At 19 until 21, I did my nursing training at Mona Vale District hospital in Sydney, New South Wales. I worked in a children’s intensive care unit and then as an operating theatre and recovery unit ‘Sister’, before I did my midwifery training at 25 at Royal North Shore hospital in Sydney, New South Wales. I did both my nursing and midwifery training before these courses went into University, so there was lots more work in the hospital with blocks of tuition.
During my midwifery training, I had an awakening, and I awoke to the patriarchal culture that I didn’t even know was a thing. Sure I felt the effects of that my life, but I had not questioned it that much. I was aware that women were deemed ‘less than men’ and I was very angry about that, but I didn’t know there was such thing as the patriarchal culture determining this. My midwifery training focussed on the mechanics of birth and how to serve the birth machine. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. In 1984, after I finish my midwifery training, I started an apprenticeship with one of the few homebirth midwives Sydney. I began my process of unlearning and really learning what being with woman meant.
I had my first baby in 1985, and unexpected caesarian after pushing for four hours and not being able to move my baby’s head. This birth taught me lots, especially when I took responsibility for what happened. Upon asking myself, how did this experience serve me? What did it teach me? What unravelled on my journey of self-awareness, discovery and personal growth was the work I am here to do, my mission.
My own births taught me so much, as did the women I served at the birth altar, and my dear teachers – Maggie Lecky Thompson and Jeannine Parvati Baker and my friends Shea Caplice and Sheryl Sidery with whom I set up the Group Midwifery Practice in 1989. I was involved with the politics of Midwifery in NSW, on the executive board and served as the first Publicity Officer for the Australian College of Midwives when the state midwifery association branches merged together…
I practised as a homebirth midwife (now former) for 30 years in the city to start with and then in the country when we moved there in 1993.
