the face of birth

Tomorrow is Adelaide's screening of the new Australian documentary The Face of Birth. I am on the committee of the Homebirth Network of SA, and we have been tirelessly working to plan for and promote this screening for the past six months. I hesitated to post this here, as I normally don't delve too deep into personal matters on this blog (something I wish I did more of), but I changed my mind after reading Jodi's post about the film earlier tonight.

I won't go into too much detail, but instead send you over to Ché and Fidel where Jodi does a much better job than I could ever do in expressing her thoughts on the film. If I was to create my own list of points from the documentary that resonated with me, it would be almost identical to Jodi's - except I would add one more: the amazing words of Jan Ireland, a well-known midwife, who said:

'We don't lose many babies in Australia; we're very lucky because we've got good nutrition and good social circumstances. But what we do lose is a lot of marriages, and a lot of relationships, and a lot of people's mental health after childbirth'.

I haven't written much on this blog about what happened nine months ago. But as a woman who planned a homebirth because I felt it was the best location for me to achieve a natural intervention-free birth, who then experienced firsthand the negatives of the current maternity system after transferring to hospital for assistance, and who then suffered birth trauma and postnatal depression, this film resonates deeply with me.

You can find a list of screenings around Australia here.