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Stacey Warnecke died in September after giving birth at home.

Newborn cries, quiet groans: The Triple Zero call as influencer lay dying after ‘free birth’

In the months before her son, Axel, was born, Stacey Warnecke expressed a deep fear of birth trauma and was adamant she wanted to have her baby on her own terms.

  • Melissa Cunningham

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Australia's declining fertility rate.

Australia’s baby bust

The fertility rate in Australia is at a record low. We explore why we’re having fewer babies – and what that means for the country’s future.

Kate Daly and her husband, Hugh, with their son, Will and daughters Grace, Emmaline and Ellen in 2016.

The common but deadly virus most pregnant women have never heard of

Pregnant women with young children are at high risk of infection. There are three simple things that can reduce the risk in unborn babies.

  • Kate Aubusson
Alicia Graham has been donating her menstrual fluid in the hope of helping researchers prevent pregnancy complications.

The missing piece of the miscarriage puzzle could be hiding in plain sight

Australian researchers are among the first in the world to study a long-stigmatised aspect of women’s lives and its possible link to pregnancy complications.

  • Henrietta Cook
Pregnancy is risky and expensive.

Being pregnant is risky and expensive. Should women be paid for it?

If society needs women to fall pregnant to reverse falling fertility rates, then it needs to adequately support and compensate them for doing so.

  • Luara Ferracioli
Lyndsay Bourke sought the advice of a councillor to help guide her son, Billy through their family’s grief.

‘Did she look like me?’ How Lyndsay found the right words after her daughter died

Families grieving for lost babies too often move on rather than seek help.

  • Kate Aubusson
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There’s a great life to be had out the other side of the baby-making vortex, says author Katrina Strickland, pictured here with Teo.

I didn’t choose to be ‘childless’, but life on the other side is actually pretty great

For some of the unintentionally childless there were medical issues. For others, it was the result of not one big decision but dozens of little ones.

  • Katrina Strickland
Baby R, as the infant was referred to during the coronial inquest last year, died from perinatal hypoxia in August 2022, after he was delivered during an emergency caesarean at Bendigo Hospital.

Baby R died after a disastrous home birth. Coroner says midwives provided ‘deficient’ care

Two private midwives waited too long to transfer a mother to hospital in Bendigo, starving her newborn of oxygen and causing his death six days after an emergency caesarean.

  • Melissa Cunningham
American reproductive rights advocate Abigail Porter is among many celebrating the falling fertility rate.
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Joy as young women without children outnumber mothers

American reproductive rights advocate Abigail Porter is among many celebrating the falling fertility rate.

Jim’s baby was born by surrogate in Georgia using Global Surrogacy run by Australian former lawyer Paul Norris-Ongso.

Baby broker: The ‘crazy car salesman’ brokering babies and holding embryos ‘hostage’

As the $200 billion surrogacy industry booms, families are left to navigate an opaque web of companies and stateless babies while brokers operate unchecked.

  • Amber Schultz and Kayla Olaya