Bunbury midwife takes out WA Excellence in Midwifery award

But she does just that with her positive birthing classes from Hypnobirthing Australia.

As a result of the success of the program, Ms Biggar has recently walked away with Excellence in Midwifery at the WA Nursing and Midwifery Excellence Awards.

Ten years ago, Ms Biggar was noticing how often women would have traumatic births and births with more than one intervention and thought there must be a better way.

After doing research she came across Hypnobirthing Australia which changes the language and information around birth so that it isn't seen as traumatising.

"I was called to birthing room where I saw this woman breath her baby out in the water and I was amazed by what I had witnessed," she said.

Two weeks later, Ms Biggar was called to another birth but it was a non-elective caesarian after having all the different interventions.

"I thought I would be supporting her through what you would call a traumatic birth experience but she was really empowered and positive about the twist and turns," Ms Biggar said.

"It wasn't the birth she thought she would have, but she was able to give her baby the best birth possible."

The main thing Ms Biggar took away from these two women was that they had both done hypnobirthing.

Ms Biggar started her classes in Perth privately, before deciding it needed to be more accessible to people.

"It often bothered me that I could anecdotally see the difference it was making for women and their birth partners but it wasn't accessible to everyone, only to those who had done research or money to do it," she said.

After moving to Bunbury, she was able to get approval to change the hospital pre-natal course to the hypnobirthing program in 2019.

She said it was great to see how women's thoughts of birth changed from 'painful' and 'scary' to 'calm', 'strong' and 'empowering.

With everything, COVID threw a spanner in the works with the face to face classes no longer able to be held and restrictions on how many people could be involved at the birth.

"Now more than ever women were terrified about giving birth," she said.

"Within three weeks of lockdown we launched the positive birth program through telehealth to all of WA Country Health Service."

Ms Biggar said it was a silver lining as now the telehealth classes were still being accessed by women across regional WA.

"Women are so comfortable with the telehealth service, so accessible for people are far away or partner who is FIFO," she said.

Ms Biggar said being nominated was an honour in itself and then when she found she was a finalist that was also exciting.

"At the gala I was reading about the other finalists and my husband and I just said 'wow' people are doing some phenomenal stuff," she said.

"So I wasn't going to be upset if I didn't win knowing who the other finalists were but I was really proud and excited to be up there."