Today, we are so pleased to be bringing you the beautiful Anushka's incredible birth stories.

Anushka walks us through her journey to her caesarean birth with her first son and explains how a posterior baby and long labour contributed to a cascade of interventions, including receiving syntocinon that she had not consented to, that ultimately ended with her meeting her baby via caesarean. She powerfully describes how she refused to let this birth be anything other than beautiful and sacred, and it was only much further down the track that she really accepted the trauma that she had experienced - not as a result of having a caesarean, but from the cascading labour and the treatment from maternity staff in the lead up.

In her second pregnancy, she was in the middle of her midwifery studies, and originally decided to go back through the team midwifery clinic she had used in her first pregnancy with student midwife, after being unable to find available support for a hospital birth from doulas or private midwives in the area. Divine intervention, you might call it, saw her turn her plans around completely when she realised she wanted to birth at home and she found a wonderful PPM to support her HBAC.

Another posterior labour, but this time with solid support around her, and Anushka brought her second son into the world with one foot in her bedroom and the other firmly planted in the stars. She shares vulnerably about her more complicated breastfeeding journey with her second son, and the impact of ongoing and unrelenting sleep deprivation over his first year of life.

It was such a joy to interview Anushka for our podcast, and she shares her experiences so generously and with such thoughtfulness that we know you are going to absolutely love this one.

Please join us on our journey to bringing you all kinds of VBAC stories from across the country from here on in by subscribing and following us on social media, @australianvbacstories on Instagram and Australian VBAC Stories on Facebook.

If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to rate or review, and tell your friends!

If you are feeling that you might benefit from mental health support after listening to our podcast, please reach out to one of the organisations below:

PANDA https://panda.org.au/

Gidget Foundation https://www.gidgetfoundation.org.au/

COPE Australia https://www.cope.org.au/

If you've experienced mistreatment or disrespectful care in your pregnancy, birth or postpartum and are seeking advocacy support, please contact one of the following organisations:

Maternity Choices Australia https://www.maternitychoices.org/

Maternity Consumer Network https://www.maternityconsumernetwork.org.au/

Thank you for tuning in to our podcast.