Natural Beginnings - Holistic Health, Bodywork & Doula Services

20/10/2026

I turn “disposable organs” into medicine and artwork. What’s your superpower?

18/10/2026

Today I completed my 4 month Internal Pelvic Release Work Mentorship with a bunch of other awesome women, taught by Fiona Hallinan Midwife & Birthwork Teacher at By Fiona Hallinan .

This incredible course spanned 63 hours of face to face education, theory and practical work - donating my body and practicing on others.

I have been doing internal work (via Holistic Pelvic Care) since 2018, but this course has deepened my knowledge of pelvic anatomy, which has enhanced and refined my practice.

If you are in Sydney and have heard about the incredible benefits of Internal Pelvic Release work, such as the interview of Fiona on The great birth rebellion podcast podcast (episode 86), but couldn’t find a local practitioner, I am now offering this important work for women, bringing care, balance and release to the pelvic tissues in my clinic in Caringbah South.

I will post more about how this work can help women with all sorts of issues soon.

15/10/2026

This is exactly what my GP advised my parents to do with me when I was a sickly child with chronic bronchitis and asthma. And the end of my bed was put up on bricks to help with drainage of phlegm. These days Drs would just prescribe drugs!

In 1976, an influenza outbreak swept through several nursing homes, hitting the elderly the hardest.

Medical supplies were scarce — no antivirals, no ventilators, not even reliable oxygen. But one facility refused to give up.

With nothing left to use but gravity and determination, caregivers began using a simple yet life-saving method called postural drainage.

By tilting patients on stacked towels or chairs, they helped drain mucus from the lungs — keeping airways clear, one breath at a time.

While other homes lost dozens, this facility recorded zero deaths.

💡 A reminder that medicine isn’t always about machines or technology — sometimes it’s about human creativity, compassion, and the will to keep someone breathing.

02/10/2026

Geez I wonder if that would cause cervical c@ncer. 🤔

Tampons sit against some of the most absorptive tissue on the body for hours at a time, and until mid-2024 almost nobody had tested what is actually in them beyond the cotton and rayon on the label. A team led by researchers at Columbia and Berkeley finally did. They bought 30 tampons across 14 brands and 18 product lines, sourced from stores in several countries, and tested each one for 16 metals.

Every single metal they tested for turned up in at least one tampon. Lead showed up in one hundred percent of the products tested. Arsenic, cadmium, mercury and a dozen others were present too, just at different levels brand to brand.

Here is the twist that should stop you before you reach for the clean looking box. Non-organic tampons carried more lead on average. Organic tampons carried more arsenic on average. Paying more for the organic label did not buy a metal free product, it bought a different metal. The researchers were careful to say they cannot yet tell you how much of this actually leaches out into the body during use, that research has not been done, and menstrual products are not required to disclose their full ingredient list the way food is.

That gap is the real story. A product classified as a medical device in most countries, used by roughly half the population for a huge chunk of their life, has never had to prove it is free of toxic metals, because nobody was required to test for them until independent researchers decided to check.

We are not telling you to panic or switch products off one study. We are telling you that unscented, cotton, hypoallergenic on a box was never a guarantee of what is actually inside, for this or most personal care products, and the only way that changes is if enough people know to ask.

29/09/2026

🥰

28/09/2026

Women have superpowers in our uteruses (or is it uteri?!).

I've seen this floating around and wanted to look into it to see how much validity there is to the claim - because women know without a shadow of a doubt that there is TOO MUCH s*xism in medicine and science as we know it.

Here are the facts:

Menstrual-blood-derived stem/stromal cells (MenSCs) were first reported in 2007, with independent research identifying stem/stromal-cell populations in menstrual blood.

And they are genuinely an interesting research area. Menstrual blood provides a relatively non-invasive, repeatedly obtainable source of cells with mesenchymal-stem-cell-like properties. Researchers have investigated their potential in regenerative medicine, immune-related disease, endometrial repair, and other applications.

But, somehow, it is still in VERY early stages of research - nearly 20 years after these cells were first identified.

Curious, ain't it? Let's dig in.

A 2022 peer-reviewed analysis of research published between 2008 and 2020 found that menstrual-blood-derived mesenchymal stem/stromal cell research represented just 0.25% of the research results in their comparison of different stem-cell sources.

0.25%.

The researchers specifically concluded that the scientific output in this area remains incipient and pointed to gender bias and the social stigma surrounding menstrual blood as possible factors in why menstrual blood is so underused and its scientific value underestimated.

So no, we didn't JUST discover menstrual blood stem cells. We've known about them since 2007. But... that doesn't make this situation better. It makes it WORSE.

We've had nearly TWO DECADES to study what they can do, and we're still in the early stages of figuring out what they might be capable of.

THAT is the part that should p**s you off. Two f*cking decades.

This is not happening in a vacuum.

Women have been historically excluded from medical research to the point that the NIH created its Office of Research on Women's Health in 1990 after a federal investigation found that NIH's policies requiring women's inclusion in research were poorly communicated and inconsistently applied - and that NIH was doing very little to encourage researchers to actually analyze results by s*x.

The Women's Health Initiative was launched in 1991 as part of that course correction. More than 161,000 women were eventually enrolled across 40 clinical centers, making it one of the largest women's health studies ever conducted.

And in 2025, the Trump administration attempted to terminate funding for the Women's Health Initiative.

A landmark women's health study that had been running since the 1990s. Why? For what? Who does that help? Who does that HARM?

After massive public and scientific outcry, thankfully, the funding was restored. But we shouldn't have had to fight to continue HISTORIC research with over THIRTY YEARS of data.

Meanwhile, a 2026 analysis found that the NIH terminated 2,291 active research grants in 2025, withdrawing $2.45 BILLION in funding. Women researchers were disproportionately affected by those cancellations.

Women's bodies have been under-researched, underfunded, misunderstood, and excluded from medical research for DECADES. Our entire lives. The lives of our mothers and grandmothers.

We've spent nearly 20 fu***ng years studying the potential of cells that come out of a woman's body every month — and research in the field remains a tiny fraction of stem-cell research.

We have an entire landmark women's-health study that exists because we realized women were being left out of medical research — and then the federal government tried to pull its funding.

And we're STILL having to fight for women to be believed about their own bodies.

Sexism in medicine is real and prevalent. It isn't ancient history. It isn't some problem we solved in 1993.

It's baked into the history of medical research, and we're still dealing with the consequences.

When you underfund research into women's bodies, you don't just lose some interesting scientific discoveries.

You lose treatments, diagnostic tools, opportunities to understand diseases earlier, and opportunities to make women's healthcare safer.

And who keeps paying the price? WOMEN.

We should be DEMANDING answers about our bodies.

Instead, we're still arguing about whether the people making the decisions even need to understand them.

21/09/2026

🧐

The trigger that initiates labor in human childbirth has been a biological mystery — but scientists may have finally found the spark.

A groundbreaking study led by researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto has identified a novel mechanism showing that the immune system, rather than just hormonal signals, directly pulls the trigger on labor.

Toward the end of pregnancy, signaling molecules recruit pro-inflammatory immune cells, known as M1 macrophages, into the uterine muscle tissue. These immune cells then form physical, microscopic connections called tunneling nanotubes with the uterine muscle cells, directly transferring their own mitochondria to fuel the massive energy demands of childbirth.

This sudden influx of mitochondria raises levels of the energy molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in the uterus. Additionally, it increases the presence of an enzyme that breaks down progesterone locally in the muscle cells, signaling the body that it is time for labor to begin.

By revealing how contractions are activated at a cellular level, researchers hope to utilize this discovery to develop targeted therapies that can stop the process in its tracks, potentially preventing preterm births.

source: Nadeem, L., & Lye, S. J. (2026). Macrophage to Myocyte Mitochondrial Transfer in the Myometrium: A Novel Mechanism for the Initiation of Labor. bioRxiv.

21/09/2026

My bestie told me tonight that today is World Gratitude Day so here is my shout out to everyone I’m grateful for (that I can think of off the top of my head!):

Said bestie: Kylie Kylie Aekins for being my person and someone who is always there to chat to about anything and everything, and gets me more than anyone else.

My husband Dan Ride Repairs for loving me, for sticking with me for 23 years and going above and beyond for our family.

My other close mates who I love doing life with and who I know will always love me back:
~Josie Josie
~Rachel RA Gray
~Rachael Rachael King
~Kylie Odonata Ky
~Elke

My sister Caroline Caroline Bloomfield Caroline Bloomfield Ceramics for our shared sense of humour and shared memories of childhood, Seinfeld quotes and 80s ad jingles.

My spiritual teacher: Angel medium Shunanda Scott for mentoring me through life’s ups and downs.

My beloved doula teacher Marie Burrows Marie Burrows (RIP) for changing my life path to birth work.

All of my fertility/women’s health and pregnancy, birth and postpartum bodywork teachers and mentors who have taught me such wonderful skills that have made such a positive difference for so many women through my hands:
~Gail Tully Gail Tully Spinning Babies
~Ginny Phang Ginny Phang-Davey | Doula Trainer & OMP Founder Optimal Maternal Positioning | Pelvic Alignment & Mobility
~Bushra Finch Bushra Janna | Mizan therapy
~Tami Lynn Kent Tami Lynn Kent, MSPT (Holistic Pelvic Care)
~Lynn Schulte Lynn Schulte
~Jenny Blyth Jenny Blyth
~Naoli Vinaver Naoli Vinaver | Mexican midwife
~Fiona Hallinan Midwife & Birthwork Teacher By Fiona Hallinan (I’m 3/4 the way through the Internal Pelvic Floor Release Work mentorship which has been amazing!)

My death doula teacher Denise Love Denise Love LifeOptions Denise Love

My homebirth midwives Jacqui Wood Jacqui Wood (it’s a real pleasure to also regularly work alongside you in service of women!), and Jo Hunter Jo Hunter

My doula colleagues at Doula Network Australia

My homebirth advocate sistas at Homebirth Australia and Homebirth New South Wales

And finally to all my clients who trust me with their health, bodies and presence at their births, thank YOU!

(ETA: Not sure why it’s saying it’s AI Content when I made the graphic myself in Canva and wrote the words myself! 🤷🏻‍♀️)