The founder and owner of Sydney Bubs, Michelle has been a Doula for the past 13 years. She supports parents’ choices in birthing and caring for their baby whether that be a hospital or home birth, natural or medically assisted birth or breastfeeding or bottle feeding. In this way she empowers parents and gives them confidence back regarding the way they choose to handle this life event.

Prior to starting Sydney Bubs, Michelle worked as a Parent Support Counsellor for Sids n Kids NSW, dealing with bereavement following pregnancy and baby loss to miscarriage, termination, still birth, prematurity and neonatal death.

Michelle has worked closely with women and their partners in the postnatal period to overcome problem such as:

  • Breastfeeding issues including low supply, relactation, mastitis, breast refusal, positioning, premature birth breastfeeding, expressing, returning to work, and of course the guilt that comes with not being able to feed their babies
  • Establishing effective routines
  • Settling techniques.

The Sydney Bubs service covers home and hospital visits as well phone and email consults.

As well as being our resident expert here at Mum Knows Breast, Michelle is also a bereavement and breastfeeding professional on the Australian Multiple Birth Association forum and is often called upon by media organisations for her views on issues concerning mothers, babies and parenting.

On a more personal note, Michelle is a mum of four children Katie 13, Sophie 11, Aimee, 7 and Jack 3. She lives in Sydney with her children and her husband who runs an aquarium business from home, and also works for a government department.

As a mum, Michelle has experienced plenty with her own children.

With her eldest, Katie, she had a healthy, normal pregnancy with no issues other than what the doctors called an "irritable uterus". This caused contractions throughout the pregnancy which were a bit painful. However Katie was born a week overdue and very healthy, after a 19 hour labour and natural drug free birth. She breastfed and bottle fed in tandem for two years.

Her pregnancy with Sophie was very much the same. She was born two weeks before her due date, after a 3 hour labour and natural drug free birth. Again, she was breastfed and bottle fed in tandem for two years.

However the pregnancy with Aimee was problematic from the start. Michelle had a low-lying placenta, which became placenta praevia. Eventually she had a massive placental abruption at 25 weeks, and Aimee was delivered by emergency caesarean 3 days later. She fought for 96 days in NICU, until finally coming home. Michelle expressed breast milk and fed it to her via nasogastric tube for two years. She also had a bottle feeds when I was too unwell/exhausted to express.

With Jack, she was diagnosed with placenta praevia very early on and had many major bleeds during the pregnancy. She was admitted to the Royal Hospital for Women for last 9 weeks of pregnancy for monitoring and blood transfusions. Jack was born by planned classical caesarean at 33 weeks. He had many problems, but came home at 10 days old, and was fully breastfed for 2 years.

As the Mum Knows Breast expert, Michelle will be active on the forums and will also be regularly checking in on the blog posts. If you would like to ask her a question directly, visit the "Ask the expert" forum or email her on bubs@sydneybubs.com.au

admin :: Apr.26.2007 :: Uncategorized ::