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

Well thankfully doctors now wash their hands unlike in the 19th century when 'childbed fever' was the number one killer.
Dr's would literally go from examining corpses to examining women in labour without washing their hands as bacteria were not discovered at this point.
Midwives would use lye (active ingredient in soap) to wash a woman before birth, Dr's in their arrogance saw this with suspicion.

And we have antibiotics now.

A report is hardly going to call a dead woman an idiot, and solely blame her for her own death. The midwives have stated that she refused monitoring. The paramedic that arrived confirmed the room was dark and only lit by candles. The midwives shouldn’t have gone along with her hair-brain scheme, and should have refused care and called their clinical supervisor. Yes, they were “negligent” but it’s pretty damn hard (and illegal) to force care on someone.

No but not can it call her care grossly negligent if it wasn’t.

She didn’t understand the risk she was at because they used soft soapy language to talk to her about it.

Dimmed lighting is quite normal in labour. You can't refuse care. You have to provide care to the best of your ability while you escalate.

You can't say that though. The husband thinks she would refuse care if she did know, but it seems like he wasnt at these appointments. I haven't read the details of this for a while but when I did, it seemed like she attended them alone from his account. So he doesn't know what language was used and because the doctor didn't write exactly what was said, we don't know. But officially, "if you didn't document it, it didn't happen".

I know from my own experiences that the midwives and doctors didnt always document exactly what we talked about and by the time I had my later babies, I knew that could bite them on the arse later on.

side point but I loved giving birth in hospital and then coming home. The thought of waving off a midwife an hour or so after giving birth… terrifying! I loved being all cosy in my hospital bed, baby beside me, knowing that first whiff of an issue - I’m surrounded many medical professionals and kick ass medical equipment.

Plus I LOVE the cheap white bread they serve. At home it’s only whole grain I buy but oh the tray of a dirty white slice of toast and jam - I’d go back to hospital for that.

and then the excitement the next day of packing up baby, going home.

One of the coroner comments about the language used is 'outside of guidance' rather than a stronger 'against medical advice'

And I think that can be true of a lot of medical issues, they are trying hard not to let you panic that they play it down.
Its not the first time I've had Doctors play things down to avoid me panicking.

That's also because the way they evaluate risk isnt individualised enough to correctly say that each woman they deem to be high risk is "medically advised" not to have a home birth as it is factually less safe for people like them.

So for example, it might well be factually true for people with many risk factors for pre-eclampsia, but not actually true for women who just have a high BMI. There isn't much good quality research that actually studies how high risk women fare in low risk settings because of the ethics. You can only look at who has given birth and their outcomes and hope you have enough information to control for the many variables.

What they can say is that it is outside of their guidance and then they aren't actually stating that their guidance is based on solid research ie "medically advised". You have to find that out for yourself by reading it.

The law says that care must still be provided even if it is outside of guidance where competence isn't compromised. So at the end of all that, if the woman wants a homebirth, she gets one, and the staff have to plan to minimise risk.