This woman was disppointed by the anti-vax messages in her own community. So she started a campaign to show that even mums ‘like her’ believe that vaccinations are safe.
I was 36 weeks pregnant when I finally decided to have a homebirth. I was clear on the research and best practice, and was privileged to be birthing with Western Australia’s Community Midwifery Programme which gave me choices.
Once all the pieces were in place intellectually, I waited for instinct and circumstance to guide me. Reading a beautiful home-birth book to my daughter and being surrounded by women I valued as sensible informed my decision. I feel that this experience has given me some insight into how we make important decisions about our children’s well-being and weigh up risk; facts, values and emotions are all involved.
The Fremantle community is is a pretty left-leaning, progressive, culturally vibrant and free-thinking place. After my son was born, I was eager to make more friends in the home-birthing scene, but apprehensive about exposing my son to unvaccinated children. When the topic of vaccines arose in that circle, not every voice was virulently anti-vax, but many said they didn’t know whether to vaccinate, or that they hadn’t vaccinated older children. This was reinforced on cloth nappy and baby-wearing forums where anti-vax sentiments were explicitly linked to other practices that I considered to be wonderful and important.
I made the decision to go public because I was concerned that others were not daring to speak up, or were absorbing the message that to vaccinate was to be out of step.
I wrote an opinion piece for the Fremantle Herald critiquing my community’s values. I had experienced excellent support in my decision to home-birth, and through informal peer education in using cloth nappies and baby-wearing devices. If we were so good at looking after each other, then why was this one decision so out of step with all the others?