Numerous Kiwis were already concerned about the way Jacinda Ardern was ruining the country when shockingly, on Monday 15 November 2021 (a particular date forever etched in people’s minds), Ardern went to a level of callousness never before known in this country.
New Zealanders who did not want a Covid-19 jab were made second-class citizens, and thousands were mandated out of their jobs.
Ardern put enormous pressure on these people to comply, forcing them into poverty by denying them their usual income. It was the final straw for some.
The BFD published on 24 January 2022 my article based on an interview with a midwife after she was ‘fired’.
Vicky, her husband and four young girls reluctantly sold up, packed one bag each, uprooted the family and left the country. She saw the writing on the wall of how far this country was going downhill.
Vicky recently wrote from Mexico recalling her own motherhood and the painful betrayal and loss she still feels towards the NZ Government. Here is an abbreviated version of her journey.
My Journey of Beautiful Births and Midwifery
Vicky
My path of midwifery has always been closely intertwined with my own birthing and mothering. When I was 23 my husband and I had our first baby, a beautiful home water birth attended by a midwife who inspired me to become a midwife myself. My entire first pregnancy was fraught with a mix of emotions, as my own darling mama was dying, and the grief and walking her last months was mixed with the highs of expecting and birthing my own baby Isla. My midwife came and her very presence was all I needed to feel supported, and at 2am I birthed Isla. I still remember the effort of pushing her out was a bit more work than I had bargained for, but still so incredibly powerful and wonderful.
The next day we got the call from Whangarei Hospital to come and say goodbye to Mum as she was expected to die at any stage. Five weeks later Mum finally died, by this time at home with only me and Isla there with her as she left. This in itself was surreal, because my Mum had five children and one of us was always with her from the time she had her diagnosis to the time she passed. But I was there the least because of having a new baby. Everything happens for a reason, and I know I was supposed to be there. My Opa had died the week before, and they lived on the property adjoining Mum’s. As I was sitting on the couch looking out over the Kaipara Harbour with Mum’s body on the hospice bed beside me, I was comforted by watching two wild and free hawks swooping and diving above the valley and harbour, and I know without a doubt that the spirits of my Mum and Opa were freed from pain and suffering. All while holding my new baby in my arms, I had expected this baby to arrive at 42 weeks, which is when my Mum died, but because she came at 37 weeks, she had five weeks with her Omy.
You may wonder if any of this is relevant, but birth and death is close and for me this is all part of my spiritual journey of midwifery. The following year we were living in Dunedin and expecting our second baby. By this time, I had realised that I needed to be a midwife, as while I was thinking about finding a new midwife in a different place it hit me: “Oh! That’s what I am meant to do.” My second birth was another wondrous experience with beautiful midwives attending. Snow outside, a blazing fire inside and a team of women keeping the house and water warm for my second daughter.
After the struggles I had had with my first I was so incredibly grateful for a baby that fed voraciously. Of course, my journey is my own, and at 10 days we were in the Starship Air Retrieval fixed-wing plane heading off to Auckland to get her coarctation of her aorta surgically repaired. With a baby in heart failure screaming blue murder, I think she missed the memo that she was at death’s door. She has been a fighter her whole life; she is an incredibly wise and determined being who has incredible intuition that Tom and I have both learned to heed and trust.
The following year I started midwifery training at Otago Polytechnic.
So finally, that year, 2010, I graduated as a midwife in New Zealand, although I feel strongly that my journey started with my first baby in 2006. For the following 11 years, I worked around New Zealand and Australia in various areas and in different contexts, as well as taking time off twice for my third and fourth daughters. I had also been at my Dad’s death in 2016 with my fourth baby with me that time, and my respect of birth and death has only deepened. Home-birth midwifery was always my heart’s home, and even though this wasn’t always easy to balance with all my own daughters and rural life.
Finally, in 2021 I was back to working in the most wonderful home-birth practice with the best team I could have wished for and looking forward to continuing this way, even as our team was changing with some midwife mamas planning time off for their own babies. I was loving feeling like an older midwife, finished having babies, and the juggle was easier and I could see our way forward in life, and midwifery and everything was fantastic.
It was incredibly clear that we were going to be mandated out of our jobs, so when the announcement came, I was not surprised, but very sad to say goodbye to my career. So being fired from midwifery on 15 November 2021 for declining a dangerous injection was a sad day, but I would never ever change my decision. Our journey then led us to leave New Zealand and build a new life overseas.
This is my journey of how I came to midwifery and how I came to be fired. There are many more stories like this by so many midwives hurting around the globe as their ability to carry out their labour of love has also been taken from them. I know that definitely 200 and maybe 400 of us in New Zealand were fired on 15 November.
I miss home terribly but I feel it has betrayed me and my family and I will not be coming home.
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