International Normal Labour and Birth Conference 10-13 October 2016, Sydney Australia

International Normal Labour and Birth Conference 10-13 October 2016, Sydney Australia from PBB Media on Vimeo.

Last week Pregnancy Birth and Beyond Radio made the trip down to Sydney to cover this year's International Normal Labour and Birth Conference.  And I was the lucky one to pack my bags and represent our team!

I set myself the ambitious goal of interviewing all of the keynote speakers - a goal I almost achieved.  For two of the three days of the conference I ran around with my trusty recorder and camera having as many on-the-spot conversations I could manage with our busy, but obliging interviewees.

In between my interviews, I got to catch a lot of the presentations, and wow, there is such vital information that is shared at these conferences.  Information that women and their families going into birth would really benefit from knowing too.  (Did you know that babies born under epidural can have diminished ability to regulate their moods 12 months later? -K. U. Moberg)  Information that most people don't know yet could prevent life long health challenges.  

The importance of this information, and our team's invitation to hear it, confirmed in my mind the important role our team plays in bringing the research to women.

So in the coming weeks and months, we'll be bringing you these interviews - there's a lot of editing for me to do first though!

And who was I lucky enough to interview?  

• Professor Hannah Dahlen, Chair of the 2016 conference
• Professor Caroline Homer, President of the Australian College of Midwives
• Professor Eugene Declerq, Professor of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health and Founder of www.birthbythenumbers.org
• Bashi Kumar-Hazard, lawyer from Human Rights in Childbirth
• Professor Sally Tracy, Professor of Midwifery at Univ. of Sydney
• Professor Maralyn Foureur, Professor of Midwifery at Univ. of Technology, Sydney
• Dr Andrew Bitsis, obstetrician, Royal Hospital for Women, Sydney
• Professor Alec Welsh, obstetrician, Royal Hospital for Women, Maternal-Foetal Medicine Specialist
• Leona McGrath, midwife and senior advisor to the NSW Aboriginal and Midwifery Strategy
• Sheena Byrom, OBE, midwife
• Professor Soo Downe, OBE, Founder of the Normal Labour and Birth conference series

I also got to interview Ann Kinnear, Executive Officer of the Aust. College of Midwives and one of the lead authors of important policy documents such as Towards Normal Birth about the state of maternity services reform and Bec Jenkinson from the Midwifery Research Unit of Univ. of Queensland about informed consent and maternity care plans.  Another special treat is an interview with an obstetrician about the challenges she faces in delivering woman centred care.  Fascinating listening.  

We're very much looking forward to sharing these informative discussions with our listeners.  Stay tuned!

Above in the video, you can check out a mini showreel of the event I've put together to give you a snippet of this wonderful conference .
 
We extend our sincere thanks to the Conference for their invitation and we are thrilled to have their endorsement.  We look forward to collaborating with the conference convenors again in the future!

​- Sally