Farmer wants a midwife
On a hot, bright day in a tiny Queensland town, midwife Anne Bousfield is sitting face to face with a local legend. She’s in a health clinic in Cunnamulla, 750 kilometres west of Brisbane, and has just met Jessie Thompson. Jessie is expecting her third child, and she’s hoping this next delivery will be less dramatic than her first.
The tale of Jessie’s first birth, back in 2016, is well known to health workers in these parts because her baby was delivered here, at the Cunnamulla clinic, but five years after it had ceased to operate as a birthing service.
“It’s you!” Anne says. “The last woman to give birth in Cunnamulla!”
Jessie, 30, smiles as she relays the story of her infamy. Five weeks before her first baby was due, she started experiencing pain. She was assessed and told all was well. The next week she was scheduled to fly to Toowoomba, where she would stay until her baby was born. But the night before she was supposed to leave, she was woken again by sharp pain, and shook her husband from his sleep.
“He said, ‘Ugh! I’ve got to get up again?’” Deadly serious, she told him: yes, he did.
It was about midnight when they drove to the single-storey building that houses the Cunnamulla Primary Health Care Centre. Jessie didn’t realise she was in labour but by 3am
