Midwives ‘deterred’

Press, 7 May 1984, Page 5

Midwives ‘deterred’

Low wages meant that not enough domiciliary midwives were attracted to cope with the demand for home births in New Zealand, said Mrs Alison Locke, the co-ordinator of the Christchurch Home Birth Association,, yesterday. Mrs Locke said that members of the New Zealand Home Birth Association, which held its annual conference in Christchurch during the week-end, planned to approach the Government to lobby for a realistic rise in the domiciliary midwife’s benefit. Association members agreed that parents had the right to choose the place and type of birth they wanted, but that right included the responsibility to choose the safest alternative for baby and mother, and to plan and prepare adequately for it. Although there was sympathy for those parents who wished to have a home birth but lived in areas where there was no domiciliary midwife or doctor available,

unattended home births were not condoned, said Mrs Locke.

Many areas in New Zealand lacked the facilities for home births or had inadequate facilities, she said. In Auckland there were two domiciliary midwives, but up to five women a week who wanted home births were turned away. In the Waikato there were no midwives. An advocate of controversial water births, Mrs Estelle Myers, was not given time to speak at the conference. Mrs Myers had approached the association as late as Thursday to ask if she could speak on water births, Mrs Locke said. The matter was put to the association’s members who decided not to give her time, partly because the conference was running to a tight schedule, and also because the coverage of water births in the past had reflected back on the association and it was reluctant to let that happen again. The association sought to promote safe and responsible home births.