EP7| Melanie the Midwife - Why women choose freebirth for their VBAC

<p>In this episode, we meet Melanie Jackson - AKA Melanie the Midwife. Melanie has been a private midwife for 11 years and has worked as a homebirth midwife for her entire midwifery career (<a href="http://www.melaniethemidwife.com/" target="_blank">www.melaniethemidwife.com</a>).&nbsp;</p> <p>We talked about the reason why women choose freebirth for their VBAC which includes not feeling supported by health care providers to have the birth they want, birth trauma, feeling unsafe and wanting to be the authority on their birth.&nbsp;</p> <p>We also took it a step further to dig deeper into some of the cultures in hospital systems about VBAC and why many health care providers seem scared of supporting a VBAC and why some homebirth midwives choose not to support women at home after c-section.&nbsp;</p> <p>Plus we discuss some of the VBAC myths of "scare tactics" that sometimes lead women into feeling like their only choice is a repeat c-section.&nbsp;</p> <p>Whether you want to find out more about freebirth for yourself or you want to explore further having a VBAC Homebirth with a midwife this episode is not to be missed! &nbsp;</p> <p><strong>MORE ON MELANIE:</strong><br> Melanie also has a PhD called ‘Birthing outside the system’ which focuses on what motivates women to choose freebirth or homebirth with known risk factors. Melanie has recently published a paper on her findings from this study which is available to read in <a href="https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-020-02944-6.">full here</a></p> <p>Melanie was also a contributing author in a book on the same topic called ‘Birthing outside the system: the canary in the coalmine’. Melanie also works as a part-time researcher at Western Sydney University.</p> <p>Melanie lives in the Blue Mountains NSW with her 2 children (3 and 7 years old) who were both born at home. When they are not working Melanie and her Husband Dan spend their time homeschooling their children and maintaining their small homestead which includes a bee hive