Thanks 2025 – and now on to 2026!

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 2025, and give you a glimpse of what I have planned for 2026. (It’s going to be epic!)

Blog highlights

I posted 46 blogs this year. 26,800 people visited the blogs and viewed them 46,800 times. Once again, Australians and folks from the UK made up the majority of the blog readers, but rather surprisingly China came in at number three this year, replacing the USA. The list of countries is long. Hi to the seven readers from the Ukraine and the two from Palestine (I hope your 2026 is an improvement on the last few years).

I share the blog posts posts (and other things) on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook tells me there were 1.1 million views of my account this year (wow!). For Instagram the number was 574,700. (If you don’t yet follow my socials, come find me – @birthsmalltalk). My 2026 goal is to post daily to both accounts.

The three most read blogs this year were:

There’s so much more!

I sat down at the computer earlier this week and wondered just what it was that kept me feeling like there was always about 10% more work on my to do list than I wanted there to be. It is very easy to lose sight of the year’s achievements. Here’s the list of just some of my key achievements for the year:

369 people enrolled in a paid Birth Small Talk course (you can still enrol here – and get in before prices go up in 2026!)
Published seven academic papers
Spoke at four conferences, and delivered three in-person Fetal Monitoring Masterclasses and three online workshops, two podcast appearances (if you want to book me as a speaker in 2026, information about how to do that is here)
Contributed chapters to four different books, two of which are now published
Peer reviewed ten papers
Marked an honours thesis
Did paid Research Assistant work on four different projects
Added new PhD students, bringing me up to five

It was a big year!

What’s coming for 2026?

My book, Monitoring Your Baby in Labour, is very close now. I’m expecting draft print copies to arrive in the mail before Christmas. If all goes well, you should be able to get your hands on a copy in March 2026.

The Fetal Monitoring Academy will open enrolments again in 2026, and I’ll be running two live rounds of Confident Intermittent Auscultation again (if you can’t wait that long you can access this year’s recording here). My existing courses (I’m having a VBAC. Do I need fetal monitoring? and Fetal Monitoring: Informed decisions for your birth) will continue through the year, though the price will go up. Grab these before the end of December if you are interested!

I have plans for five entirely new courses, and possibly more if the response to these are favourable. These will focus on core skills all maternity professionals need – being able to make sense of research, understanding how to apply fetal monitoring guidelines in an ethical way that meets professional obligations, and how to have a fetal monitoring counselling conversation to support women’s decisions. Two conferences are already in my calendar, and I’m looking for a third (any recommendations folks?).

On my list of goals for the year is to get a new research project of my own, one related to fetal monitoring, started. The rate limiting step is my ability to generate enough income from my courses to reduce the need for me to take on paid work doing other people’s research. If you want to see me research a new fetal monitoring topic, you can make that happen by supporting my work financially!

If you want to be sure not to miss anything –signing up for the newsletter is your best option. I’m going to take a short break now but will be back posting by mid-January. Stay tuned for a HUGE 2026 for me and Birth Small Talk!

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