Australian Birth Stories Sophie Walker

Bee went into spontaneous labour and spent most of her labour at home before transferring to the birth centre. She pushed for a few hours before making the decision to move to the birthing suite for assistance. Bee’s story is a beautiful example of the power of education to make informed decisions every step of the way.

Ruby shares her journey with infant sleep. We all come to postpartum with a predisposed understanding of baby sleep which usually involves the mindset that it’s the parent’s ‘job’ to ‘teach’ the baby to sleep. But as you will hear in this episode, babies have a primal drive to sleep and their sleep needs are ultimately influenced by their temperament.

Sea shared her first three physiological births in episode 304 and today she returns to tell us all about her fourth pregnancy and birth.

Ariane shares her experience with postpartum psychosis. As a psychologist working in child and family services, Ariane was aware of perinatal mental illness but her anxiety prevented her from disclosing her symptoms which included disillusions, hallucinations and suicidal ideation. After a stay in a mother and baby unit, she started seeing a perinatal psychiatrist who saw past her well-presented exterior and diagnosed her with psychotic depression.

In this episode 478 Katie shares her pregnancy and birth experience as a plus-size woman. She was denied access to midwifery group practice because of her weight and was immediately placed in a high risk model of care.

In this episode Angela shares her incredibly positive first birth - a water birth at home, supported by private midwives. Before she had conceived, Angela spent years learning about birth and discovered that a physiological birth in water was her preference.