How a Melbourne woman’s death is shining light on the dangers of non-medical births – Full Story podcast

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0:30birth keeper, Emily Lau. And if you want to hear the full original investigation, look for the birth keepers on The Guardian Investigates feed.

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1:18Just a warning before we start, this episode contains references to baby loss and maternal harm. Please take care while listening. Today I am officially launching my new program, my natural eating program. Stacey Warnicke was a Melbourne influencer who decided to give birth at home, free of all medical help. When she gave birth, no one was in the room except Stacey's husband and a woman named Emily Lal. Lal called herself a birth keeper and had taken an online course offered by the Free Birth Society, a multi-million dollar business that promotes the idea of women giving birth with no medical assistance.

2:06I really take issue with people saying that it's irresponsible because I think it's actually the exact opposite of that because I am taking 100 % responsibility. I am responsible for my body and my baby. At the time, Lal was the most prominent Free Birth Society member in Australia. But in September 2025, after giving birth, Stacey Warnicke suffered a massive postpartum hemorrhage and died in hospital several hours later. Now, an inquest is looking into what happened and why. Today, medical editor Melissa Davey and investigations correspondent Shirin Kale on the inquest so far and what we know about the Free Birth Society.

2:54It's Tuesday the 30th of June.

3:03Hi Melissa, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. You've been watching this inquest unfold. What's it been like? An inquest is always interesting because the coroner has to grapple with a number of questions, in this case around not just cause of deaths, but also around prevention and some of the reasons why Stacey Warnicke chose a particular type of care. And one of the central questions for this particular inquest is why are women increasingly choosing to have low or no intervention births, deciding to entirely shun evidence-based medical care and instead give birth at home without any medical practitioners present.

3:45And it's been quite interesting to hear some of the reasons that women are choosing to do that. Let's take a look specifically at Stacey Warnacky's background and her decision to go in this direction. She was a wellness influencer living in Melbourne. What did the court hear about why she specifically decided to give birth at home with no medical help? Yeah, so Stacey was a nutritionist and she was about to become a first-time mother at 30 years old and she was really worried about unnecessary interventions. So things like cesarean or forceps or epidurals, she didn't want any of those interventions.

4:23She wanted to try and give birth as naturally as possible. And that wasn't without good reason in some ways. We know that from the New South Wales birth trauma inquiry, for example, that there are many women who feel like when they give birth in a hospital, they are sometimes subject to interventions they did not want or that they did not fully consent to. They can come out of that experience feeling quite traumatised despite placing their trust into medical care. And some of the impacts can be quite long lasting. These interventions can cause pain, they can cause ongoing symptoms. So it's not without any evidence that Stacey decided that she wanted to try and give birth with no intervention, but she went quite far the other way in that she didn't want a midwife.

5:06She didn't want any medical tests throughout the pregnancy. She didn't want any interventions at all, any interaction with the medical system throughout her pregnancy, but also through the birth itself. And so that is how she then came across a birth keeper. So Stacey then hired Emily Lau, who describes herself, as you say, as a birth keeper. She paid her$6 ,000. And Emily Lau has given evidence at the inquest. What did she say about why she was there at the birth and what her role was supposed to be? So despite that$6 ,000 payment, Emily Lau said that her role was very firmly one of a friend, that she attended that birth as a friend.

5:50It's a point that she was challenged on by counsel assisting the coroner who made the point that, well, what was the$6 ,000 payment for? And Emily Lau's website, which has now been removed, was referred to in the inquest because that website did advertise certain services like education, for example, and packages that you could buy for different values of money. So she was challenged on that. But Emily did say that she has no medical training. She's not there to do things like assess blood loss or to intervene or to even call an ambulance against the mother's wishes. She is there purely as a friend and to do whatever the mother wants as part of her birth plan.

6:28So we have heard about how Stacey gave birth to a healthy baby and she gave birth to the placenta as well. But what did Emily Lau say about when she made the decision to call an ambulance? So Stacey had quite a lengthy labor and we heard in the coronial inquest that that can put a lot of pressure on the uterus and it can fatigue it basically so that after giving birth and then giving birth to the placenta, it makes it hard for the uterus to contract and to stop the bleeding. And so after Stacey gave birth to the placenta, she had quite a massive postpartum hemorrhage and there was blood noticed at that time.

7:08And shortly after that, Stacey began to feel very short of breath and eventually was not very coherent. She needed to lie down and Emily Lau did tell her that she might be having a panic attack and we did learn that she was in fact having a massive postpartum hemorrhage. And what we have since discovered is that there are many signs of a massive postpartum hemorrhage and that internal bleeding can be one of them and that trained medical professionals are there to identify those signs and symptoms. And they're also there to identify what might be a meaningful amount of blood loss. It's very hard to kind of assess blood loss, but medical experts are trained to look beyond just the blood loss and look at a whole host of symptoms.

7:49And so Stacey was asked three times by Emily, do you want an ambulance? But Emily would not call that ambulance unless Stacey specifically said, yes, call an ambulance. And it does seem that throughout this time, she was becoming weaker. And on the third time Emily asked, she did say yes. Stacey did say yes. So I want an ambulance. But as we heard, by the time that paramedics arrived and got her to hospital as quickly as they could, time had passed since the massive bleed. And the best time to intervene is even before the bleed, if certain signs and symptoms are detected. It's some really distressing evidence.

8:23I believe the paramedics said that when they arrived, they found Stacey in an altered state of consciousness. So once they got Stacey to the hospital, what lengths did the hospital go to to try and save her? Stacey had unfortunately gone into a number of cardiac arrests and the ongoing CPR put pressure and trauma on her heart. So by this point, it wasn't just the bleed that doctors were contending with, but the trauma on the heart and fluid around the heart. they needed to try and get her stable enough to perform two surgeries at once. One a hysterectomy to stop the bleed. The bleed was just not stopping.

8:56And another surgery simultaneously to remove the fluid from the heart. Very hard and tricky to figure out, well, which do you do first and how do you stabilize someone enough to do both at once? And it was quite heroic efforts from the medical team to try and figure out the best way to treat her. And they also exhausted Stacey's type of blood supply from the hospital trying to save her as well. And they had to thaw out blood supply and get that ready to treat her. So unfortunately, after the surgery, Stacey suffered from a further cardiac arrest. And by that point, it was just too late to save her.

9:33What did the inquest hear about what Emily Lal did during this time when she went back to Stacey's house to clear up the blood? How did Lal explain to the coroner what she did and why she made that decision. Yes, Emily Lau said that she went to the hospital with Stacey only because Stacey's husband had accidentally taken her phone. So she went really to retrieve that phone, but she did have some conversations at the hospital that were overheard by medical staff. And medical staff were concerned that although that Emily Lau said she was there as a friend, the terminology she was using made them quite suspicious that perhaps she had more involvement than that of just a friend.

10:13And so one of the senior clinicians later after Stacey died did report Emily Lau to police. Once Stacey went in for surgery, Emily Lau then returned to Stacey's home. And she said she went there because she didn't want Stacey's husband to be confronted with the scene there. She cleaned up and she took the bloodied carpet and she took that carpet home with her to her own house and disposed of it in a bin. She said it didn't fit in Stacey's bin. and when police later went to assess the scene, it was so clean that they couldn't really determine what the layout had been when Stacey had given birth or really what exactly had happened there.

10:50So what was the issue then highlighted with Lal deciding to make that decision? The question was put to her, you know, it could be seen that, you know, you went and cleaned up the house, you took the carpet with you and then you refuse to give a statement to police. That doesn't necessarily seem like the actions of someone or a friend. Like, wouldn't a friend want to talk to police? And Emily said that that's really unfair, that she really wanted to clean up so that Nathan wouldn't be confronted with the scene and that she saw Stacey as a friend. And that the reason she didn't give a statement to police is because her previous experience supporting a woman with a free birth pregnancy that had sadly resulted in a death had led the media to blaming her.

11:35when she gave a statement to police. And so this time around, she got legal representation and was advised that she did not have to give a statement. She wasn't legally required to give a statement to police, and that's why she chose not to do so. And that was a separate case that you just described. That was a separate case. A separate coronial inquest was held into that case. We should point out here that Emily Lowell was not present at the birth or death of the baby in that previous case too, and the inquest made no findings against her. But back to Stacey's case, What have experts said so far about whether her life might have been saved if she'd been in a hospital setting or if she'd had someone with medical training with her?

12:17So all of the experts from those with emergency department experience through to obstetric and gynecology experience to a midwife who gave evidence said that whether Stacey decided to give birth at home with a midwife present or involved throughout the pregnancy, or whether she decided to give birth in hospital, those professionals would have identified a postpartum hemorrhage. It's not uncommon. It's not something they're not familiar with. They're very much trained to identify that. Midwives also carry treatments and drugs to try and treat a postpartum hemorrhage as well. So all of the medical experts did say that a postpartum hemorrhage, it can be identified quite early looking for certain symptoms.

12:54And once it is identified, it is very treatable as long as it's treated early. So the inquest is ongoing, but it has been paused at the moment. Why has that happened? On the second last day of the inquest, we heard that new forensic evidence had emerged after an analysis of Stacey's phone. And the material on that phone was seen by the coroner as so significant that it might lead her to make further inquiries or to ask for more witnesses to give evidence. And so for now, the inquest has been paused while the evidence from the phone can be assessed. Melissa, thank you so much for talking to us today and letting us know what's been happening so far.

13:32Thank you. Coming up next, Investigations Correspondent Shirin Kale on the Free Birth Society.

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14:23Hi, Sharon. It's good to talk to you again. Thank you for having me. You've been following the case of Stacey Warnacky for some time. It's one that has a global connection to the Free Birth Society, which you've investigated for The Guardian. You made a podcast series, which we've spoken to you about. People can go and listen to that. But can you just remind us what the Free Birth Society is and what their beliefs are? So the Free Birth Society is a business that is led by two ex-doulas, Emily Saldaya and Yolanda Norris-Clark, her business partner. and last year my reporting partner Lucy Osborne and I published a year-long investigation looking into the Free Birth Society.

15:01Now this is an organisation that our reporting found was linked to baby deaths around the world and potentially avoidable tragedies and the Free Birth Society, FBS, promotes this very extreme interpretation of free birth which means giving birth without any medical assistance whatsoever so no midwife with you even at home and we found that FBS was teaching women inaccurate, scientifically dangerous advice about the possibility of complications in their pregnancies and birth might require medical attention. And we also found that FBS had trained an entire generation of so-called radical birth keepers to attend women's births around the world.

15:42And these radical birth keepers were people who did not have medical training, who did not know how to manage the complications that might arise during pregnancy and labor. and very sadly I believe now that what we've seen in Australia with the Stacey Warnacky inquest has demonstrated the real harm that can come from having unmedically trained women attend births. What do we know about Emily Lal's connection to the Free Birth Society? So the Free Birth Society has various online schools which are hugely profitable for them. They've pulled in millions of dollars in revenue and Emily Lal was actually a student in FBS's Radical Birth Keeper School in 2020, the first year that they opened that school.

16:21She was trained personally by Yolanda Norris-Clark and Emily Sardaya through this school. Now, the Radical Birth Keeper School is a three-month Zoom course that pledges to teach so-called authentic midwives. You cannot learn to be a midwife in three months and certainly not through Zoom. So Emily Lal was trained by Yolanda Norris-Clark and Emily Sardaya through this Radical Birth Keeper School in 2020. And I would really say, based on my reporting, that Emily Lal exported FBS ideology to Australia. She is their most prominent Australian radical birthkeeper. I would argue that she is probably the most prominent radical birthkeeper in the world.

16:58And that's because she is the only student that I'm aware of through my reporting in Lucy Osborne's reporting to be linked in inquest to two tragedies, two deaths. And that's in the five years since she trained under FBS. Two separate cases. Yes. So Emily Lal was linked in inquests to two separate cases. One was a case involving a baby girl called Baby E who died after her birth, a few hours after her birth, which was a free birth. And the second case was Stacey Warnicke's. I should emphasise that there were no findings made against Lall personally by the coroner in the Baby E case. And we're still awaiting the final outcome of the Stacey Warnicke inquest.

17:36What is your reaction to it as the details emerge? Do you find any of it shocking, especially as you've been reporting on this? There's this one thing that Emily Sardaya, the founder of the Free Birth Society, has always said, and that's that she's never heard of a woman, a mother, dying during a free birth. And a big part of the appeal for the women who chose to engage with FBS and choose their radical version of free birth that they promote was this idea that free birth is safer because if you go into a hospital, you're going to have all these unnecessary medical interventions performed on you and your baby, and it's going to be very traumatic and unsafe.

18:11Now we can definitively say that there has been a maternal death linked to FBS. What emerged from the inquest into Stacey Warnocky's death was that Stacey appeared to have engaged with FBS concepts, such as the variation of normal concept, which is massively promoted by Saldaya and Norris Clark. So on her birth plan, she had a specific phrase called variations of normal, and that is a specific piece of FBS jargon that is used to downplay often very serious pregnancy complications that do require medical assistance. I think that we also saw in the evidence given by Emily Lal at that inquest, her evidence to the coroner, that Emily Lal appeared, in my opinion, to be following her FBS training.

18:54One of the things that FBS really emphasises is this idea of autonomy and this idea that women should be able to reject medical care under all circumstances, even if they are incredibly sick and even dying. And this is something that Emily Sardaya and Yolanda Norris-Clarke really emphasise in their teaching for the Radical Birthkeeper School. So in 2023, Sardaya actually told her students that the idea that they would call for an ambulance before the woman that was giving birth that they were attending asked them to, She said that was horrible and made her want to throw up. So that's an indication of how strongly this organisation feels about this.

19:28And during the evidence that was heard by the coroner, we heard that Stacey rejected an ambulance twice, even when she was bleeding out, and that Emily Lyle respected her wishes and did not call. And that led to quite an interesting cross-examination of Emily Lyle, where she emphasised that even if Stacey Warnocky appeared to be dying, she still would not call an ambulance against her wishes. And I think for me, the thing that really stood out the most from Emily Lyle's testimony was how often she referred to herself as a friend. And I found that absolutely fascinating because she was paid$6 ,000 by Stacey Warnety to attend her birth.

20:03That's a significant sum of money. And if she was a friend, then how do you explain that payment? So being a midwife is a protected term in most jurisdictions. and what they teach their students is that you need to protect yourself by not signing contracts, by accepting cash gifts after a successful birth and also by having an understanding with your clients that you are there as a supportive friend and that is the terminology that they instruct their radical birthkeeper students to adopt. You are there as a friend and you know I went through the transcript of Emily Lau's evidence to the inquest and I think that she referred to herself as Stacey Warnieke's friend nine times.

20:41I should note that The Guardian has put this point to Emily Lal and invited her to comment, but we've had no response. Now, Emily Lal has described herself as a birthkeeper, but what is the difference between that and a doula? Yeah, so Emily Lal has described herself as a birthkeeper and her Instagram handle before she deleted her account was the authentic birthkeeper. And this is really interesting. So So a doula is a woman, predominantly a woman, who provides emotional and practical support to a woman during labour and birth. So, you know, a doula might be fetching her drinks or massaging her back or getting fresh towels.

21:19But it's not a medical role. It's very clearly defined as not a medical role. They're not a midwife. In her evidence to the coronial inquest, Emily Lau was asked what is a birthkeeper. And she said, I think the exact phrase was essentially a doula. And I thought that was absolutely fascinating because Emily Lal has formally, in podcast interviews before Stacey Waldenky died, explicitly said that she is not a doula. And the reason that she gave for saying that she was not a doula was because she said that she had skills that she could use if complications emerged. And throughout our reporting into FBS, Lucy Osborne and I spoke with many ex-students of the Free Birth Society's Radical Birth Keeper School.

21:53And they were all very clear that radical birth keepers did not see themselves as doulas. They saw themselves as authentic midwives, i.e. midwives who don't have licenses and aren't beholden to the state. And actually, it became clear through our reporting that the term doula was effectively a dirty word. In FBS circles, they look down at doulas. And so to hear Emily Lau describe herself as a doula is fascinating. I will say that since the Guardian's investigation into FBS, FBS has changed its marketing materials, and it now refers to the Radical Birth Keeper School as a doula school. But that certainly was not the case when Emily Lau was enrolled in it.

22:28and it wasn't the case until recently. The inquest is ongoing. It's paused at the moment. We will continue to cover it as it unfolds and, of course, the findings of the coroner. Shirin, thank you so much for talking to us today and for all of your reporting on this. Thank you for having me. That was Investigations correspondent Shirin Kale and before that you heard from medical editor Melissa Davey. Emily Saldea and Yolanda Norris-Clark were both previously approached for comment about the issues raised in the Guardian's Free Birth Society investigation. Neither provided a substantive response, although Saldea said some of these allegations are false or defamatory.

23:12Norris Clark has said it is unfair to hold her responsible for the choices of a mother influenced by her content. In May, FBS released a disclaimer saying its content was not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any medical condition related to pregnancy or birth. It added, for medical advice, consult your healthcare provider. Emily Lal was also contacted for comment but did not respond. You can find the full six-part podcast series by searching The Birth Keepers on theguardian.com or the app. And we've linked to the series on the full story page. That's it for today. This episode was produced by Karish Maluthria and Miles Herbert.

23:55Sound design and mixing by Lou Hill. And the executive producer of Full Story is Hannah Parks. Don't forget to subscribe or follow Full Story wherever you listen to podcasts, including on Spotify. I'm Regid Ahmed. See you soon.