Three Births, Three Worlds Apart: Rowena Cooke on Birth, Loss and Postpartum
Written by Rowena Cooke, postpartum doula. Reviewed June 2026.
Content warning: this article discusses miscarriage in detail.
What does postpartum look like?
"I have had three completely different birth and postpartum experiences. A really traumatic emergency c-section with my first due to foetal distress, with zero support afterwards.
"My second birthing experience was of our angel baby (with Down syndrome) at 12.5 weeks, which was horrific. Seven hours in an emergency room, gushing blood and enduring a very painful labour and miscarriage, followed by a D&C under general.
"My life-changing and healing third birth experience was with my youngest daughter Rua, who was born at home, VBAC, with the support of two private midwives and a doula.
"The care and support I received, and the self-interrogation, exploring the edges of my fears and doubts around birth and my sense of self, in preparation for this birth was fundamental for me to move into the birth and postpartum space."
"These experiences lit a burning fire in my belly about the treatment of women and birthing people and their bodies that I could not ignore."
What does a miscarriage feel like?
"I wish I had known about the sheer physicality of having a miscarriage. It sounds silly, but the emotional impact of miscarriage and loss seems to be more widely spoken about.
"I had to go through labour and birth, while being swamped with grief around the loss of our baby. Everybody seems to know about the emotional burden of a miscarriage, but the physicality, the bleeding, the contractions, the sterility of a hospital emergency room, being left for hours while awaiting to be seen by overrun medical staff, was totally unexpected for me.
"Reclaiming birth as a rite of passage. The act of giving birth, of creating life, should be made a much bigger deal of. It is massive, and yet we are for the most part expected to get back to our usual lives as quickly as possible, and are in fact celebrated and commended by society when we do."
Support in Australia
If you are navigating pregnancy loss and need support, The Pink Elephants and The Perinatal Loss Centre both offer specialised guidance for miscarriage and pregnancy loss in Australia.
More on miscarriage from the moode journal
- After Miscarriage: A Naturopath's Guide to Recovery
- Five Losses, One Rainbow Baby: Alexandra's Story of Pregnancy After Miscarriage
- Pregnancy Loss and Termination: Sheree Rubinstein's Story
The act of giving birth, of creating life, should be made a much bigger deal of. It is massive.
Rowena Cooke is a Coburg-based postpartum doula and mother of two. She shares her birthing experiences with her children Sonny, born January 2018, Rua, born October 2020, and her angel baby, born at 12.5 weeks in November 2019.
