still buzzing from last night. Oxytocin flowing. A room filled with birth nerds alike - doulas, midwives, doctors, allied health practitioners, parents and parents to be.
Thank you @nurturedbirthmelbourne for hosting this beautiful film and to @rheadempseybirth @drnatalieelphinstone and @momooscar for leading the rich discussion following the screening 🙏
The highlights and my take homes:
➡️ Hospitals provide many women with a sense of security in birth, but this does not mean they are emotionally or spiritually safe.
➡️ The right to choose is everything. How or where a woman gives birth isn't what makes her experience positive. Feeling seen, held, heard, loved and in control of the decisions made is what matters.
➡️ What I thought was a Western World issue; the over medicalisation of birth is actually a worldwide problem. And largely impacted by colonisation. We have lost our inner knowing, our deep innate wisdom to trust in ourselves, our bodies and our babies.
➡️ Endogenous oxytocin is under threat. And the impact is beyond what we probably understand; playing out in our connections, relationships, empathy, love, attachments, how we parent our little ones, and then how they go on to birth and parent the next generation.
➡️ Despite the "heaviness" of where we are currently at in our maternity care system, I feel that the tide is turning. Women are coming back to what once was. Going back to ancestral ways. Feeling into that intuition. Connecting into themselves and their babies. Speaking out and wanting more. Taking ownership of what belongs to them. Because birth matters.
And imagine the ripple effect of that.
"Heal the Earth, one birth at a time " - Jeannine Parvati Baker