S2 EP1: Empowering Mothers and Partners through the Maternal Assisted C-Section- An Interview with Lauren Brenton or "Loz", of One Mama Midwife

In this episode of Shire Health Chat, an enriching discussion unfolded with Lauren Brenton, also known as Loz, from One Mama Midwife. Being a new dad, the host shared his excitement about diving into the area of maternity and birthing, an area Loz well-versed in as a Shire-born endorsed midwife with One Mama Midwife. She expressed her passion about supporting families, especially during Covid, by offering a reliable information resource and essential antenatal classes.

The heart of the conversation focused on a fascinating topic- the maternal assisted Cesarean section, a process where a mother assists in the birthing of her own child during a C-section. Loz affirmed her belief in the empowering nature of this option, especially for those mothers who crave direct involvement and instant connection with their newborns. Drawing from her profound professional and personal experience, she also discussed the journey of bringing this option to light in her hospital.

Reflecting on the four-year journey of her business, Loz shared her derived advice to trust oneself and to dive all-in without holding back. Her life and business philosophy revolve around advising people to trust their instincts in all aspects, especially during pregnancy and parenting.

A significant part of One Mama Midwife’s classes focuses on partners and their key role in the entire journey. Emphasizing the importance of partners attending antenatal classes, Loz shared various practical ways partners can support each other after birth.

The chat concluded with a valuable piece of advice shared by Loz; to lean on the support of friends and family more than we usually do. In her words, babies are a group project that involves the wider community and family unit.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
It's absolutely amazing. So for those people who don't know what a maternal assisted cesarean is,
it's where a mother is having a cesarean, so an elective cesarean section,
and she assists in the birth of that baby. Hello.
Shire Nation. Welcome to another Shire Health Chat, and I am very excited to

(00:23):
be sitting down with Lauren Brenton, or Loz, from One Mama Midwife.
I saw Lauren's Instagram posts over a long period of time and as a new dad,
this is an area that I'm really excited to get into.
Before I start, we are recording on the traditional lands of the Dharawal people
and I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.

(00:44):
Lauren, welcome to the show. I'm really excited to have a Shire Health chat
with you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm also very excited to be here.
Okay, we might dive straight into it. Can Can you give the people your Shire
specs? You know, how did you come to work in this area?
Where are you? What's going on? Yeah, so I'm a Shire born and bred.

(01:05):
I grew up in the Shire, so have lived here my whole life and don't ever plan on leaving.
But I did, I am a midwife, an endorsed midwife. So I did my studies outside of the Shire.
And then once I finished, I did start working as a midwife back in the Shire
again. Again, I now am doing my own antenatal classes and I do these from my carrying bar studio.

(01:26):
So still back in my favorite place, the Shire.
Very good. And look, getting that passport to get outside the Shire is time-consuming,
but for medical training and for midwife training, and for a lot of reasons,
if you do have to get it sometime. Yeah, we do.
Look, tell us about how you started One Mama Midwife, because you've obviously
built quite a big brand and you've helped a lot of people along the way.

(01:47):
Sort of tell me where that came from.
Yeah. So I myself have four kids and being a midwife going into that setting,
I found that there are a lot of people coming in scared and just
feeling like they didn't have that information that they
really needed to know so first of all I started
it in COVID when again all antenatal classes and things
stopped and I thought well I can just

(02:09):
put a free resource out there and people can look at it and go okay well this
is you know information I can trust and I don't have to surf through Google
for my answers so that's kind of how it started and I didn't expect the growth
that that it was going to have and the impact that it now has,
which is really, really nice.
But yeah, it just started as a free resource to try and help anyone that needed

(02:31):
that bit of extra support coming into the hospital, especially during COVID.
And then, yeah, it just, it built up from, I guess, word of mouth a little bit,
but also through obviously being active on my social media and just giving that free advice.
And a lot of people were sort of going, you know, you need to do more with this.
You need to do more with this.
And I was like, yeah, but like, I'm not really sure what and then kind of got

(02:54):
a lot of requests for classes and further education and went yeah actually I'm
gonna do that so then that's where one mama midwife antenatal classes were born.
Excellent and look for some of our audience you know some of the blokes who
listen to my channel they might not have any idea this might be their first
contact they might not have had kids yet or they might just be getting to the

(03:16):
start of a pregnancy with their partner and it can be a bit of an unknown,
like you're jumping into the unknown. You don't really know what to expect, which is why these.
Prior to birth, really good antenatal and preparatory classes really give you
a head start because after birth, you are sleep deprived.
You know, it's so hard to pick up a podcast or listen to an educational session.

(03:38):
So I'd certainly encourage anyone to get along to preparatory classes.
One of the things I did see that you were quite keen on was the maternal assisted C-section.
And I thought that would be a really good topic to talk about because it sounds
really really empowering.
Yes, it's absolutely amazing. So, for those people who don't know what a maternal
assisted cesarean is, it's where a mother is having a cesarean,

(04:01):
so an elective cesarean section, and she assists in the birth of that baby.
So, the obstetrician delivers the baby's head and shoulders,
and the mum is fully scrubbed with surgical gown and gloves and assists to reach
reach down and with the help of the obstetrician, pull that baby up and onto mum's chest.
So there are so many benefits of doing that.

(04:23):
You've got A, the empowerment, the connection, feeling involved,
but also you've got that immediate skin to skin and the benefits for that for both mum and baby.
So definitely something I'm very passionate about, but obviously also not for everyone too.
Yeah. And I think that's just one really good way you can empower people and
whatever their choice in the healthcare sector for pregnancy,

(04:47):
you know, we try to be a very judgment-free zone in healthcare where possible.
It's just one option that they have to really get involved and feel connected.
Yeah, definitely. And it wasn't an easy thing to advocate for myself.
Now it's a lot easier. It's now, I've written, helped write the policy at the
hospital where I was working and it is now easier and families can choose it

(05:11):
as a much more easy option,
but it It was, yeah, hard to advocate at the time to bring in something completely
new and completely foreign. I'll bet.
Yeah. Like I'm going a little off tangent here. I do apologise.
But how did you jumpstart that? Was it like how did you start the ball rolling?
Was it your own experience? Did you bring in an outside protocol?
Like how did you, I mean, system change is hard in any medical field,

(05:35):
but how did you jumpstart that?
I, before I fell pregnant with my fourth baby, I knew that that's what I wanted
to do. I was like, next baby, I want to do this.
I want to feel involved and I want to get that instant connection that I see
so many people working as a midwife get in the vaginal birth scenarios.
And I was like, I just want to experience that myself. So I had a very,

(05:56):
I had Andrew Zushman as my obstetrician and he was very supportive.
Eventually like at the start I was like I want to do this and I think he thought
I was joking and just sort of pulling his leg a little bit and then once I you
know opened up and was like no actually like this is something that's really
important to me and explained why it was important then he was 100% on board
and was like yep you get the hospital on board and we'll do it let's let's run with it,

(06:21):
so kind of was a combination of showing him
the videos that I'd seen from an obstetrician in
Melbourne getting policies so we got some policies from Queensland and Melbourne
to base our policy in our hospital off so I then yeah wrote our policy with
the educator of the hospital to make sure it was obviously all legitimate and

(06:43):
proper and we got that policy passed in the hospital.
Very nice yeah so you are coming up
on four years birthday for your business which is which is quite
good a lot of small businesses don't make that four-year mark and you're thriving riding
at this point what advice would you
give you if you had to go back four years if you had to give advice to
yourself starting the business or to the laws of that time what

(07:04):
advice would you give to yourself I would give
myself the advice to trust trust yourself
and to just go for it I feel like I held back quite a lot in those early days
and I think if I jumped in a little bit more at the start it might have made
it a little bit easier now but yeah just I think trusting that I I knew what
I was doing and that I could do something that is helpful to the community.

(07:28):
Yeah, trusting myself would be the biggest thing.
I think that's great advice. I think that's probably applicable to most of life
rather than even just business. Yeah.
Okay. So if you had to summarise your sort of philosophy to business or parenting
in one sentence, this is a lot to ask, but what would that sentence be?
So I think that it would be to trust your instincts with everything,

(07:52):
whether that be during the pregnancy and you don't feel like
something's right or you know being presented with
an option that you don't think suits you or your
family or then yeah parenting not trying
to sort of fit children all into the same category or all into the same box
so you know as you would know all kids and all babies are completely different

(08:13):
and I think trusting that instinct and sort of following their lead can really
take away a lot of stress in that parenting and business business, life.
I love them. I like that. Thanks. All right.
So, look, I'm a dad, obviously. We sometimes get a bit hesitant around pregnancy
and understanding what's going on.

(08:34):
But we obviously most of the time do want to be involved and do want to be as much help as possible.
I've, I guess, do your classes, do you encourage people to bring their partners
along? Is it preferred to or not?
I often tell dads, you know, get empowered, get involved. I'll give them a bunch
of links, but should dads come to your classes and what's the best idea?

(08:54):
A hundred percent. Partners should definitely come to the classes.
I do focus a lot on the partners because again, you know, having worked in that
birthing suite and having partners move out of the way when we walk through
and me being like, no, no, you guys are more important than I am.
Like you need to be in here.
So yeah, I definitely focus on the partners a lot in each stage,

(09:16):
but then also, you know, practical things for when the baby's born.
How can you guys practically help your partner in that postpartum period?
So definitely 100% recommend bringing partners and them being involved.
And I kind of make jokes being like, nappies and baths are dad jobs and just
getting our skills out of the nappy changes.

(09:39):
We're very happy to help with nappies. And for the dads who are looking for
something to do, if you want to look at the amount of nappy bins,
there's so many different types of nappy bins you can buy online.
It's just this huge industry that we didn't know about previously.
Okay. Is there any other advice you would give for people out there in general?

(10:00):
I know, obviously, people can find you at One Mother Midwife and we highly encourage that.
Is there any advice you want to give or anything you want to talk about just
to the people of the Shire?
I think it would be to really rely on
friends and family more than you do I feel like
especially as shy people we tend to just kind of

(10:21):
try and do everything ourselves and try and you
know make it look like we have this all under control
and all down pat but I think if we let people in
and let our friends and family you know take the baby for a walk
for an hour so that you could rest or say hey actually I
can't cook dinner because I'm so tired do you think you
might be able to drop me over a meal most people would be

(10:41):
so over the moon to be able to help but just don't
know how so I think that yeah being able to trust
people a little bit more and really do take in
that support especially when you're first in those first few weeks as as you
would know a new parent yeah really having that extra support makes a big difference
and I guess you sort of start to realize that a baby is a group project involving

(11:03):
not just you and your partner but also the wider wider community and the wider family unit.
And they say it does take a try, but until you get in there,
I didn't really understand why.
Music.