Baby born home, alone

Happy Family (mother) Nichole Lee-Yidaki father Focus Yidaki and 3 week old Aquil Yidaki of Main Arm choose to have unqualified assisted home birth.

Jay Cronan

NICHOLE Lee-Yidaki's dream of giving birth to her baby at home came a little too late for the Northern Rivers' small home-birth industry.

So she decided to go it alone.

When the Federal Government last year tightened insurance regulations around home-birth midwives, the industry warned it risked opening the way for “free-birthers” – women who chose to bear their babies at home regardless of whether they had a midwife to help them.

The changes make it impossible for home-birth midwives to get medical indemnity insurance and effectively ban them from overseeing births at women's homes.

Ms Lee-Yidaki said she would have preferred to have a midwife to help welcome her son, Aquil, into the world in the kitchen of her Main Arm home two-and-a-half weeks ago, but she had no regrets about choosing “free-birthing” over a hospital birth.

Aquil was Ms Lee-Yidaki's third child and the first born outside of a hospital.

“I wanted to have my second child at home, but I didn't have a very good support network,” she said.

“This time I did and my partner was quite supportive and this has been the best birth out of the whole three by far.”

Ms Lee-Yidaki was helped through the birth by a doula – a professional supporter – but without a midwife because it has become nigh-on impossible to get a home-birth midwife on the Northern Rivers since legal changes last year made it almost impossible for them to operate.

Maternity Coalition Northern Rivers branch president Sally Cusack said there remained a couple of hardy midwives operating on the Northern Rivers without the benefit of insurance.

However in most cases mums could only get a private midwife to look after them before and after labour, but not through the birth itself.

In a few cases, hospitals in NSW, such as St George Hospital in Sydney, ran publicly-funded home-birth programs that allowed mums-to-be the option of having their baby at home with the help of a midwife and the oversight of an obstetrician.

However no comparable program is available on the Northern Rivers.

University of Technology Sydney midwifery professor Caroline Homer warned in 2009 “free-birthing” would be the “worst-case scenario” resulting from the Federal Government's legal changes.

Ms Lee-Yidaki's “worst-case scenario” was being unable to give birth at home.

Ms Cusack said it was a choice woman should be able to make, and they should be able to make it with the back-up of a professional midwife.