The Depleted Women of Modern Life

She’s the steadfast ally any woman would want – particularly those desiring a family life. When it comes to mothering there isn’t much that Lynda Bailey hasn’t seen, dealt with and assisted.

A nurse, midwife, naturopath and clinical teacher, Lynda specialises in pre-conception care, thorny infertility issues, post-partum depression, breast feeding and all the issues that can plague women throughout their reproductive life.

She’s a dot connector, making easy connections between the number of people who handle a baby immediately after birth and subsequent breast feeding problems; or a life depleted of self care and a woman washing up to a hard menopause; or poor health prior to conception and spiralling maternity complications and medical bills.

Her long decades of coalface health experience shine off her in unassuming but confident waves.

Now in her early fifties, Lynda was at the forefront of the small, brave band of midwives in New Zealand who first went into independent practice. It was the early nineties when a huge battle raged to allow women to access midwives – rather than just doctors and obstetricians – to help with birthing.

Back then Lynda worked with two other midwives in a largely rural practice in South Canterbury. Even now it’s a matter of quiet pride that 10% of the women in the area chose to give birth at home largely because of the midwifery practice they operated: 700 babies a year across Timaru, Mt Cook, Twizel and surrounds.

Later years, when her own children were raised, Lynda worked as a maternity nurse to rich private clients in London and also opened her own practice as a naturopath in Hampstead Heath.

In Italy, Lynda worked in the small township of Amelia in Umbria: watching with fascination as the village pharmacist would toss out doctors’ scripts to exhort his customers to instead use tried and true traditional herbal remedies.

Midwifery became her dream after her own traumatic birth experience, an experience so at odds to what she saw around her as a child.

“I grew up in England and women giving birth at home were the norm. It was a time of big families, four or five children, and I’d seen with my own mother (I’m the oldest of five), my aunties and all the women around the midwife coming into the home. It was a normal part of life: I grew up with that.”

Her own births became the catalyst for returning to nursing and finishing her training. Lynda’s other passion for herbal and natural medicine was further strengthened by her South Canterbury years when mothers would ask her advice about what natural remedies to use.

She says one of the things about modern life that makes her the most sad is that “women are not encouraged to think about their health in terms of what kind of shape they want to be in when they are 55”.

“If women thought about what was going to be best for their health in the long term future I think things would change – including how keen they would be to use synthetic hormones, whether that is in the oral contraceptive pill or IVF. But women are not encouraged to think that way.”

Instead the treadmill is to buy the right house, marry the right man, be the perfect mother, feed the family the best food, have the perfect career. “They are trying to be the best at everything ... but women become so exhausted trying to fulfil all those roles,” says Lynda.

No matter what their age, Lynda helps women who feel exhausted, sad and depleted realise what is humanly possible and encourages them to rest and start caring for themselves in a better way.

Among tools she uses are nutrition, herbs and treatments like reflexology and Reiki. “These tools help women move through stressful times, helps them move to a different place where they feel they can cope.

“I’m a guide,” smiles Lynda. “I help women feel safe and supported, help them restore health and wellness and essentially gain their confidence back.”

These days Lynda divides her time between a practice at her home in Rothesay Bay on Auckland’s North Shore and working as clinical supervisor to a new generation of healers at Wellpark College’s Prema Clinic (www.wellpark.co.nz)

The clinic offers patients low cost treatments ($20 for an initial consult and $10 for follow-up) with natural health students whose clinical work Lynda supervises.

“The students give their all,” says Lynda. “It’s a very transformative time for them, where they take all they’ve been learning in the classroom to work with real life patients.”
Lynda believes natural healing will come to be a very accepted and integrated part of mainstream healthcare.

“We are right at the beginning of that journey,” she says, talking of the quiet pleasure she feels in seeing her student graduates now working in this emerging field across the world.