For Immediate Release The Australasian Birth Trauma Association (ABTA) is proud to announce its rebrand to Birth Trauma Australia. This change reflects our renewed focus on supporting women, partners and families across Australia and reaffirms our commitment to driving advocacy, education, and support for those impacted by birth-related trauma. As Birth Trauma Australia, we will ..read more

Read one mother’s raw account of coping with a fourth-degree tear, navigating postpartum pain, and discovering hope through community, self-care, and resilience ..read more

The theme of Perinatal Mental Health Week 2024 is trauma-informed care. To mark this week and this important topic, ABTA's Advocacy Coordinator Hannah shares her story of how necessary medical care triggered past trauma ..read more

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At the Australasian Birth Trauma Association (ABTA), we are committed to addressing the lack of comprehensive birth-related education for both parents and clinicians. Our recent feature in RANZCOG’s Spring edition of O&G magazine sheds light on this crucial issue. In 2022, we conducted a survey of 1,005 parents who had given birth in the last five years ..read more

The Australasian Birth Trauma Association (ABTA) launched ThinkNatal Education four years ago. In response to the thousands of women and parents telling us, ‘What didn’t anyone tell me’? ThinkNatal offers a series of educational resources aimed at providing birth preparation support and information on topics that are often excluded or underrepresented in existing antenatal education ..read more

Content warning: This birth story discusses trauma. Topics discussed include pre-eclampsia, emergency C-section and mental health struggles. If you are seeking support for your birth trauma, we have downloadable resources here or you can join one of our free Peer2Peer Support programs.     My first pregnancy was pretty unremarkable up until 38 weeks when I developed severe pre-eclampsia and went on to have a category 1 emergency C-section. While my baby was born healthy, I required admission to the intensive care unit where I woke up alone. Although I recovered w ..read more

You need to inform people. Full stop. Please don’t withhold information from women. When I got my wisdom teeth out, I was informed about every potential side effect. Did it scare me? No. It informed me and prepared me because I did have nerve pain for almost a year after. But I was given the dignity of being told. The psychological impact from not-being-told about the pelvic impacts of forceps – being blindsided – was too great for me. In fact, I wasn’t informed about forceps at all. I had no idea what prolapse or pelvic avulsion was… because the medical community didn’t think I should know. T ..read more

A couple of weeks ago, ABTA CEO Amy Dawes and our Group Facilitator Lead Rhiannah Pohlman, visited Tamworth Community Health in Tamworth (NSW) to deliver facilitator training. Since its launch in 2020, ABTA has been offering our six-week birth trauma support program, Peer2Peer Meets. This program was developed to address the gap left by traditional mothers’ groups, which often leave women with birth-related trauma feeling isolated and unsupported. Peer2Peer Meets provides women who have experienced birth-related trauma with a safe space to understand and explore their experiences. It helps t ..read more

The Australasian Birth Trauma Association welcomes the release of the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry Report into Birth Trauma but calls for urgent funding to address systemic failures in the maternal health system nationwide.     Since The Australasian Birth Trauma Association (ABTA) launched in 2017, it has played a significant role in providing input and raising awareness about the extent and impact of birth trauma by amplifying the voices of women and their families. ABTA’s contributions were crucial in highlighting the need for better support and policies to address birth trauma ex ..read more