Pregnancy, Birth And Beyond

This week is Birth Trauma Awareness Week 2020, where we are working with other maternity health advocacy groups to raise awareness around traumatic birth and the wider implications for inadequate care throughout the pregnancy, birth and postnatal periods of life. Here, Oni Blecher speaks to Rhea Dempsey; esteemed and highly sought after childbirth educator, counsellor, speaker, author and birth attendant with experience at over one thousand births. She is respected, both in Australia and internationally, as an insightful thinker and presenter on the topic of working with pain- both physical and psychological- in childbirth, and the implications of this for normal physiological birth and postnatal wellbeing. Here, Rhea explores, within the context of her work, how we can move forward in a culture that normalises traumatic birth.