The Baby Dreaming Tree
Our family has been embracing our adventure of the moment, living on a small Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Bulman is a special place, with kind and generous people, an abundance of bush tucker, scenic countryside and secret waterholes. My husband Peter is the secondary school teacher in a two-teacher school. My sons Kai and Taj and I are here to learn and grow from the experience alongside him.
The locals had warmly welcomed us. A couple of months after arriving we were invited on a camping trip to Baghetti outstation to visit sacred sites and burial grounds. We were honoured to be asked and the experience was humbling. Several weeks after returning from the camping trip I had the sensation I was pregnant and my womanly intuition proved right. It was definitely quite a surprise though!
When I told one of the elders, Annette, who had accompanied us on our trip, she burst out with delight that (unbeknownst to us) we had been camping under the Baby Dreaming tree! So our child’s life would forever be tied to the land of her conception and its people. Annette spoke of the importance of the baby to connect with the land and to learn about her ‘country’ when she was older.
So we were pregnant and living remotely, with the closest town of Katherine being four hours drive on a gravel track that is often impassable in the wet season. Two nurses lived in the community and a doctor flew in once a week. What were our options and preferences for birth? We had a wonderful birth in hospital with Kai and a beautiful waterbirth at home with Taj. Being at home and birthing was awesome, and it would be our goal with this baby.
After discussion with the nurses, although they were considerate, we realised that we would not have support from them for a homebirth in the community. We contemplated an unassisted homebirth and had complete confidence in it, but ultimately decided against it because we wanted to be in a supportive, loving environment, sharing the beauty of the event with like-minded others.
Having a homebirth elsewhere also meant that Peter would have three weeks off, whereas if we had stayed on the community Peter would have worked up until the birth and only had a week off! We decided that we’d go to Darwin where homebirth was supported by the government and where there was a community of homebirthing mammas and their support networks.
We spent the summer school holidays in Darwin getting to know our lovely homebirth midwife, Lynette, and thinking about where our birth would be.
The baby was due at the end of March 2007, in the midst of the wet season. We decided to rent a small, quaint cottage with a huge verandah for three weeks in March/April. It was our intention to have the baby outside on the verandah in a birthing pool. Our excitement mounted as the weeks passed and our pride at the swelling of my belly was palpable.
There were a few more dilemmas though before we could concentrate on the birth. How would we get to Darwin? We wanted to drive so that we would have our car to use even though on the wet roads we’d be lucky if it took us eight hours to get there. Everyone thought we were crazy. ‘What if you give birth in the car on the way in the middle of nowhere?!’ Both of our sons were born around one week ‘late’ so I was confident the same would happen with this baby. And Peter had some lessons from Lynette on what to do if I went into labour during our trip so we figured our bases were covered.
The policy at Bulman, and many other remote Aboriginal communities, is that pregnant women are flown out of the community at 37 weeks, stay in a hostel until they’re in labour, when they are transferred to hospital to give birth—a vastly different birthing experience to that of earlier last century.
It is disempowering for these women, taken from the incredible support networks within the community to birth in a foreign place. I was encouraged more than once to get on a plane at 37+ weeks, but that seemed ridiculous to us. The nurses obviously feared that our plan to drive to Darwin would be thwarted by flooded roads and we would have the baby there.
We didn’t have a backup plan, should the roads be impassable, and as it neared closer to my due date, we began to realise we’d need one. The roads were flooded, but we kept hoping. We weren’t sure how to get to Darwin otherwise; I could have been flown from the community to town, but not with my family. So that was out of the question because we were in this together. Eventually Peter asked the education department if it was possible for them to fly all of us. It was! And we could cancel the plane at the last minute if we were able to drive. Perfect!
The rain kept coming and we finally accepted that a flight to Darwin was inevitable. On a wet Monday in March we bundled into a tiny single-engine Cessna. Even though we had packed as minimally as possible we still had to leave half our things on the tarmac because there was no way they would fit on that little plane. We landed in Darwin, settled into our cottage and looked forward to getting to know Lynette better as we awaited the meeting of our next blessing.
Lynette had brought around the birthing pool from the Darwin Homebirth Group, but we found it to be too small, ie, Peter wouldn’t be able to fit in it with me! Our plan was to have Peter sit behind me in the pool and support me while giving birth, just as he did when Taj was born. But where do we get a pool to suit such an occasion? We must have looked at every pool for sale in Darwin but we had great difficulty deciding which one to buy. After many days of searching and thinking about it, we finally chose the cheapest one (not because it was the cheapest but because it seemed the most suitable), a $50 blow-up pool from Big W.
My due date came and went. I still felt like a million bucks and thought maybe I could be pregnant forever. Yet I was keen to meet this little star that had grown inside me for nine months. I think Peter was beginning to wonder if the birth would ever happen, but he was wonderful—so supportive.
Finally the day came, at 41 weeks and one day. We didn’t have much to do that morning, so we went shopping to buy underwear or something. By the time we got home it was very hot and humid and the clouds hadn’t yet come over for the afternoon rains. We had some lunch and talked about what we would do for the rest of the day. Then I got my first contraction, which made it clear that the birth would happen sooner rather than later.
The pool had been set up in the corner of the wonderfully large verandah and now it was time to fill it. Peter set to work and I rang Lynette to say it was time. We softly explained to the kids that the baby was coming very soon. Lynette came over around twenty minutes later when my moans had gotten a little louder. I got in the pool and Peter got in behind me.
The pool we had chosen was perfect. But my heart sank, I thought my labour had stalled from getting in the water. My groans had stopped and a wave of calm expectation overcame me. My contractions were intense but not painful.
Soon I was telling Lynette that I was ready to push and she said, ‘no you’re not, you’re not being loud enough’. She walked around the corner and rang Marg, a midwife who was meant to come for the second stage of labour.
Lynette also phoned Bianca, a friend and a junior doctor who was to be there for support for the kids and to experience her first homebirth. But I gently pushed the baby out without them, with only our sons there watching in wonderment.
Peter and I tenderly brought our baby to the surface of the water and looked at her in awe. Her brothers immediately adored her. It was an ecstatic birth. We didn’t even consider what sex she was until Lynette asked and we had a look! A girl, who would have several names with several meanings: Soma Mularra Baghetti Ngarritjan Murphy.
One of the most special moments in my life was the night of her birth. We were all sleeping in one bedroom; Peter, the baby and I in one bed, Kai and Taj in beds next to us. In the middle of the night Soma let out a soft cry because she could not find my breast and I turned on the light. The boys woke and crawled onto our bed, and we all sat there quietly looking at her in amazement and feeling the immense love for her and for each other.
Thoughtful friends came laden with gifts to meet our little miracle and four days later our happy family of five once again bundled into a tiny plane to go home to Bulman, where Soma (or ‘Baghetti’, as she is affectionately known by the locals) is cherished by all. Her placenta has been ceremoniously planted back at Baghetti outstation, where it is nourishing the land that gave her life.
Pam and her family have recently returned to NSW. Their lives have been greatly enriched by living on two remote Aboriginal communities over two years. They will return to Arnhem Land one day to reunite with the special people who will teach Soma about her country.
*Within traditional Aboriginal culture, kinship is the system of law governing social interaction. It is defined by what is called the ‘skin’ system, which can be loosely translated as pertaining to family or clan. If a non-Aboriginal person is around their culture for a long time, they can be ‘adopted’ into the skin family.
Published in Kindred, Issue 27, Sept ’08
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