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

You’re missing the point. Doulas are an addition to midwives, not instead of. I said that in my first comment.

Glad they are protecting themselves and their staff.

In general it's better when people stick to their jobs and roles and don't try to be something that they're not. Doulas are fine as doulas.

I'm a bit loathe to endorse a system of home births for anyone that wants one because it puts a lot of pressure on midwives. There's a lot of potential for trauma for midwives if they are regularly made to attend high risk women labouring at home without being able to get immediate medical care when things go wrong.

I was replying to the poster who said that “childbirth and the physical aspects involved in labour and delivery is still a medical event,”

Childbirth fundamentally isn’t meant to be a medical event. For most of human history birth happened outside of hospitals and was seen as a natural life event. Most women’s bodies are biologically capable of giving birth spontaneously without medical intervention.

Your friend was a friend, not an expert. Doulas behave as if they are experts. They literally earn a living from this.

You were replying to me. And you conveniently left out the end of my sentence which was “in many instances”.

If you had read the thread, you’d know that the woman I am referring to was experiencing anything but a normal, safe, healthy pregnancy.

But if you’d read the thread, and followed the conversations, you’d know this particular discussion was referring to the article about Jennifer Cahill, not Stacey who the thread is about.

Staff arent happy as far as I know for a range of reasons from taking away women's choice to the inevitable rise in freebirthing as a result of them stopping HBs.

@rumerx I do feel that many anti hb'ers don't actually understand what a fully supported home birth is.
Evidenced by grouping it with free birthing.

I think the Jennifer lady was daft to ignore the medical advice she was given.
She knew she'd hemorrhaged before and was at risk again.

The Stacy woman, what can you say, she paid 6 grand to a charlatan, with no medical knowledge.
Neither the woman, he husband or her recognised the danger until it was too late.

To be fair, I was in a room full of doctors, nurses, midwives, who all knew the danger I was in but who were all as calm as daisy's.
The only person who didn't know the real danger was ME!

So I kind of get as lay people neither her nor her husband recognised how much she was losing.

They wouldn't be happy either to be put in the position that Jennifer's midwives were put in.
Unknowingly walking into a high risk birth, with the mother insisting the room was only lit with tea light candles, I'm sure I read reports she was loathed to let them monitor the baby.
Then getting the blame for being negligent

Women died every 12mins giving birth without medical help, well actually some will have medical help and just be unlucky. But I get the majority will have no or limited medical help.

A baby dies every 7 seconds

Women naturally died a lot though. So did babies.

They still do a death every 12 minutes for women, 7 seconds for babies

The normal physiological act of giving birth isn’t usually the cause of death. It’s other factors.

Puerperal fever used to be a leading cause of death for women after giving birth. Doctors and birth attendants often moved straight from performing autopsies on corpses to examining pregnant women without washing their hands or instruments, transferring bacteria into the mother's reproductive tract.

Childbirth is most dangerous in countries across sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia and the Middle East.

Nearly two-thirds of global maternal deaths happen in areas affected by war, civil unrest, or institutional collapse according to The World Health Organisation.

From what I read leading cause was PPH.

The most common cause of death was puerperal fever (also known as childbed fever or postpartum sepsis), closely followed by postpartum haemorrhage.

@FunPartyIdeas How are all of the cases you referred to a comparison to a low-risk home birth attended by one, and then two, qualified midwives?

I disagree, but regardless of your opinions, the evidence backs doulas being beneficial for labour outcomes. No one is saying anyone has to have a doula if they don’t want one but taking the option away is just not smart.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1523-536X.2008.00221.x

@Newname26 How are all of the cases you referred to a comparison to a low-risk home birth attended by one, and then two, qualified midwives?

Did you read the article?

You can seperate out the mother’s (unwise) choices from the poor care she received. The poor care wasn’t because of her choice to have a homebirth, it was because the midwives neglected their most basic functions and didn’t take critical readings. If they had done that, they would’ve noticed the baby’s heart rate slowing down and the fact the mother was in distress as well.

The attending paramedic’s words were damning in my opinion. When he turned up they hadn’t switched the lights on, the baby was unwrapped, cord not cut and the resuscitation hadn’t happened due to broken equipment. He managed to get the baby breathing within seconds, and he isn’t a midwife.

Unfortunately nobody will ever know for sure whether it was only poor care, or if the patient was obstructive and set on her birth her way. Anyone who has had previous PPH and tested positive for Group B Strep and STILL pursues a home birth is not indicative of a sensible person who is open to medical advice.

She may have refused monitoring. Many do refuse, even in hospital.

Purpural fever was a common cause of death long before the 1850s. It was caused by poor hygiene but if birth was as straightforward as you are making out then third parties wouldn't have their hands in the birth canal at all.

Edited to add:..poor hygiene and retained placenta...

The WHO says the leading cause is PPH.
I'm not looking at the dim and distant past I'm looking at the thousands who die every year.