Dramatic changes to birthing practice in Australia – with the normal vaginal birth rate dropping below 50% for the first time – corresponds with increasing reports of birth trauma and points to an urgent need to transform maternity services. 

This has been the long-held focus of research conducted by Associate Professor Liz Newnham, who arrived at Flinders University in June 2024 as new teaching and research Associate Professor of Midwifery in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. 

In addition to her teaching duties, Associate Professor Newnham’s continuing research on midwifery connects with a core research theme of Flinders University’s Caring Futures Institute to promote a healthy start to life. 

“In teaching the next generation of midwives, we need to focus on what creates and promotes wellbeing,” she says. “Some of those intangible aspects of humanising birthing practice – such as care – have a significant impact on the hormones of labour and birth, and the associated emotions of joy and love have a great effect on the mother and baby. It’s such a crucial time. These help to set up the first few years of a baby’s life in such a positive way and prevent many health problems that can extend into adulthood. 

“This is where midwifery intersects with the belief that care is central to humanity. We all need it – and it needs to be a core part of our teaching and practice.” 

Associate Professor Newnham says that pregnancy/birth is a life course “super-moment” where so much good can emerge when it is done well – although she laments that at present there are many problematic maternity issues, including increasing birth trauma reports. 

“We are not doing things well in maternity, across the world, and things must change,” she says. “The medical model works so well in emergency situations, but, historically, its reductionist approach has neglected the experience of giving birth. Of course, there is always an element of risk and danger with birth, and midwives are highly skilled to manage complications and refer when necessary. Hospitals are currently facing enormous pressures, so there is work to be done in terms of scaling up relationship-based, midwifery models of care, which we know improve both birth outcomes and birth experience.” 

Her PhD thesis – “An Ethnographic Study of Hospital Birth Culture” – was published as a book, Towards the Humanisation of Birth by Palgrave MacMillan, and laid a foundation for the continued focus of Associate Professor Newnham’s research. She was involved in writing the first South Australian Perinatal Practice Guideline on pharmacological analgesia for labour and birth, and co-wrote an article series in practice journal The Practicing Midwife, that has been popular with clinicians and released as an e-book. She has also been interviewed for several podcasts, including the Contractions Podcast, Care Ethics Research Consortium, Making a Midwife , Through the Pinard, and The Great Birth Rebellion.

Her latest research is directed to a specific area of attention, working with Flinders colleague Professor Annette Briley on the project “Identifying the health care needs of autistic childbearing people during the perinatal period, and the educational needs of midwives who provide this care: an arts-based, co-design study”. It represents world-leading research dedicated to autistic people and the birthing process. 

“This taps into my central research themes, to promote more birthing experiences that are best for everybody,” says Associate Professor Newnham. 

This is a two-year project funded by a Leahurst Nurse’s Foundation grant, in which autistic people who have given birth and midwives who have cared for them will participate in workshops to create a co-designed resource, to provide more specific information for others to follow. 

“I always expect to find surprises in such an under-explored issue,” says Associate Professor Newnham. “If you are curious and you ask questions, the answers reveal new knowledge.” 

The results of this project will help to inform midwives’ care of autistic childbearing people, and may also support policy development. 

Associate Professor Newnham’s goal is to facilitate positive change in practice and experience that will help reduce rates of birth trauma and promote human flourishing. 

“Humanised birth emphasises the social, emotional and psychological aspects of childbirth, because it recognises that birth isn’t just a physical process,” she says. “It’s a deeply personal and transformative experience for women / birthing people, their families and communities.”