By Janet Fraser

My partner was one of the best things about the homebirth of our daughter last year. He was constant, loving, patient and present when required. He held me, nurtured me, parented our other child, cooked food for us all, did stuff with the birth pool and was all round great! Of course he’s like that in our lives generally, does 95% of the shopping, does all the parenting he can do given his lack of breasts and sees home maintenance as just something that is done by ablebodied, functioning adults. So when I hear women talking about the lack of support they have from partners in their birthing times, I’m also seeing women who lack support at other times. Most women lack the kind of support that enables them to truly flourish. We are overworked and undervalued and rarely nurtured by other adults, especially partners.

Think of the many women you probably know who decide that they want to birth their baby at home. For some it’s after previous trauma, for some it’s a great pull towards the familiar, some women just research birth and decide that way. How few of us say to our partners that we are interested in birthing at home and receive a great response? Many of us have partners who refuse to read or perform their own research but who somehow feel they have the right to decide for us how and where we will birth. I’m telling you, no one but me has to live with the scars on my body and soul from birthing if it goes poorly and therefore no one but me will be making that decision. It is however, such a reflection of women’s more general status that we often accept someone else making that vital decision as if it is not ours to make. For these reasons we cannot separate birth from women’s lives but must support women to empower themselves in their lives more generally and then let it flow naturally towards birth.

Of course the partners who are supportive make a birth story so great to read, don’t they? Those who love us, putting birth first, holding our space, supporting us and working hard with us as we birth are performing something so wonderful. In fact, being at a birth always seems like such a gift to me that it is those with the woman who are really receiving the gift of being present through such a magnificent event.  Perhaps if more partners realized the immense good fortune that is theirs in being present at a birth, they’d be keener on it. I have yet to meet a person who hasn’t had any doubts they had utterly washed away when they’ve seen their partner as a birthing goddess in full flight! Some of the most passionate homebirth advocates I know will never be pregnant or give birth but they are partners of birthing women, and not just for birth, but for life.