Since the birth of my first daughter more than thirty years ago, I have trained as a childbirth educator and counsellor and have been privileged to attend more than one thousand births in hospitals and home settings as a birth attendant.
I have also been honoured to work with many, many more women and their partners and support people during my birth preparation workshops, pre-natal classes, personal birth counselling sessions and in presentations and seminars around Australia and internationally.
Sadly, in more than thirty years of birth support work, I have also witnessed an unprecedented rise in unnecessary medical interventions during birth—and the development of a culture that, rather than supporting women to birth naturally, is actually undermining them.
No wonder, then, that many women are fearful as they approach their labour. Will their body cope? Are they physically and emotionally prepared?
Feedback during my regular presentations to midwives and medical practitioners tells me that my understanding of our birth system is ‘on the money’ but—more importantly—that women who have undertaken my birth preparation classes are better prepared to navigate the many challenges they face when trying to birth naturally.
My passion is to educate women about the impact of our birth culture on the outcome of our births. Instead of fear, I want you to go into your labour with confidence in your body and your support people, and the knowledge that will give you the best possibility of natural birth.
Join me to learn how.
‘WOW. Empowering, passionate, awesome, practical — Rhea’s a rare treat’ — midwife
qualifications
Independent Childbirth Educator, Trainer, Birth Attendant and Counsellor.
T.P.T.C. (Trained Primary Teacher’s Certificate)
Dip. C.B.E. (Child Birth Education)
N.A.C.E. Trainer (National Association of Childbirth Educators)
Grad. Dip. Counselling & Human Services (La Trobe University)
Certificate of Gestalt Therapy
about birthing wisdom
‘The intention of my Birthing Wisdom work — workshops, birth support, counselling practice, birth attendant training, presentations and talking birth talk wherever, whenever and to whoever — Is to keep alive a trust in, and possibility for normal physiological birth’ — Rhea
birthing with courage and confidence
pregnancy and birth — a rich purposeful journey
In many cultures and across time, the challenging journey of pregnancy and birth was celebrated and honoured as a transformational process, a ‘rite of passage’. Women were supported in this journey and enabled to find the inner resources they would need to become powerful birthing women and strong mothers. Often in our highly interventionist ‘labour-bypass’ era, a woman’s need to consciously experience this transformational process is not fully recognised or adequately supported.
Rhea’s Birthing Wisdom offers support to the ‘willing women’ who wish to honour this transformational process — women in touch with their yearning for normal physiological birthing and willing to undertake the work required to open the possibility for achieving it.
Universally, women have taken this rich purposeful journey in the company of other women, and current research continues to indicate that instinctive physiological birthing is enabled through the connection of woman-to-woman support.
In evolutionary terms it’s only very recently that we have invited our men to share this journey with us, and research confirms that this is deepening the positive bonds between fathers and their babies.
So, whilst strongly advocating for the evidence-based practices that strengthen the woman-to-woman connection, Rhea’s Birthing Wisdom work also supports the father’s unique role in contemporary shared birthing.
Rhea’s Birthing Wisdom approach encourages the development of physical resources — especially resources to raise your pain tolerance threshold; to release into functional pain; to normalise ‘crisis of confidence’ moments and to increase your ability to relax in action.
Birthing Wisdom also explores the emotional, psychological and relational aspects of pregnancy and birth to enable you to take your journey with courage and confidence; to deepen your relationship; to create a meaningful birth experience and to ensure a safe and loving welcome for your baby.