Karen McClay - Supporting the Mind-Body-Birth Connection

Karen is the Director of Calmbirth®. Australia’s leading Childbirth Education Program. She is also practicing Registered Midwife (RM), a Registered Nurse (RN) and is the daughter of the founder of Calmbirth®, Peter Jackson.??Karen has a passion improving the emotional experiences of birth and for sharing her knowledge and experience with pregnant couples and caregivers. Her hope is that one day our society and cultures view and experience birth will be far more positive than it is today.

Karen will be discussing the importance of understanding the interdependent relationship of the mind-body-birth connection, how this not only impacts on a woman or birthing person’s experience of birth but the way their body responds to birth and how we as caregivers can support this.

Marina Weckend - Physiological Plateaus in Normal Labour & Birth

Marina Weckend, MSc, is a midwife who is currently conducting her PhD at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. She has ten years’ experience working as a clinical and independent midwife, in midwifery education and in health research. Marina’s current research project is exploring labour patterns where progress appears to slow or stall but is still interpreted as physiological by the attending midwife. Previous to embarking on this doctoral research, Marina has worked as a head of midwifery school and as a research assistant in Germany and has completed her MSc in Midwifery and Women’s Health in the UK. She has also established a midwifery service in several emergency refugee accommodations in Germany and is interested in supporting refugee and asylum seeker health, enhancing midwifery education and promoting healthy childbirth.

In contemporary maternity care, it is commonly expected that women demonstrate what is considered continuous progress of labour until birth. According to theidihis paradigm, if a woman’s labour slows down or stalls, clinicians are quick to diagnose failure to progress and may offer augmentation. However, there is considerable evidence that labour may slow, stall, pause or even reverse on a number of occasions throughout the continuum of healthy labour and birth without constituting pathology. Findings from existing research indicate that physiological plateaus may be a healthy mechanism of self-regulation of the mother-infant-dyad. Further, such plateaus may be fairly commonly observed, particularly in non-clinical birth settings. This presentation aims to provide an overview of existing evidence about physiological plateaus, discuss varying concepts and terminology and stimulate debate about the implications of physiological plateaus on maternity care practice.