The Women Who Guided Me

Lo Mathias (talltreespelviccare.com.au) is an endorsed midwife based in Canberra specialising in internal pelvic release work — a deeply embodied approach to preparing the body for birth and healing postpartum. Lo also offers scar work and closing the bones ceremonies to women preparing for birth and recovering postpartum.A few days before recording this conversation I had my first session with Lo, seven months postpartum.I want to be honest about what that was like , because I think a lot of women will hear the words internal pelvic release and feel exactly what I felt. A combination of curiosity and apprehension. After everything my body had been through in labour and birth, the idea of anyone going near that space again felt confronting.But what Lo does is not what you experience in a standard clinical setting. It is slow. It is guided entirely by you. And for me it was less about fixing something and more about reclaiming something , reconnecting with a space that had been poked and prodded and monitored, on my own terms. Lo also introduced me to an idea that softness is a skill. That the body’s ability to yield and release tension is something we actually have to learn , because most of us have spent our whole lives being told to be strong, to hold it in, to tighten up. And then we arrive at birth and wonder why we can’t let go.

Tracey Anderson Askew (transformparenting.com.au) is a birth educator, coach and parenting specialist with nearly thirty years of experience guiding women through pregnancy, birth and early parenthood. Tracey runs Transform Parenting, a program that takes you all the way from pregnancy through to the first years of raising your child.I first met Tracey about four weeks postpartum, introduced through my doula Kylie. Kylie suggested I share my birth story on Tracey's podcast, and Tracey became one of those women I couldn't let go of.In this conversation we cover what it really means to prepare emotionally for birth, self-advocacy in a hospital setting, how any type of birth can be empowering, and something that doesn't get nearly enough attention: the birth debrief. Why processing your birth story matters, who it's for, and what can happen when that story goes unprocessed.

Kylie Coad (heartfelthealingtherapies.com.au) is a birth and postnatal doula, hypnobirthing practitioner and the first wise woman in my own birth story. Kylie supported both my wife Ellen and I through our pregnancies, and most of the women you will hear from in this podcast came to me through her.I have wanted to record this conversation since I started this podcast. Kylie was with me at the very beginning, first for Ellen's birth, and then as my support in the lead-up to my own. In this conversation we cover what a doula actually does (and how it differs from a midwife), the six models of maternity care available to Australian women, the intake process Kylie uses with every couple, and what birth consistently reveals about who we are.