Christie is a Mother, Milliner, Artist, Writer and Educator. She also practiced as a Physiotherapist in Australia and Canada for 16 years. Christie was shocked to experience the lack of evidence based care and informed consent in her first birthing experience in hospital. She was left broken and traumatised, questioning everything that she knew.
Christie spent the next 4 years learning all about physiological birth and the industrial obstetric complex. As she unpacked her own trauma, Christie realised that it was the system, not her body, that had failed her. She listened to hundreds of women’s powerful home and freebirth stories. She learnt from the teachings and research of wise women such as Sarah Buckley, Rachel Reed, Jane Hardwicke-Collins, Debby Gould, Sara Wickham and Milli Hill.
On a deeper level, Christie understood that she had called in her first birthing experience. And that her incredible first born had chosen to enter the world that way to change Christie’s life, and her red thread, forever.
Birth Is Magic is Christie’s beautiful version of birth activism. She has experienced, first hand, the power of story medicine in her own journey. She understands how women are culturally groomed, from a young age, to fear birth and the power of their own bodies.
Birth Is Magic is the children’s book that Christie wishes that she had for her daughters. It is written through the eyes of her 4 year old daughter Chloe and captures her childlike curiosity and wonder leading up to her sister being born at home.
It discusses the realities of birthing at home such as blood and poo, and uses anatomically correct language. The story centres the birthing woman and does not discriminate between home and freebirth. By providing a positive narrative about birth, it challenges many of the stereotypes young children are presented with in our current culture.
Christie has partnered with the incredible illustrator Matea Lehpamer to bring her story to life.
Our bodies and babies are magic. There is an inherent wisdom in how birth unfolds. Let’s change the birth narrative for generations to come, one story at a time.
