A Defining Moment for Home Birth
Nationwide - Quite appropriately, Home Birth Awareness Week 2012 starts on Labour Day, October 22. For Home Birth
Aotearoa (HBA), the national organisation representing New Zealand’s home birth groups, this Home Birth Awareness Week
will see whanau and supporters all over the country “wearing” their home birth heart with the launch of HBA’s first line
of limited edition t-shirts. The t-shirts feature two winning designs from an online contest, with profits going to
support the volunteer work within the regional home birth groups all over Aotearoa.
For Home Birth Aotearoa this brings an opportunity to continue asserting positive home birth awareness in our nation.
This year has seen HBA bring two international home birth documentary films, The Face of Birth and Freedom for Birth to
New Zealand shores: “Both films have provided a platform from which to reflect on how New Zealand’s maternity system and
birth culture sits within what currently exists globally” says Mrs Correa. “As one of the few western nations providing
for women’s rights to choose their place of birth, we are very proud to proactively promote home birth in our
communities” she says.
One of the limited edition t-shirts features a modest but poignant dictionary definition on its front:
“home/hōm/n: where babies are born”
“It’s as simple as that” says Mrs Correa. “Most women who choose to birth at home view pregnancy and birth as a normal
and healthy state of being” she says. “And Home Birth Aotearoa sees uninterrupted, low-intervention birth at home as the
best way to ensure the full potential of the birth process. Being self-confident is synonymous with making healthy
choices; the value of that level of empowerment to parents and whanau as they begin their journey to parenting, cannot
be underestimated,” says Mrs Correa.
Contrary to this view, is the widely accepted notion that all birth is risky and traumatic.
“Our birth culture has eroded to the point where a belief exists that risk is the defining factor of our journeys
through pregnancy and birth. The result of which, sees women approaching pregnancy and birth feeling physically and
socially vulnerable – needlessly at ‘risk’, through the stages of the process.”
Home Birth Aotearoa’s stance is that the perceived risk, promoted through a diminished birth culture, does not
accurately reflect the lived reality of the majority of women in Aotearoa – healthy, well women, carrying healthy, well
babies, who can be born at home.
“What are the consequences to our communities that our healthy women have been raised within a birth culture that
actively discourages having the self-confidence to trust our innate ability to grow, carry and birth our babies? Who is
counteracting this and who is helping women to believe in their own wellness?” Mrs Correa asks.
She adds that, “through these, high-impact t-shirts, we envisage home birth whanau confidently stepping out into their
communities, doing no less than wearing their empowered choice over their hearts”. Home Birth Aotearoa recognises the
ripple effect of an empowered birth choice: “It goes beyond the experience itself. The basic act of sharing home birth
experiences, knowledge and choices empowers us all at an individual, community, national and international level. This
is the simple gravity of birth and of human experience” she says.
Home Birth Awareness Week 2012:
· Commences from October 22 – October 28
· T-shirts are available for purchase from regional home birth groups nationwide until the end of November
· See www.homebirth.org.nz for your local group details and for information on home birth, and Home Birth Aotearoa
ends