It’s that time of the year, when many of us pause to reflect on the year that is ending and start planning goals for the year that is coming. Here, I share my highlights from 2024, and give you a glimpse of what I have planned for 2025!
Blog highlights
I posted 50 blogs this year. 24,000 people visited the blogs and viewed them 45,000 times. (Wow! So many of you!) Australian visitors, those from the United Kingdom, and the United States of America make up the majority of the blog readers, but the range of countries that people come from is vast (and fascinating!). A big shout out to the 46 people from Cambodia, 19 from Croatia, and the 5 people from the Isle of Man who dropped by this year! I hope to see you again in 2025.
The three most read blogs this year were:
- What about CTG monitoring for VBAC? (I have plans to give this post a big update next year…)
- Caesarean section and stillbirth risk
- Found it! The fascinating history of the discovery and rediscovery of the clitoris
Online courses
I ran my online courses Fetal Monitoring for Maternity Professionals and Fetal Monitoring for Birth Workers each four times this year; and added a new course Fetal Monitoring: The Basics to the mix (this one is for women planning their birth options). I also offered a free option, logically called Free Stuff! Across all these options, 167 people took an BirthSmallTalk course in 2024!
I also started a new venture working with Dr Melanie Jackson. (If you don’t know Melanie the Midwife or her fabulous Great Birth Rebellion podcast, you should check her out.) Melanie and I put together professional education about medications that midwives might prescribe, and how to interpret pathology tests. It is designed for Endorsed midwives (in Australia midwives need additional qualifications to be able to prescribe medications) but suits any midwife who wants to learn more about safe use of medications in midwifery.
Research work
The biggest project I was involved in this year was the Midwifery Futures project, on behalf of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. The report has now been published and makes for very interesting reading. Working alongside Professor Caroline Homer and research assistant Chanelle Warton was an absolute delight, and I’m still amazed and impressed just how much we were able to achieve in a short time frame. (Big shout out to the rest of the Midwifery Futures lineup too – Zoe Bradfield, Jennifer Fenwick, Kathleen Baird, Joanne Gray, and Melanie Robinson.) We have one paper published already (about what women want from their maternity care – and it’s free to read).
There’s more!
- I taught two courses about Advanced Reproductive Technology for the University of Technology, Sydney
- Appeared in at least ten podcasts (I stopped counting after ten!)
- Spoke at the Great Birth Rebellion conference in Sydney
- Wrote multiple chapters for the Pharmacology in Midwifery textbook that has just been published
- Assisted a bunch of people who are considering research about fetal monitoring or linked issues in maternity care, or who were writing about fetal monitoring and wanted to fact check.
It was a big year!
What’s coming for 2025?
I have taken everything I learned about offering online fetal monitoring courses in 2024 and have created something new, and frankly EPIC! The Fetal Monitoring Academy opened its doors quietly last week to a handpicked group of special people who are giving it the once over for me before I launch it into the world early next year. Not will you get access to more educational resources about fetal monitoring than you can shake a stick at, the Academy now also provides you with a social and private space while you work out what to do with all that knowledge. It offers a safe place to start making some inroads into changing maternity services for the better.
If that sounds amazing and interesting – you can sign up for the waitlist here to be sure you definitely hear about it when enrolments are open, including being able to access an early bird discount.
I have plans to launch a short course all about the use of CTG monitoring (or not) for women planning a vaginal birth after caesarean section (VBAC), and I want to take a deep dive into the underbelly of fetal physiology research this year. The blog will continue, and will remain completely free. 2025 will also be the year of the book! I’m in the process of securing an editor and lining up all the other things that need to happen to get it published. I have at least eight research papers coming this year (most relate to the Midwifery Futures project but some are fetal monitoring research), and a book chapter about CTG monitoring, risk, and why none of it makes sense.
And that’s just the stuff I already planned for and know about!
If you want to be sure not to miss anything – signing up for the newsletter is your best option. Or follow me on your favourite social media platform. I’m going to take a short break now but will be back posting by mid-January. Stay tuned for a HUGE 2025 for me and Birth Small Talk!
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Categories: CTG, EFM, Reflections
Tags: Blog, Book, Coming soon, Courses, Midwifery Futures, News
Birth Small Talk 
‘The biggest project I was involve in this year’
Missing ‘d’
Lovely positive missive!
Catherine
Catherine Williams
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Fixed it, thank you!
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Thank you for this blog and all your work. It’s been eye-opening to me. It’s so good that you are spreading this scientific knowledge. I’ve been coerced into an unnecessary C-section because of a cascade of interventions and continuous CTG monitoring, I didn’t know any better at this time and was in a very bad mental state after it happened… It took me months of research to understand what actually went wrong (and your blog has been helpful in that!). This won’t happen to me ever again. I’ve also been sending links to your blog to women in VBAC groups, who are so often victims of misinformation by their providers and coercion into harmful practices. The widespread sabotage of birth and of women’s reproductive health should end.
Best wishes for the upcoming year!
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Thank you! I’m glad you have found it useful.
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Amazing work! I have loved your episodes on the Great Birth Rebellion and am working my way through reading all of your (very well written) blog articles – I am due at the end of March and am so glad I found this resource so I can advocate for myself! Have been reading many sections out loud to my partner so he can help advocate for us as well.
Can’t wait to read the book.
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Thank you! I’m glad you are finding them useful.
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