After months of suspense, the Determination defining “collaborative arrangements” was quietly signed into law by the Governor General on 16 July, without notification to stakeholders. The Determination can be downloaded from this link.
The Determination provides 4 options for collaborative arrangements. Each option requires the midwife to have some form of permission from a doctor, before a woman can receive Medicare rebates.
“This Government has failed to provide adequate support for practising midwives who are case managing expectant mothers but who are not eligible for professional indemnity to support a mother in a lawful home birth,” said Sharman Stone, Shadow Minister for the Status of Women
The peak body for midwives says some women are being refused a drug called Syntocinon, which prevents haemorrhaging after birth.
The college says it is aware of a cluster of cases in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, and accuses doctors of trying to make “political statements”.
They’re signalling that home births are outside acceptable birthing practices and thus midwives who attend home births are basically on their own.
DOCTORS, fearing they will be sued, are refusing to prescribe drugs or order tests for women who want to give birth at home, and this is forcing mothers to give birth in hospitals or putting lives at risk, midwives say.
Privately practising midwives and their patients get extra protection from today with Commonwealth Government-supported professional indemnity insurance now available.
According to our friends at Celebrity Baby Scoop, Gisele launched the site to “share her pride in being a powerful woman.” In addition to items on various topics, she discussed the home birth of her son, Benjamin — whose father is NFL star Tom Brady. Here’s what she had to say in her first blog post, “A Gift From Life”:
Gisele Bündchen is proudly showing off pictures of her 3-month-old son Benjamin on her official Web site – and the supermodel is just as open about how he’s changed her life.
“Giving birth was the most intense and life-changing experience,” Bündchen, 29, writes. “I am blessed to have been able to have a home birth surrounded by love, where I was able to feel safe. It was a powerful experience. I never felt so vulnerable but so strong at the same time.”
About 150 protesters rallied outside Sydney Federal MP Tanya Plibersek’s Surry Hills office to oppose changes to Federal Government home birth legislation.
The My Body, My Baby, My Right to Decide rally, at the Minister for the Status of Women’s office, was one of 14 to take place across Australia on Thursday last week.
After a steady 15-year decline, the percentage of U.S. babies not born in a hospital rose slightly in 2005 and remained stable in 2006, according to a government report released Wednesday.
Even so, the proportion of out-of-hospital births is still less than 1% — a far cry from the 44% in 1940, the authors write in National Vital Statistics Reports.