Prepare for a positive birth experience with our new book
The Two Week Wait
10 Questions To Ask Your Care Provider
Your Pregnancy Care Options
Common Symptoms in Early Pregnancy
Six things you may not know about the hours after a caesarean birth
What is Informed Choice?
How to Plan for Postpartum
A Quick Guide to Breastfeeding
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A series of online education courses featuring a range of perinatal specialists that will give you practical skills to confidently navigate labour and birth.
The Podcast
Australian Birth Stories is a portrait of women navigating their journey to motherhood – a series of honest stories that detail the heartache of infertility, the joy and overwhelm of pregnancy, the challenge and elation of birth and the tentative first weeks of postpartum.
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Everything you need as you journey through pregnancy and prepare for a positive birth experience.
An informative and comforting 5-part audio course guiding you through the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
The empowering online childbirth education program that will help you confidently prepare for birth.
The 8-part audio program supporting your empowered and confident transition into motherhood.
A guide to inspire pregnant women to prepare for their breastfeeding journey.
Your pregnancy, birth, postpartum and parenting questions answered.
Choose a category
pregnancy
If you’re not sure whether to choose a midwife or an obstetrician for your pregnancy care, you’ve come to the right place. Here we outline what your options are, including the difference between a midwife and obstetrician and what you can expect from your care experience.
Is this normal? You may find yourself asking this question quite regularly in the first trimester. Indeed, there’s quite a few common symptoms in early pregnancy that may take you by surprise because despite their ubiquity, they’re not often discussed. Beyond the nausea, here’s what you can expect:
Whether your pregnancy was planned or a surprise, there’s often a lot of confusion about the steps to take after a positive pregnancy test. We’ve outlined everything you need to know!
birth
If you’re preparing for a caesarean birth, you’re no doubt thinking about what will happen in the operating theatre and what your recovery will be like. Here’s a few things you can expect:
Understanding informed choice is a key aspect of birth education.
Are you pregnant and searching for positive birth stories to educate, encourage and inspire you? If so, you’ve come to the right place.
postpartum
The postpartum period is the weeks and months that follow birth. If you’re pregnant for the first time, you may not have heard about it and that’s understandable considering it’s not a hot topic of social conversation. Postpartum is often a private experience that occurs behind closed doors, hence many women only learn about it when they’re in the midst of it; cradling their newborn, leaking milk and tears, blindsided by the sheer intensity of this new season.
If you’re new to breastfeeding (or you’re currently pregnant and planning to breastfeed), you’ve come to the right place.
Six weeks after your baby is born, you’ll have a routine postnatal checkup with your GP, obstetrician or private midwife. Here's what to expect.
Delayed cord clamping - also known as optimal cord clamping - is common practice in many hospitals because of the known benefits for premature babies and full term babies. Here we outline what’s involved as well as the benefits and risks of the practice that’s completed minutes after birth.
New parenthood is one of the greatest transition periods of your life (no matter how many babies you’ve had before). It’s brimming with unexpected experiences that can simultaneously perplex and delight you. Indeed, often the strangest and most memorable surprises in the early days with your baby are actually very healthy and normal experiences. Somehow, their commonality gets lost in the sleep deprivation and subsequently, they’re not often discussed.
conception
The two week wait is the two weeks after you’ve ovulated when you’re anxiously waiting to see if your attempts to conceive have been successful.
Once you find out you’re pregnant, you’ll need to make a decision about who will care for you in pregnancy and support you during labour and birth.
If you’re considering having a baby and you’ve been googling anything related to fertility or conception, chances are you’ve stumbled across the term “conscious conception”.
If you’re planning a pregnancy you may be considering your fertility for the first time in your life which can feel like a big unknown.
Please provide the following information about the first day of your last menstrual period.
This is an estimated date of when your baby is due. Babies rarely keep to an exact timetable, so your full-term pregnancy can be anywhere from 37 and 42 weeks.
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Sophie Walker
I’m Sophie, founder and host of Australian Birth Stories, the podcast with over 8 million downloads that’s endorsed by the Australian College of Midwives. I’ve got a Masters in Public Health and a passion for encouraging women to actively prepare for birth and postpartum. Beyond the microphone I’m a mum to three rambunctious boys who create a lot of joy and mess.
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