Last week I was asked to speak to doulas from the Doula Training Academy about the complexities of the ARRIVE study so I thought I would write a blog based on that webinar. The doulas wanted to better understand the conclusions of the ARRIVE study as there is other...
April is “International Cesarean Awareness Month”, an event organised by ICAN – The International Cesarean Awareness Network. However, I am writing this blog at the beginning of May because I think we should uphold the intentions of ICAN all year round....
I am not sure how I missed it but the “Western Australia’s Mothers and Babies, 2015, 33rd Annual Report” was released in July 2019. As always I wonder why there is a 4 year lag on reporting the data, and how different the actual data for 2019 would...
Why are some obstetricians suddenly all up in arms about traditional practices that help women take control of their births? Surely anything that helps women and does no harm should be encouraged. It doesn’t make sense that obstetricians would not want women to have...
Is your phone on your “pack for labour” list? You might want to re-think and switch it off altogether. I’m always concerned about the number of women who post screenshots of their “contraction app” on social media and ask: “Do you...
I was just reading about a new invention that the media are calling ‘the pregnancy patch’ (although it seems it is meant to be used during labour to measure contractions and fetal heart rate) will apparently lower intervention rates. I am left wondering...
Do you want to know how to create a birthing environment that will make your birth quicker and more comfortable, no matter where you are birthing? Are you unsure of what to do in the hospital to create an environment that will work for you? Close...
Having just made a couple of graphs representing the c section rates in Perth Metro Hospitals I thought I would make another graph for Regional WA. I don’t think you can compare them to Metro WA as a lot of transfers happen and the numbers are very different,...
When did a Breech Baby stop being just a variation on Normal? I remember, as a student midwife, sitting in a lecture being taught the mechanics of a breech birth by a lovely Obstetrician. Vaginal Breech Birth was definitely being presented as just a variation on...
When I found out I was pregnant with my 4th child, it was quite a shock. My other children were 13, 9 and 7 and I thought I was well and truly out of the baby zone. I had also never imagined I would be a mother of 4! But after the initial shock wore off, I was really...
