Lifetime of experience ... Rhodanthe Lipsett has watched the childcare sector change considerably over the past 50 years. Photo: Graham Tidy
She began delivering babies in the 1950s, and wrote a manual to help new mothers navigate motherhood in the 1990s. But, as Rhodanthe Lipsett tells Sally Pryor, times may have changed but babies will always need the same things.
If there was one word in the English language that Rhodanthe Lipsett could eliminate, it would be the word "should". It is, she says, one of the most unnecessarily anxiety-producing words in the English language.
"It makes people feel guilty. You could substitute the word 'could', but if you say you 'should', it's immediately putting pressure on somebody which might well be inappropriate. I like the word 'could' and I detest the word 'should'."
She's referring, in particular, to the increasing morass of advice – often conflicting – that new mothers have to wade through when adjusting to what can be the most confusing few months of their lives.
A Canberra resident for six decades, Lipsett worked in infant and maternal care for more than 50 years, and has helped about 23,000 women adjust to motherhood. She's also 90, so there's a certain measure of world-weariness when she rails against her most hated word.
It's ironic, she says, that as the world changes – and she has watched the childcare sector change considerably in her time, as accepted medical wisdom shifts and evolves – mothers are still made to feel guilty about the choices they make.
The irony is that babies, on the whole, don't change, which is why she set out in the 1990s to write a handbook for mothers that would apply to as many people as possible and endure through the years. No 'One Right Way' was published in 1994, two years after she was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to Australian women and their families. And, judging by the letters she has received in the years since, the book has proved a lifesaver for countless sleep-deprived, confused and anxious mothers wanting to be assured they're doing the right thing. It's been republished under a new name, Baby Care, and was launched last week by Governor-General Quentin Bryce at Admiralty House in Sydney.
Sitting in the living room of the Reid home she has shared with her husband since the 1950s, Lipsett's eyes shine as she recalls the letters she has received from women who claim her book pulled them out of the darkness of postnatal depression, and empowered them to make their own decisions when it came to their babies.
"The whole idea of the book was to boost mothers' faith, or parents' faith, in their own judgment. Here's information, these are options, different things you could try, because every little baby's unique – what goes with the first one need not apply with the second," she says.
"You know your own baby better than anyone else after the first week or 10 days. And everybody is telling you something different! This is what really makes it so hard, and . . . probably what they're saying was appropriate for their baby, but not necessarily for your baby. It was incredibly important that mothers should question any advice given to them that they didn't feel happy with. This includes professional people, your doctor or your midwife . . . They've got to be able to convince you that what they've advised is fine for you and your baby. A lot of the mums felt that the book gave them confidence to make their own decisions."
The idea for the book's original title came from one of her earliest experiences as a trainee midwife in Broken Hill. An Aboriginal woman had brought her 16-year-old granddaughter, Mary, into the hospital, in advanced labour. Standing in the foyer, Mary was gripped by a strong contraction and dived under the low coffee table in fright. Nurse Lipsett, as she then was, was down on her hands and knees, trying to coax the girl out, when the formidable Sister burst in and demanded to know what she was doing. Once apprised of the situation, the Sister – 100 kilograms and dressed in the habitual starched whites and veil of the time – also got down on her knees and spoke softly to the girl.
When she came out and began having contractions again, Nurse Lipsett asked whether she should collect the "prep" tray and take it to the delivery room. Sister refused, saying Mary "could not handle a prep".
The young Lipsett felt her world shifting under her feet; up until then, she had believed that every woman had to have a perineum shave and an enema before giving birth. And what's more, once Mary's waters had broken, leaving Sister's impeccable whites covered in blood and fluids, she was told to get a bassinet ready and put it next to one of the beds in the ward, so that the young mother could stay with and hold her baby.
Later, when Sister asked Lipsett what she had learnt from the morning's events, she realised the most important lesson was that there was no single way to do things. It was a lesson she would hear echoed several times in later years, when she worked at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital – the QEII – in Civic. Now in Curtin, the hospital used to hold day clinics for mothers at which women were encouraged to talk about their experiences with other mothers. Invariably, the fact that every woman seemed to have a different story to tell was a source of comfort, and the women would return home feeling more confident in their abilities.
Lipsett says she felt a certain wistfulness when her new publisher, Rex Finch, said that to reissue the book, the name would have to be changed.
"He said, 'Look, if a mother is looking up on the internet books to help her, she's going to look under baby, she's not going to look under no one right way.' So I said, 'Well, I've got to defer to you when it comes to the commercial side of things'."
The fact that women are now as likely to be found trawling the internet for advice as fronting up at a hospital is one of the many indications of how much things have changed since the days when she was delivering babies and helping mothers. Lipsett arrived in Canberra in 1951, at a time when many new families were settling in the capital, away from their own home towns and family networks. There were, she recalls, fewer rules about food and parenting methods. But despite what many women are given to believe before they have children, mothering does not always come naturally, and knowing how to feed, soothe or play with a child is not necessarily intuitive.
Her book – a straightforward, commonsense manual – gives such durable advice that she discovered that very little needed to be changed when putting together the new edition.
"It's an enormous responsibility for a new mum, because you haven't been there, this is a new experience, and yet your aim is to be perfect!" she says, shaking her head sadly.
"There's no point in that whatever, you do your very best and babies are resilient little creatures, and if their basic needs are met, you can relax."
She says there are five basic principles for nurturing a baby, which should allow a mother to ease more comfortably into her new role: a baby needs to flourish and thrive; must receive enough loving, physical contact; be as comfortable as possible; feel safe and secure; and enjoy appropriate interactions when the baby's not sleeping.
"With those signposts, mums can think 'I'm on the right track'," she says.
And above all, she says, avoid people who make you feel guilty, no matter what.
"In the book, I say don't talk with people who make you feel anxious. Talk your head off to anyone you enjoy talking to and you can talk about your baby as much as you wish. The minute they make you feel anxious, you say, 'How are your daffodils?' "
At 90, Lipsett is as fit and healthy as she has ever been – she doesn't even use a cane to walk – and still swoons when talking about the many babies she's seen delivered into the world, including her own three children. It's because, she says, nothing is more fulfilling than being able to help mothers enjoy the process of bringing up babies.
"Interest in maternal health is like malaria – once you get it in your blood, you never get it out," she says.
Baby Care, By Rhodanthe Lipsett, is published by Finch Publishing.
To find out how to make a donation to the Rhodanthe Lipsett Trust Fund, established by the Australian College of Midwives for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women who wish to study to become midwives, visit amaw.midwives.org.au
