Birthspirit is delighted to announce its first week-long, live-in midwifery workshop which embraces the mind, body and spirit of midwifery. This workshop begins on Sunday early evening and runs through until the following Saturday morning. Throughout this time you are provided with onsite accommodation, nutritious meals and refreshments and a beautiful space to immerse yourself in the tradition of the wise-woman midwife.


The workshop programme

We start the workshop by Opening the circle and getting to know each other on Sunday at 5pm.

There are two main workshops each day from 9am – 12md and 1pm – 4pm for the remainder of the week which are facilitated by Maggie Banks and/or Sara Wickham. Each day ends with at least one of a variety of evening activities.

Main workshops include:

Authentic midwifery in a modern world - Sara Wickham
Many people have shown that modern, industrial, Western societies have moved far away from birthways that are respectful and nurturing in their approach to women, midwives and their ways of being and knowing. This session takes an historical perspective in looking at key aspects of how this transition has occurred and considers the issues that need to be addressed in order for women and midwives to re-claim authentic midwifery

The journey from ‘doing’ to ‘being’ - Maggie Banks
Each midwife’s transition from doing midwifery to being a midwife is unique and seldom linear. In this workshop practice scenarios help us unmask the influences which potentiate or impede our midwifery journeys.

Analysing interventions: why do we do what we do? - Sara Wickham
Many midwives are keen to ensure that they are practising in ways that are woman-centred and based on a solid rationale, yet in the daily rush of practice it is often difficult to find the time to think about the ‘whys’ of everything we do. This workshop offers the time, space and tools for thinking about the different aspects of what midwives do. Sara will explore the different kinds of activities that midwives undertake, their relative value with respect to different kinds of knowledge and the kinds of information that we can offer women in order to enable women to make informed choices about their options.

Embracing the wise woman - Maggie Banks
Practising in a medicalised world can lead the midwife to value the knowledge and strategies of obstetrics even though midwives work with well women during the (predominantly) healthy life phase. This workshop offers the opportunity to work with ancient and traditional modalities in maintaining health and well being throughout the childbirth continuum.

Post-term pregnancy: myths and mysteries - Sara Wickham
Throughout the Western world, women are given a date on which their baby is deemed to be due and then told that their labour needs to be medically induced if the baby has not arrived a few days after this date. But is there any evidence to support this practice? In this session, which is based on Sara’s PhD research, we will look at the traditional knowledge and medical evidence which has created the current situation and then at the data Sara has gathered from interviewing holistic midwives from around the world who have, through their work with women, developed different ways of thinking and knowing about this issue.

Breech birth woman-wise - Maggie Banks
There is considerable anecdotal evidence that women with breech-presenting babies find it difficult to find practitioner support to give birth vaginally to their babies, and the scientific literature reports the continued and increasing loss of skilled practitioners. This minds and hands on workshop reclaims vaginal breech birth as an everyday skill within the midwifery scope of practice. It explores essential information-giving and provides the opportunity to simulate the skills necessary to embrace the facilitation of vaginal breech birth.

Woman-friendly ways of understanding research and statistics - Sara Wickham
There is a need for midwives to be able to understand quantitative medical research and to discuss this with women, students and colleagues. Often, however, midwives are not taught to understand research and statistics in ways which are respectful of their ways of knowing. Sara, who has a background in maths and statistics, has spent more than a decade developing innovative ways of helping midwives to understand research and statistics, through the use of stories and with the aid of treats, magic tricks and other practical and fun tools. Whether you feel you’re an absolute beginner or a seasoned consumer of research, this session will enable you to have fun and increase your understanding at the same time!

Exploring the ‘what ifs’ - Maggie Banks
The very first step in the Cascade of Intervention during labour and birth in the Western world is the unnecessary removal of well women from the safety and familiarity of their own homes to unfamiliar institutions – that is – obstetric hospitals or birthing units. While often framed as ‘women’s choice’, the home birth option can be avoided by midwives if they carry the perception that any difficulties which may arise will be easier to deal with in an institutional setting. This session offers opportunity to explode this myth by exploring the ‘what ifs’ of home birth practice through actual scenarios.

Placental birth: an holistic approach - Sara Wickham
Medicalised maternity care has become so focused on routinely interfering with the birth of the placenta that it is increasingly difficult for midwives to learn and develop the skills and knowledge needed to help women and babies to release and honour “the internal grandmother”. We will talk about different options for placental birth and release, traditional and modern ways of honouring the placenta (including lotus birth), remedies and tips for assisting the natural birth of the placenta and share stories of different choices that women have made in this area.

Cherishing the midwifery spirit - Maggie Banks
Countries like New Zealand have mandated through legislation and a publicly funded maternity service that midwives are the most appropriate health professionals to care for well women throughout the childbirth continuum. However, as in many other parts of the Western world, midwives do so in a country dominated by risk, and of naming, shaming and blaming. This workshop gathers up strategies to support the midwifery spirit and maintain our woman-centred focus.

Evening activities, both structured and unstructured, include:

• Exploring the links between women, birth and craft
• Camp fire and birth stories
• Videos
• Preparation for the following day
• Spa pool chats
• And - weather permitting – walks, goat milking, a garden trail and a seaside picnic.

Closing the circle ends at 11am on Saturday.


An introduction to Maggie Banks and Sara Wickham

Maggie Banks Maggie has practised as a home birth midwife in the Waikato region of New Zealand since 1989. For 18 years prior to this she worked in women’s and newborn health in both large and small hospital settings as a nurse before becoming a midwife in 1987. After a year’s teaching undergraduate midwifery following completion of her PhD in 2007, Maggie has returned to her midwifery passions - home birth practice, independent midwifery education and writing. Maggie has written two books - Breech Birth Woman-Wise and Home Birth Bound - Mending the Broken Weave and various articles . While her speaking engagements on breech birth, waterbirth, physiological birth and post-dates pregnancy (amongst other things) have taken her to the USA, Canada and Australia, Maggie now confines most of her teaching activities to within New Zealand. Maggie and her husband Tony farm a small block with the hope to be as self sufficient in food as possible – a goal well underway but yet to be fully achieved. (back to the top)

Sara Wickham Sara is a direct-entry midwife who has practised midwifery in the UK and USA, in home birth, birth center and hospital settings and she has also worked as a midwife researcher and midwifery lecturer. Sara is currently self-employed as an independent midwife, lecturer and consultant, which she thoroughly enjoy because it enables her to travel around the world to speak at workshops, study days and conferences and to work with women, midwives and midwifery organisations in a number of countries and on all different kinds of projects. Sara has written lots of articles for a variety of midwifery and birth-related journals, and a number of books, including the Midwifery: Best Practice series, Appraising Research into Childbirth, Anti-D in Midwifery: Panacea or Paradox? and Sacred Cycles: the spiral of women's well-being. She is on the Editorial Board of The Practising Midwife, a contributing editor for Midwifery Today, and writes a regular column called “Thinking Outside the Box" for The Practising Midwife. Sara’s current writing project is her PhD thesis, in which she is exploring holistic midwives' knowledge in relation to "post-term" pregnancy. When not traveling, Sara lives on a small farm with her partner (Ishvar) and a small and emotionally needy cat (Susie) who proofreads everything she writes from the back of her chair. Sara and Ish also share their lives with 5 sheep who they adopted as orphaned lambs and an assortment of free-range chickens. Sara enjoys reading, crafts, campfires, wine, music, naps and green and black's mint chocolate, not necessarily in that order! (back to the top)

Venue and Accommodation

The Cottage [photo] is the home of Birthspirit’s activities. It is located on Maggie and Tony Banks’ 2¼ acre rural property in Tamahere, Waikato, New Zealand. It is approximately a two-hour car drive from Auckland Airport - see Auckland Airport to Hamilton Map - or 4 minutes drive from Hamilton Airport. The Cottage has a backdrop of native bush and wetlands. The native fauna includes tui, fantails, pukeko, egrets, frogs and shining cuckoos, as well as introduced birds such as pheasants, hawks and ducks. The Cottage has been blessed with four home births making it a perfect venue for midwives to explore and share experiences, relax and to nurture themselves and others. By day, the Cottage is the Workshop venue and at night it is transformed to comfortable marae-style accommodation with individual mattresses on carpeted floors with sheets, quilts and pillows.

Pick up from and drop off

We are able to collect you from Hamilton airport or the Hamilton bus station in the city at 3pm on Sunday 17th January. It is anticipated that for midwives who are travelling from further away than Australia may wish to recover from long flights before the workshop starts, so we are also able to collect you from a motel or hotel in town at approximately 3pm on Sunday afternoon (17th). Pick up will need to be pre-arranged.

We can also drop you off at Hamilton airport or in the city, or you can be collected from the Cottage by family or friends following Closing the circle on Saturday at 11am.

Cost

The workshop registration fee of NZ$1,500.00 is all inclusive of all workshop sessions and materials, meals, refreshments, accommodation and bedding, outings, hot tub use and pick up and drop off from Hamilton airport or city.

Registration

Your registration includes all meals and refreshments during the Intensive plus printed material. Pre-registration is essential. Numbers are strictly limited to 10 places ~ allocated as paid registrations are received.

You can register and pay by secure credit card, online banking (New Zealand only) or by New Zealand cheque:

Secure Credit Card: Register now

Direct credit by online banking (New Zealand only): Register now

Payment by New Zealand cheque: Register now

January weather in the Waikato

January is mid Summer and one can generally expect settled weather with pretty warm temperatures. Check out New Zealand's climate for further detail.

Further enquiry

We welcome your enquiry so please feel free to do so as below.

Email: maggiebanks@birthspirit.co.nz
Phone: 64 7 856 4612
Fax: 64 7 856 3070
Post: 15 Te Awa Road, RD 3, Hamilton, New Zealand