This is the first national report on the epidemiology of stillbirth in Australia. Summary Australia is considered to be one of the safest countries in which to give birth. Viewed against comparable statistics worldwide, the rate of stillbirth in Australia is among the lowest in the world. Yet 1 baby for every 135 born in...

This paper provides an overview of the birthweight of babies born to Indigenous mothers, including recent trends and information on factors associated with birthweight variation. Summary Almost 4% of all babies born in 2011 were to Indigenous mothers In 2011, a total of 11,729 Indigenous mothers gave birth to 11,895 babies according to data from...

The aim of this thesis was to examine the way in which migrant Samoan women did birth in Wellington in the mid 1980's. The thesis draws on interviews conducted with fifty Samoan women and interweaves the findings of these interviews with analyses of material drawn from the hospital records of a larger cohort of two...

Debates about different models of maternity care have been long-running in Australia. Disputes over evidence on the safety and quality of midwifery-led models of care – which include shared care, birth centres, and planned home births – are at the heart of the debate.

Births in Australia are at an historical high – with around 285 000 babies born in 2007. This corresponds to an estimated total fertility rate of 1.93 babies per woman, the highest since the early 1980s. This is not a one-off event as fertility rates have been generally rising for the last 6 years. Overall...