To find this desperately sad? TW: freebirth death

[ExtraHotDoubleShot]

I just feel so sad for her husband and little boy. I also understand why she didn’t want to go into hospital. Feels like women are stuck between a rock and a hard place with childbirth at the moment.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jun/20/stacey-warnecke-melbourne-influencer-died-freebirth-inquest-ntwnfb

I listened to the podcast and it sounds like there’s a lot of brainwashing going on but freebirth organisational

Wow that Lal sounds like she knows she's doing something wrong

Why didn't the husband call 999?
It mentions him at some point in the article.

Possibly because they put too much trust in the woman they paid $6k too.

I hemorrhaged and had no real idea how dangerous a situation I was in, I felt OK, until my sight started to go.

How scary.

I remember the doctor delivering DC1 told me I had the smallest blood loss he’d ever seen.

DC2 I expected the same, but I had a PPH. Thankfully relatively minor but I almost fainted and was so shaky/ill. I can’t imagine having a bad one it must make you feel like death.

The thing is, the way her labour went, they almost certainly would’ve admitted her and thus confirmed her ‘fears’ re being admitted and medical ‘interference’.

It seems very hard to strike the balance between not intervening too much and too quickly, and then noticing the moment the balance tips and it becomes necessary.

I think men are woefully under informed when it comes to a lot of woman-related matters and he probably just trusted everything his wife likely told him about how safe it would be and how experienced doulas are. I’m amazed he didn’t insist on an ambulance though when she went yellow and became distressed.

Whilst I appreciate that this is a really scary situation, I think we have to be really careful about fear mongering. Midwives generally allow an hour for the placenta to deliver, without jumping up and down about it. Of course, heavy bleeding can, and does, occur due to retained placenta. And that can be life threatening. But administration of medicines (oxytocin, syntometrine, carboprost, fluid etc.), fundal massage; and as a last resort, bi-manual compression, are all within the skill set of a homebirth midwife. Paramedics can also administer drugs such as tranaxaemic acid, and may also carry blood.

This is all assuming that a retained placenta would have occurred at home. No one can say whether environment, positions, medications etc. affected the progress of labour in hospital. It’s comparing apples with oranges really. Throwing free birth into the mix is adding a whole different fruit into the metaphor.

No, I’m just angry. Millions of women have died in childbirth because they couldn’t access proper medical care. If someone chooses to take that risk for religious or other deeply held personal reasons, I might at least try to understand their perspective. But for social media followers, likes and attention? No, I can’t understand that.

And as for the husband “respecting her wishes”... What kind of husband are you? Your job is to help keep your family safe. If I were in his shoes, I’d rather have an angry wife than a dead wife and be left alone to raise a newborn. Disgraceful.

It's difficult though because ultimately, it's her choice. And most of us would agree with that if she was choosing between a home birth, hospital birth and elective caesarean. We'd say it's up to her what medically approved method of birth she chooses.

What we really mean if you think about it is that it is totally up to her and he should have no say if she chooses one of the approved methods. We start to waiver on how much right he should have once she chooses a method we oppose as either an individual or a collective (like freebirthing).

Stupid and dangerous 😳 I had a home birth, had a massive PPH and had to be blue lighted to hospital. If I'd been freebirthing I'd be dead. Maternity care in hospitals definitely needs to be improved and I'm not denying that there are instances of unacceptable care but giving birth without a medical professional in attendance is incredibly risky.

Absolutely agree.
Of course some retained placenta situations may happen with no known risk factors, as the other poster suggested was the case in her situation.
However, as others have mentioned, any medical intervention is absolutely not itself without risk.
For example, one of the risk factors in increased chance of retained placenta is Induction or prolonged labour; long labour times or the use of oxytocin to stimulate contractions can affect how the uterus behaves during delivery which can increase risk here alone.

Why is it her choice? Her husband is now left alone to raise a newborn because of a decision that affected the whole family. Also, she did this for followers, fame and money to promote her “all-natural” lifestyle.

She was struggling for hours, and despite things getting serious, an ambulance wasn't called until it was too late. Both the husband and the birthkeeper should have sought medical help rather than relying on the wishes of someone who was in a life-threatening situation.

Respecting someone's wishes shouldn't mean standing by when their life is in danger. Now a baby has lost its mother, a husband has lost his wife and is left to raise their newborn alone, and the people who were there will have to live with the trauma of what happened. All of this because people belive it was "her choice".

Well it depends on at what point you mean.

At the point she was bleeding out, you could say that he had every right and responsibility to call an ambulance. But these choices started way beyond that day.

From the moment she was pregnant, the law, society, and most of us agreed that she had every right to choose:

• whether the pregnancy continued
• who provided her maternity care
• where she planned to give birth

And he has absolutely no control over any of it. Even if he could prove her mentally incompetent, the State would make those decisions. Not him.

Now not only do we expect the fathers to not have any real say over what happens with the pregnancy, we expect, probably rightly, that they are generally supportive and kind irrespective of what choices the mother makes.

And now, after 9 months of that being his reality, we expect him to override all of that, and do something against her wishes.

Bear in mind, he is also going through the monumental process of becoming a father in this time, too. It's a massive rite of passage for him, plus we know men have biological changes when they "nest" with a pregnant woman with the aim of raising a baby.

I think it's a lot to ask in that moment. I can understand why some people would be too conditioned to do anything but what they are told.

It’s not about fear mongering, it’s about pointing out that things can go drastically wrong and time is of the essence. My experience tells me that had I not been in hospital I would have died of blood loss. It’s no skin off my nose what another lady decides to do, but my point is that it’s not all warm and fluffy and the problem is there is no way of knowing who will have an emergency or who will sail through and that’s the crux of it for me.

Honestly, I struggle to understand how a man could hold his newborn baby while watching his wife die without doing everything in his power to save her. No man should be so afraid of being labelled controlling or oppressive that he becomes paralysed when his wife's life is at stake.

This is life and death, not a debate about gender politics. There's a difference between controlling a woman and fighting to save her life.

Well thankfully, for the majority of men, it doesn't come to something like this. And after all, I don't know this man's views beforehand. I'm speaking generally.

I always had the view that I wanted my husband to feel like he was as informed as me and I personally wouldn't have made choices he was opposed to at the point of birth, simply because it wasn't the precedent I wanted to set for our co-parenting relationship.

Luckily, he came in with his own views of pregnancy and childbirth from the women in his family, and it was mostly aligned with mine. He was also open to hearing information on why I wanted to make choices that weren't standard and considering them with an open mind.

I'd encourage all women in healthy relationships to not get too caught up in "my body, my choice" when you're planning to raise a baby with someone.

There is an alternative at least in the UK to have qualified midwives attend a home birth or to attend a midwife led unit instead of hospital

A tragic story.

@Loverurarliving01 I totally agree. Why the hell didn't he call an ambulance when he could see the "birthkeeper" wasn't doing anything and his wife was on the floor dying?!?

The algorithm rewards absolutely bat shit behavior.

@WhoGives2Fucks Again though, with the greatest of respect, this was your first baby.
In subsequent pregnancies, giving birth at home if low-risk is statistically as safe as giving birth in hospital.
For that reason I did not choose a hb for my first-born but did for my subsequent.

I agree, while I think the ‘birth keeper’ was despicable and her subsequent behaviour very disingenuous, ultimately her husband and life partner was there the whole time and didn’t think to call an ambulance when she was clearly deteriorating.

I hate to look like I’m kicking someone while they’re down, but I don’t feel this lack of responsibility can just pass unnoticed.

I remember DH once becoming very ill and asking me not to call him an ambulance, but overrode this decision and called one anyway. Thankfully he was fine but he was unwell enough for them to initially suspect he had meningitis.

I think women are equally uninformed about the risk in pregnancy and birth.

I think I've reached my conclusion that lots of things women regard as traumatic during birth are actually as a result of doctors interventing because they know how dangerous the woman and babies situation is.

But they don't want to communicate that information because they don't want the mum or birth partner to panic.

Can you imagine how women would feel if it was pushed at them a woman dies every 12mins giving birth, and a baby every 7 seconds.
We intervene to ensure that you aren't added to those statistics

That is a very unkind comparison. There are many reasons that can cause people in emergency situations to act in ways they might later regret.

@Newname26 As for doctors’ intervention being about them managing risks they don’t communicate to spare women - well informed consent requires information as a legal principle not just because women don’t need to be infantilised.

This also doesn’t allow for the lack of parity of outcomes for statistically similar sets of women across hospitals, across counties and across counties. There are places you are much more likely to end up with sections or forceps use or induction. In my local area there are huge difference in how interventions are performed and there is a much greater risk of 3rd and 4th degree tears from one hospital while for babies are similar. Compare countries with the best outcomes for mother and babies with other first world provision that performs poorly in comparison and the narrative to explain differences has to be more complex.

That’s fine and I feel like you think I’m being judgmental and I’m not. It’s just I know through first hand experiences how awful it can be and my worry would be that if the same thing happens to someone else, they would die because currently I don’t there’s any guarantee of ambulance being able to get there that fast.

If it was guaranteed that an ambulance would get you to A&E within the time frame then I think that’s a different story but until then I do think it’s risky. If someone lived in the middle of nowhere and there was no way an ambulance cousl get them there that imo its playing Russian roulette.

@WhoGives2Fucks Homebirth midwives are trained sufficiently to know how to deal with a retained placenta as another poster explained; there are time guidelines they work by (different guidelines if your choice of placenta delivery is managed or not). I chose non-managed so up to 60 mins accepted, but would guess nearly all hospital births are managed (with the injection). In case of managed, guideline of time allowed is 30 mins.
But I agree in so far as a very rural location would have to be factored in when considering a hb.