19-05-2025
Calls for more funding to support families through challenging pregnancies and fertility struggles
For many Australians, the journey to parenthood is joyous.
But for a growing number of families, that path is anything but easy.
Stefanie Jolly, 32, remembers the exact moment her mental health began to deteriorate during her first pregnancy.
'I was 25 to 26 weeks pregnant when I probably was at my worst,' she told 7NEWS.
'It's exhausting, especially as a first-time mum. You want to prove to everyone that you're great and everything's fine and you're managing really well.
'But once I surrendered to the feeling that I was getting exhausted and I wasn't able to concentrate on my day-to-day activities, I was able to access services, then my family and other supports were really able to step in.'
Mental health challenges during pregnancy are increasingly common, with perinatal anxiety and depression affecting an estimated one in five mothers.
But many of the services that support women like Jolly are underfunded and under pressure.
'We think it's so important that funders and researchers realise that this is the most influential period we can be impacting in someone's life,' Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia (PANDA) chief executive Julie Borninkhof said.
'We know that if we can provide support to people in the perinatal period, we're not only supporting parents but ... the growing infants are going to go on to be healthy parents, hopefully, themselves in future.'
Even before pregnancy begins, the hurdles can be high.
With many women deciding to have babies later in life, they turn to fertility specialists.
One in every 18 babies in Australia are born through IVF .
Among them are the two and four-year-old daughters of Jade Richards.
'We tried for about two years, naturally,' Richards told 7NEWS.
'I then proceeded to do a laparoscopy and we tried a couple of other things to sort of get things going and then resorted to IVF about five years ago.'
She is thankful that both attempts resulted in a full term pregnancy.
'(Our daughters are) beautiful, we're not getting not much sleep,' Richards said.
'But look, if we could potentially have another, we would love one more.'
Her current attempt to fall pregnant has not been as easy.
'We're going to do one more round (of IVF) and if we can get one more, amazing, but if not, we feel very blessed with what we've got,' Richards said.
Scientific breakthroughs are just around the corner.
A Melbourne clinic is now using state of the art artificial intelligence to analyse women's eggs with unprecedented accuracy, giving doctors a better prediction of pregnancy success.
But the challenges do not stop at conception.
When it comes time to give birth, many women face limited choices due to Australia's maternity services crisis.
Since 2018, at least 11 private maternity units have closed nationwide, with more shutdowns expected this year.
Associate Professor Magdalena Simonis, one of Australia's leading experts in women's health, warned this is a serious issue.
'Women's choice around how they want to have a baby is being taken away from them,' Simonis said.
'We have obstetricians and gynaecologists who are unable to work because the hospitals that they have been working in have been shutting down.
'In Australia, a country that's as advanced as it is, and as has been as wealthy as it has been, we shouldn't be facing a situation where if you live rurally your baby is less likely to survive a complicated pregnancy than if you lived in a metropolitan city.'
The lack of staff and services can result in severe consequences for women during and after birth.
A shocking one in three Australian births have been reported as traumatic, and 98 per cent of participants in the same survey have experienced ongoing physical pain.
'That's around 90,000 women every year emerging from the birth process with some physical or psychological trauma,' Amy Dawes, founder of Birth Trauma Australia, told 7NEWS.
'We also know that around 4 - 6 per cent of all birthing women will have PTSD as a result of the birth experience, which is really hard to hear when we think of post-traumatic stress disorder.
'We don't typically associate that with something that society perceives as often the happiest day of someone's lives.
'Women reported feeling dismissed or coerced into interventions, such as unplanned or emergency caesareans or instrumental deliveries.'
Dawes is calling for more funding and awareness to deliver better outcomes for women.
