to be around. So I was super excited and chuffed to be asked to go and speak at the International Day of the Midwife Conference 2016. It was such an honour to be standing alongside the likes of these wonderful women who have contributed so much to the birthing realm.
L-R: Inny Slade, Sunae Reilly, Bronwyn Moir, Sarah Buckley, Rhea Dempsey, Rebecca Mar Young and Sue Cookson
Here we all are together at the end of the day… Inny and Sunae who organised the conference were awesome – and then there’s the lovely Bronwyn from the Birth House in Lismore – she’s doing incredible things up there for women in terms of providing a safe space for natural birth and is building such a warm community there and providing so much support for the women in her care.
Next is Sarah Buckley. Her presentation on the hormones of birth was fascinating and captivating to say the least. My favourite take-home images and info were female elephants forming a circle around the birthing mother whilst she sways and they sway and they lay their trunks on her and stroke her. Such a powerful image for a beautifully supported birth. I enjoyed learning about the incredible hormones more deeply, especially the love drug oxytocin and its receptors and that link to labour and why augmentation of labour may not work. For some reason I love learning about how other mammals give birth and learning that dolphins have dolphin midwives was super cool. I have so much more info in my toolkit now to tell you about when you come in. Her other important take-home message was that mothers need to feel private, safe and unobserved, and if we could provide that for all birthing mothers then research shows our outcomes would be very different to what they are now, they’d be better for mums and babies. Though I’ve read and listened to Sarah many times, I always learn more as there is so much detail and depth to the hormonal processes and they fascinate me.
Rhea Dempsey from Birthing Wisdom shared just that – over 40 years of her wisdom into why and how things have changed and how important it is to swing the pendulum back the other way. Her presentation was engaging and passionate. She really fired up the room and gave the student midwives, who were feeling a bit of mid-semester lull, the mojo to keep on going because at the end of the day, if you can help a woman to have a beautiful birth that she feels good about, then it’s a success.
Then it was my turn. I spoke about how radical acupressure can be during a birth. I’ve used it myself successfully twice … used it on others and I’ve heard so many stories from midwives who we have taught as testament to that fact. It is a great technique to be able to slip into any midwifery practice which is why it’s so cool. There aren’t many techniques you’re allowed to do without asking and getting them signed off on when you’re at a tertiary hospital. But a bit of pressing on a certain point can amazingly go a loooooong way to calming a mum when she’s freaking out or minimising contraction pain or helping her contractions to become more powerful. It’s pretty cool and if I’m honest, also super weird that it works. Hey I grew up here too – I may have learnt Chinese medicine and I do love and understand Eastern philosophy now but it is so incredibly different to the way we are brought up to think.
The final presentation was from Sue Cookson. It was a warm account of her time as a home birth midwife and she had many incredible stories to tell. She spoke of the need for women to be able to birth in the place they felt was the safest for them.
The day filled me with a lot of oxytocin – that wonderful love drug – and a bit of adrenaline right before my talk. I hope you can also take something away from my little wrap up and look forward to seeing you in clinic soon to discuss how oxytocin isn’t just great for birth but also for depression, anxiety, heart problems, immunity and so much more.
Sarah Buckley and Rhea Dempsey feature in our Bumps Births Babies holistic health conference for women. Instant access, yours to keep forever.
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