Permaculture and Home Birth
I’ve been catching babies as an obstetrician for a good while now, but only learning about permaculture for the past two years. Like many, I have discovered permaculture from the perspective of someone wanting tips about how to grow a few edible plants in my backyard, but have discovered that it is so much more. As I have read my way through whatever information I can get my hands on I have seen reference to home birth as fitting into the general concept of permaculture (eg David Holmgren’s Permaculture Flower) and have been thinking about why that might be.
Let me make some up front declarations first, so as not to confuse or mislead. I work in a hospital setting. My babies were born in a hospital. I have never been to a home birth either as a care provider or a support person. But I do provide “backup” for women who choose home birth and their midwives, and enjoy being able to do this. I am good friends with a handful of women who are skilled home birth midwives. So while I can’t profess a personal or professional expertise, I do think I have a passable understanding of some of the issues.
At first glance it could appear that home birth is remnant of the “alternative culture” beginnings of permaculture. One of the well known and highly respected teachers of home birth midwifery is Ina May Gaskin, who was and still is a central figure at The Farm in Tennessee, an early intentional community built around permaculture principles. But to dismiss home birth as simply part of the “hippy fringe” risks missing some important insights into the nature of birth and our relationship with it at individual and society level.
There are many reasons why birth outside of a hospital setting sits very comfortably with permaculture principles. For example:
Waste. Birth in a hospital setting generates waste, much of it plastic. The plastic clip on the baby’s umbilical cord, the plastic dish the placenta is placed in, the plastic and paper sheets placed on beds and furniture to keep them clean and so on. Caesarean birth generates a vast amount of waste – in my hospital it is usual that 5 garbage bags would be filled with plastic and paper for a single birth. Birth at home can generate virtually no waste at all. Even the placenta can be used as an input somewhere else.
Use of nonrenewable resources. Electricity is needed to power the multiplicity of machines that go “ping”.
Much of the sterile equipment that used to be washed and used again is now designated for single use and thrown out, only to have to be manufactured again for the next woman. Disposable nappies are used as routine in hospitals. Lots of water is used to wash hands, linen, and to steam sterilize equipment. If you are fortunate enough to have access to it in your chosen hospital, it’ll also fill the bath you will birth in. At home you could divert the water from your birth pool to your fruit trees instead of sending it down the municipal drain.
Use of local resources. Australia in particular is seeing small maternity units close around the country as financial expediency dictates centralized services (PDF). Keep a local midwife, or team of midwives, skilled and gainfully employed in your local area by utilizing their skills to attend home births. In the post Peak Oil period this knowledge and skill may well be vital to the ongoing success of local communities.
Integration not segregation. Hospital birth imposes institutional rules on women and their families – visiting hours for example. This is done to meet the needs of the institution, not the new family, and serves to isolate them from the community that they will need to support them through the often challenging early days of parenting. At home a strong community spirit can be fostered more easily.
Breastfeeding. Feeding a baby at the breast is an incredibly powerful force for good. It avoids the risk of plastic bottles containing dubious chemicals or contaminated infant formula. The health advantages are substantial. The rate of successful breastfeeding is arguably higher amongst home born babies compared with hospital born babies.
Birth is an intensely private and personal experience. How we give birth, and how we are born, matter deeply in ways that we are only just beginning to understand. I am in no way suggesting that to choose not to give birth at home is to “let down the side” for permaculture. This is a decision that only the woman and those closest to her have the right to make. Where you choose to give birth should be a conscious deliberate choice, and society should support a woman’s choice to birth at home in safety and dignity.
Thanks for this. Great article. An eye opener on waste generated in an institutionalised environment. I am all for home birth, and choice. Always have.
Awesome Kirsten – a fabulous article – well done.
Great article Kirsten. How I wish there were more O&Gs like you in our hospitals! Can you get into Ted Weaver’s ear and get these sorts of issues on the agenda in relation to the national (home birth) maternity debacle? There is so much more at stake than the few fear driven arguments discussed in the home birth debate.
An insightful and true overview of the benefits to the family and the enviournment. By making our homes a place of peacefulness and safety, it makes a perfect place to birth a child, and also adds to the harmony of the home. Concsious decision making is all I am suggesting in every action we take. There is no right way to live our lives, but having and making choices leads to personal freedom. Happy gardening and birthing!
Both my children were born at home and it is the most empowering thing I have ever done.To watch my partner progress through labour in our own surroundings with our fantastic midwife was – words cannot explain at least not mine ,I was going to say magical but it was not it was natural perhaps supernatural.
Here in the Netherlands 30% of the babies are born at home.
Most expecting mothers go to a midwife (can be a man as well, by the way) for the regular check-ups. In case of complications the midwife sends the mother to hospital.
But if everything goes well, the mother can choose between 2 places to give birth: In hospital, under the supervision of the midwife or at home.
At home there are many ways to give birth: On the bed, a special stool or even in bath.That was what I did with my youngest child. We had a special oval bath placed in the living room.
It was the easiest and most relaxed childbirth I had of all. Before I gave birth to my eldest in hospital with the midwife and to twins in a clinical setting, so I can compare the different situations.
Now a critical note: As women tend to get older when giving birth (30 years with their first child here in Holland), there a more complications. So it’s good to have a medical care in the vicinity as a back-up. Here that’s easy. Because The Netherlands is such a tiny, crowded country with hospitals within 30 min. drive everywhere, we can maintain this system safely.
Our second little girl was born at home. One of those great memories. One of her first and favourite words is ‘flower’
The Farm in Minnesota –Got that wrong
Thank you all for the feedback.
I’m jealous Marijtje – The Netherlands is very much a country that Australian midwives aspire to following. The tyranny of distance is an issue for Australia of course. Even in capital cities it is unusual to be less than 30 mins from a maternity hospital!
Ted Weaver is the current President of the Australian College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, but finishes his term soon. I know Ted personally and know that he has tried very hard to steer the College on a course towards working more collaboratively with midwives. Unfortunately there is much paranoia and many vested interests that get in the way.
Hopefully by changing the way we train midwives and doctors we can start to break down some of the barriers between our respective professions and put women back as the central focus.
One of the many reasons my wife decided to have a home birth was the way doctors tend to treat pregnant women. She felt she was being treated like a patient (as in a sick person) rather than a woman doing the normal healthy thing that women do.
Having just welcomed my third child,and having experienced hospital and home births,the happy medium was found when we delivered in a birthing suite.This is an area within a hospital that offers a holistic environment,birth bath,privacy ,trained midwife.We created a birth plan and knew that if complications were to arise that we have the support of a fully equipped modern hospital to deal with this crisis.Fortunately this was not the case and we were back home within four hours of delivery.A visiting midwife arrived the next morning to check on us all.Minimal interference is best for baby best for mum.
Well spotted Gerald – it is Tennessee. I’m geographically challenged at times!
Great article Kirsten, sharing on : )
These are things I have often pondered and thought about wrting about. I birthed at home and then got into permaculture and work in a hospital maternity setting and see the incredible amount of waste generated (dont forget to mention the mountain of gloves). I would like to attend homebirths but with the new collaborative agreements and insurance reaquirements it is not cost effective when only a few women want to have homebirths in the area where I live. What women need is a supportive community of women that support homebirth as a intelligent decision. I fear the skills of our hospital colleagues rely too much on technology and the machines that go ping. I would like to hear your thoughts on homebirth and peak oil and decentralisation of communities and resources that will follow. Do you think that you could do more to support homebirth midwives ? Do you enter into collaborative agreements ?
“What women need is a supportive community of women that support homebirth as a intelligent decision.”
Yes please! Even just a community that supports midwife led care, normal birth and breastfeeding would be a large paradigm shift from where we are.
I’m presuming that you are working in maternity care femme – so you’ll know that “collaboration” is currently a very politically loaded term. I think that deserves a whole new article on it’s own. I’m very comfortable working with the midwives that I know to provide them and the women in their care with advice and treatment when needed. That’s my version of collaboration. I only get asked to do this a few times a year, and I could do more if the demand was there.
Thankyou Kirsten,
I am a vet into permaculture and homebirth and can assure you that both my jackfuit and bananas have thrived on the water through which my beautiful daughters were born ( the bananas really went into superfruit mode).
In the NT we have 3 maternity units for a place nearly as big as Qld – the social and environmental waste of flying hundreds of healthy pregnant women around each year to birth is tragic. And here attended homebirth in these remote areas is illegal! Send Ted a niggle from the NT PLEAZZE. Thanks
Thank you Kirsten for your well researched, honest and thoughtful article. The homebirth movement in Australia was very much grounded in the roots of and understanding our ecological footprint in the 1970’s-1990’s. For some reason we have gone way off course over the last 10 years – often in the name of becoming more mainstream. In the move to manufacture so called ‘midwifery models of care’ – many of our own have become OVERLY obsessed with governance and clinical guidelines as the most important aspect of birth care. Increasingly running scare campaigns that have contributed to the situation where birth at home, is rapidly becoming another hospital managed machine.
During this time many of our own in the cause have in the name of becoming more mainstream also sacrificed our strong commitment to ‘care at birth and care of the earth’, essentially ignoring our elders ways and powerful birth knowledge. A typical example is the selling of women’s birth rights and ways of birthing in exchange for publicly funded maternity services (at home, birth centre or hospital). Trade displays conducted at birth and midwifery conferences are full of plastic crap, including those from the now successful multi million dollar multinational disposable nappy industry. There was a time where our ethical principles would have never been compromised.
It has as you suggest been too simplistic to discard women’s conscious ways of birthing with catchcries such as ‘we are just a bunch of hippies’. My view is that in order to reclaim our knowledge and understanding of birth – we must reconnect with our care for the earth and not be put off by those who are only interested in protecting their turf.
Permaculture principles are an excellent avenue for reform … and reconnecting. My heartfelt thanks to you Kirsten for being a ‘light’ in our darkness. The only way out is in. And the path to saving midwifery, birth knowledge and women’s human and birth rights is the path back through our connection to country & earth.
I think there should not be this dichotomy: hipermedicalised birth at the hospital or a physiological and respectful birth at home.
Women have the right to received the best medical attention, also within the hospital, if they want to give birth there. Many of the “medical“ ??? practices (inmobilisation, oxytocin, episiotomy….) at the hospital are scientifically proved to be harmful if unnecessary, only sustained by myths, beliefs and a pathological need from the part of the institutions to control, control women and control nature, all in one package.
As for the similarities between industrialized agriculture and industrialized birth, there is an interesting book: the farmer and the obstetrician, by Dr. Michel Odent. Both are sustained by the same mentality.