"Birthing Stories" is a consumer-led initiative which is a collaboration between a Women's and Children's Hospital Network (WCHN) consumer representative Tessa Kowaliw, and sound and music artist Heather Frahn. At its heart lies the birth stories of 12 WCHN consumers – this project has gathered these experiences and used these to create a variety of written, spoken word, song for relaxation, and visual art-based pieces.
Tessa, Heather and participants officially launched the Birthing Stories collection in 2017, including: the custom-composed Birthing Stories song for relaxation piece featuring group lyrics, the Birth Stories Vox Pop podcast, and the Birthing Stories: Art + Poetry exhibition.


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Birthing Stories : Full Project Description Below...

Women carry their babies for nine months, but they carry their birth stories for life. New mums often leave hospital services before they have had a chance to reflect upon and tell the story of their birth. Once home and immersed in the flurry of new family life, it is hard for women to find the time, energy or stillness needed to deeply explore their birth experience. Mothers groups, online communities and family and friends may offer a brief ear, but many find they are too often silenced if they attempt to tell the story of the birth of their child in its fullness. Perhaps their story is too positive, perhaps it is too horrific, or perhaps their story – good or bad – just doesn’t want to be heard at all.

Birthing Stories is a project designed to let these stories be heard many times by many people. Tessa Kowaliw, a consumer advisor, public speaker and programme facilitator, co-designed this initiative with Heather Frahn, sound therapist, music artist, vocalist and meditation guide.

Tessa and Heather hoped to do several with this project. They wanted to offer women a precious opportunity to step out of daily life and explore the meaning of their birth experience to themselves as mothers and also as individuals. In order to support women to find their voice, they sought to capture the rich diversity of their stories through a range of creative methods, including written, visual and audio formats. They wanted to document their stories in dynamic and engaging ways to make them accessible to as broad an audience as possible.
Lastly, they hope to reinvent/reform the birth story genre to empower women to share their experiences in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes.

The Birthing Stories project outcomes are a multi-modal documentation of birth stories from eight beautiful women: Claire, Carol, Kathryn, Teagan, Leah, Bria, Sarah and Rainbo. The creative outcomes include ‘Born With You’, a song for relaxation, various visual art pieces, poetry and song lyrics, and this vox pop recording which you are listening to now.

Because birth stories can often be huge, unwieldy narratives, Heather and Tessa decided to ask participants to, through workshop processes, distill their experience into four chapters: the moment when they found out they were pregnant, their labour, the first time they held their baby and, finally, their birth experience as considered in retrospect with the wisdom and knowledge they hold today.

Tessa and Heather also recommend listening to this vox pop more than once, if you can. Though there are eight birth stories captured here, there is an infinite number of insights and so much inspiration to be found in these women’s words which move beyond clinical lexicon. As they worked together, participants discovered their own language to talk about birth with resonance, clarity and truth.

Though the Birthing Stories project is now complete, these eight women continue to mould, shape, re-tell and make sense of their own birthing experiences. This is part of the beauty of their stories – they are constantly in process, growing and changing, just as mothers continue to grow and change alongside their children.

Tessa and Heather would like to thank Friends of the Women’s and Children’s for funding this pilot project, Heather Dunnachie and Allan Ball for their support, and the eight Birthing Stories participants for generously sharing their time, stories and personal insights.