The seed of the Big Bang glimmers in the heart of this birth.
Birth Ecology is a framework for mapping all the various influences that come to bear on birth, so that we can work in conscious alignment with birth for true health, both as women coming to birth, and as those who work with birth: aunties, doulas, midwives and obstetricians. This understanding values women, birth, families, community and the Planet; everything is interconnected in this great interwheeling ecology we experience as life, and birth has a critical role in laying down pathways for health and connection from the beginning. Working with birth, we work for a greater generative and dynamic health for this whole planet.
Birth matters!
Women matter.
And health is not a static state to arrive at but a way of being: generative, fulfilling, dynamic, purposeful and powerful. Healthy baby, in all ways; healthy mother, in all these ways; healthy planet, in all these ways.
This site is an exploration of the application of Ken Wilbur’s quadrant analysis to the process of birth by midwife and writer Jessie Price, from a perspective of birth as inherently responsive and adaptive, a direct result of its being honed by the process of evolution. Jessie calls this understanding of birth’s complex interconnectedness and inherent adaptation and responsiveness, the Ecology of Birth. It is for any woman who instinctively feels there is more to birth than only the physical process, and any woman who wants to be proactive and prepared for her birth. It is for anyone who works with birth and wants to consciously raise up the factors that work towards healthful birth, and soothe the influence of those things that hinder it.
Jessie has travelled and worked around the Asia Pacific region as a journalist and subeditor. In 2005/06, Jessie assisted the indigenous Karen Women’s Organization on the Thai/Burma border with communications support, including a report on their project supporting Traditional Birth Attendants providing care and support to indigenous Karen women in the refugee camps and inside the Burma conflict zone. Midwifery united everything she loved – the mucky, the profound, the real – and she came home to enrol in the Bachelor of Midwifery. Jessie worked as a continuity of care midwife in Canberra, Australia, providing care in relationship with women across the full spectrum of their pregnancy, birth and early parenting, including birth education for parents. She is currently championing the issues for midwives and midwifery as the Professional Midwifery Organiser with the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, ACT Branch.
She gave birth to her own first son at home in Samoa in 2008 with two wonderful local midwives, and in 2010 to her daughter, into her own hands in water, with her beautiful midwife in the Canberra Birth Centre.
Jessie was awarded the 2018 Rodanthe Lipsett Midwife of the Year by the ACT Australian College of Midwives for her Birth Ecology work, and loves to speak and share and collaboratively explore concepts around Birth Ecology at midwifery events and workshops, including with student midwives.
Jessie lives and works on the land of the Ngunnawal people. I acknowledge and pay my deep respect to Indigenous knowledge, wisdom and stewardship of Land, Culture and Spirit, and I pay my deep respect to the Elders, past, present and emerging today. Always was, and always will be.