Caitlin Gard Midwife

Caitlin Gard Midwife Privately practicing midwife offering homebirth services in the Cairns region

17/06/2026

Just wait until...

The first giggle
The first time they properly hug you back
The first time they tell you they love you

When you can have a coffee with a book at the beach and they'll entertain themselves on the playground

Just wait until 🫶

15/06/2026

Pregnancy comes with a lot of opinions.
A lot of them!
Sometimes it's hard to block them all out.

I do have a chuckle at the crazy ones though.

Share with someone who's heard 'just wait until...' a few too many times.

I thought I prepared for postpartum last time.But I seriously misjudged what my body actually needed to feel safe and re...
11/06/2026

I thought I prepared for postpartum last time.
But I seriously misjudged what my body actually needed to feel safe and recover.

I didn't nourish my body.
And consequently I dealt with anxiety, depressive periods, intrusive thoughts, rage, and gut issues.

I was surviving not thriving.
While going through one of the biggest transitions of my life.

This time I am preparing differently.
More of my focus on how to support myself.
Because if I'm looked after, I have more to give my baby.

Postpartum isn't just something to get through.
This is something I wish I had a better understanding of last time.

09/06/2026

I'm in a due date group on fb and the amount of posts about routine sweeps at 38 weeks is... a lot.

When did we start believing this was necessary for labour, a deeply intricate hormonal interplay, to begin.

I've sat in on an obstetric consult where the informed consent process consisted of 'it's a natural form of induction without any risks'

'Natural form of induction' is a conundrum in itself because any form of induction is an intervention.
And just because we label something natural, does not mean it doesn't have any risks.

We're talking about an internal vaginal examination where your cervix is manually stretched open and the membranes are stripped away.
Pretty far from 'natural'.

There are risks to membrane sweeps:
Prodromal labour, accidental rupture of membranes, infection, discomfort, bleeding, starting a labour when the baby is not ready and of course that it may not do anything.

If you want one, that's no problem.
Make that decision with balanced information.

Just know that you can go into labour without one!

05/06/2026

'You'll be right, you're a midwife'
'You don't need to prepare, you know everything'
'I guess you can just look after yourself'

People tend to think I must feel completely calm about birth
I do when it's someone else's birth 😅

For my own, I have all the same thoughts running through my head as everyone else does

02/06/2026

I am 100% for building a village of support around you for pregnancy, birth and postpartum.
We aren't meant to traverse this alone and we shouldn't have to.

But there also comes a point where we cross the line from seeking guidance to seeking a fix.

There was a point in this pregnancy where I realised that I wasn't seeking support with the right intentions.
My drive wasn't intuitive and my energy was frankly frantic.
I kept asking myself 'who is going to help me fix this?'

And then I realised, after a conversation with a friend, that no one would.
Because while I'm blessed to know so many wise women, their role in my journey is not to resolve my worries.

Pregnancy, birth and postpartum is a huge time of expansion and transformation.
We should be held in this time.
But we should always be the driver of our own growth and development.

29/05/2026

Seeing a variety of outcomes should shape awareness and allow you to grow as a practitioner.

It should not lead to you perpetuating a cycle of intervention and fear based care, circling you straight back to the exact same outcomes youre so worried about.

Burn. It. Down. 😅🫣But seriously...There are wonderful people in there, most of them in fact, working so hard to make a d...
28/05/2026

Burn. It. Down.
😅🫣

But seriously...
There are wonderful people in there, most of them in fact, working so hard to make a difference wherever and however they can.
They show up shift after shift and give whatever they can that day.
Sometimes they go home and cry.
In frustration. Sadness. Despair.

Sometimes they check out and distance themselves in order to protect their hearts from the moral distress inflicted on them.
I dont blame them for that, we all have a limit on our capacity to give.

Every now and then, more and more infrequently in the ever growing domain of medicalisation, there is a glimmer.
A beautiful birth, an empowered mother, a feeding success story.
But thats often not enough because its the minority of experiences.

And the more awful things we see the more normalised they become so that our perception of birth becomes warped.

When i first started in MGP i was so saturated with intervention in the birth space that I felt it was a great outcome for a first time mum to birth vaginally with a vacuum or forceps.
Not the ideal birth of course but vaginal and I figured she would likely have a lovely smooth birth next time.
At the time of course I had no concept of the deep psychological imprints birth leaves on mums and babies and that simply being born vaginally is a pretty low benchmark.

For many years I lived in the belief that we were making small changes that added up to something bigger. That we could eventually all change the system for the better.
But then I realised 'the system' is a being of its own and we cant change it because it operates exactly as it was intended to.
The system operates for the system, not for the people working in it and even less so for the people seeking care within it.

We have the ability to make a difference for individuals but we are not changing the system.
The ever worsening birth statistics show us that very clearly.

The change wont come from within the system at all.

Change will come from women who know what they deserve, who ask different questions, and choose to walk away and do it their own way.

Do you know how the practice of measuring progress with cervical exams started?With one study done on sedated women whos...
26/05/2026

Do you know how the practice of measuring progress with cervical exams started?

With one study done on sedated women whose labours were being induced.

We have plentiful information now that shows this is not an accurate representation and yet as with many other ‘routine care’ it continues to be prevalent in the vast majority of maternity care.

 
Women are subjected to cervical exams in order to be allowed to enter birthing areas, before being allowed access to pain relief, in order to be allowed to keep labouring…
The list goes on.

And yet this standard is upheld with no good evidence to support it.
It has become so normalised that women frequently say ‘Oh, I didn’t know I could say no’.

There are reasons for cervical exams and situations where they can provide information that may be beneficial for you, they decision maker.

But having them because it has been four hours and the policy says so is not a good reason

21/05/2026

Shout out to all the MVPs who just say 'you're looking wonderful'
Especially when you're not 😅

My first pregnancy my entire social circle were all midwives and I had very little of these comments

Now I go to playgroups and other small child activities and man, y'all are brutal!

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Cairns, QLD

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