Jan did not plan to become an acupuncturist. She was an English teacher when her then-husband enrolled her, without quite asking, in four years of full-time Traditional Chinese Medicine study. That accidental beginning led to one of the most quietly remarkable careers in Canberra's women's health community. For most of those 42 years, Jan has focused almost exclusively on gynaecology and fertility, drawn early to home births and never really looking back.

What Jan brings to this conversation is not clinical authority in the conventional sense. It is something rarer: 42 years of sitting with women at the most vulnerable moments of their reproductive lives, watching patterns repeat across generations, and developing a quiet, precise understanding of what the body is actually doing and what it needs.

We cover how acupuncture supports women through pregnancy, from first trimester anxiety and nausea to cervical preparation from 36 weeks. We talk about what Chinese medicine sees in conditions like endometriosis that Western medicine has been slow to name, and why Jan was diagnosing it 20 years before it became a mainstream conversation.

We talk about fertility and what Jan actually does in her treatment room with women who cannot conceive. Not just the physical interventions, but the emotional weight she holds alongside them. She shares a story about a woman who spent two years in bitterness over her inability to conceive, who one day looked at a friend's baby with nothing but love, and who was pregnant the next morning.

We talk about information overload and the tightrope women walk between being informed enough to navigate the system and staying connected to their own instincts. About why partners so often side with doctors over their labouring partner. About what Jan sees in women who come back for a second birth with a fire in them that wasn't there before.

What this episode covers:

• What acupuncture does in pregnancy
• How to prepare cervix for birth
• Chinese medicine and endometriosis
• Natural IVF support 
• VBAC success stories
• Birth anxiety during pregnancy

Anna is a woman who has sat inside the system, been failed by it in ways that should not happen, and built something extraordinary in response. 

Her three births are all incredible and all taught her something deep. The first ended in birth trauma and postpartum psychosis. The second, a planned home birth, ended with a torn pelvis following an intervention she did not consent to. The third, a forty minute labour during COVID lockdown, she caught herself. 

We cover a lot of ground in this episode. We talk about what the nervous system actually does during birth, and why the maternity system as it currently exists is fundamentally designed against women’s physiological needs. Bright lights, strangers, direct questions, the smell of a hospital all trigger a threat response that slows labour, diverts blood away from the uterus and puts both mother and baby under physiological stress. 

We talk about why women go along with things they did not want, and why they feel shame about it afterwards. Anna explains what actually happens in a female threat response, shaped by estrogen, oxytocin and decades of social conditioning, and why compliance in the birth room is not weakness, it is a nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do when safety feels threatened.

We talk about what birth trauma actually is. Not the story your mind tells about what happened, but the incomplete response your body is still trying to finish — sometimes years later. Anna explains why talk therapy has limits when it comes to trauma that lives below the level of language, and what somatic therapy can reach that thinking alone cannot. She describes a concept know  as spontaneous cognitive reappraisal, the shift in meaning that emerges naturally from the body when trauma is resolved rather than talked around.

And we talk about why Anna built Soma. A response to something she kept seeing in her therapy room: women who could not get well because what they actually needed was not another one-on-one session. They needed community. Safe ways to move their bodies. A place to land. Soma is that place — a women’s wellbeing centre in Canberra offering yoga, Pilates, somatic therapy, sound healing, acupuncture, massage and women’s circles, with community care places available for women who cannot afford full fees.

What this episode covers:

• What is somatic therapy
• nervous system and birth
• Why women comply in birth 
• Birth trauma in the body
• Postpartum psychosis recovery
• Polyvagal theory pregnancy

When I found out my son was breech at 38 weeks, Sasha was the first person my doula Kylie told me to call. I had just been told by the hospital in Canberra that I would not be supported there. Sasha was wholeheartedly supportive from the very first conversation. She had a lot of faith in me, and I had never spoken to her before. She also connected me to Breech Without Borders, an organisation founded in 2018 by Dr Rixa Freeze, which became one of the most important resources in my birth preparation.

In this conversation we cover what breech actually means, why vaginal breech birth disappeared from Australian hospitals, what your options are if your baby is breech, and the single most important question to ask your care provider.

What this episode covers:

• What to do if baby is breech
• Vaginal breech birth Australia
• Breech baby 36 weeks options
• ECV success rate
• Breech birth risks vs caesarean
• How to turn breech baby

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.

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.

What this episode covers:

Emotional preparation for birth

• How to prepare emotionally for birth
• Birth debrief Australia
• What is a birth debrief
• How to advocate for yourself in hospital birth
• Letting go of birth plan
• Birth trauma recovery
• How to process your birth story
• What is matrescence
• Fear of birth anxiety pregnancy

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.

What this episode covers:

• What does a doula do
• Doula vs midwife Australia
• Do I need a doula
• How to find a doula Canberra
• Models of maternity care Australia
• Continuity of care pregnancy
• How to prepare for birth emotionally
• Birth support team pregnancy
• What is a birth plan
• Postpartum doula support