For midwifery advocate and champion Sally Tracy, her life's work revolves around a basic premise, which is: "The notion that something as simple and as powerful as a woman having a continuous relationship with her midwife before birth, during birth and at home afterwards has the potential to alter the whole landscape of birth interventions," she said.
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"It reduces fear of the unknown and helps the woman to trust herself and her body."
Professor Sally Tracy, of Glenbrook, has been appointed a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her significant service to tertiary education and to midwifery.
Despite a self-confessed "COVID fog" when the Gazette rang, Professor Tracy was still able to articulate her passion.
"I have spent my whole life trying to make midwives not invisible. I think every woman should have a midwife with them when they give birth."
As well as decades helping to deliver babies, Professor Tracy has also spent decades in midwifery academia at the University of Sydney, UNSW and the University of Technology, Sydney.
She was also head of midwifery at the Royal Hospital for Women, where constant review and discussion of cases kept her "hands on, even though I didn't actually have to put the gloves on".
She co-authored the first textbook for New Zealand and Australian midwives and wrote the guidelines for consultation and referral, which inform women about what would be safe for them - a hospital birth, in a birth centre or possibly a home birth.
She has also worked with women in Indigenous communities but found "so many forces agin it, mostly money ... up against the mighty dollar at every turn".
However, she recalled one notable success - an Indigenous elder from near Bourke who gained her masters degree from Sydney University.
While she no longer works full-time at Sydney Uni, she is still very much involved in the field, now with both the International Confederation of Midwives and the World Health Organisation to help establish midwives in the developing world.
Professor Tracy is a fourth generation midwife. Her great, great grandmother was a midwife in Scotland as well as a great grandmother on the other side of the family.
She is, understandably, a fan of the BBC program Call the Midwife and in fact, one of her textbook co-authors is the granddaughter of one of the original midwives on which the show was based.
While honoured to be awarded an AM, she added: "It's just that there are so many people who deserve these things. I don't know that I fit in that group."
