Mothers who attended the National Birth Trauma Awareness week Walk and Support say they need to be heard

A Walk and Support event, held as part of National Birth Trauma Awareness Week, yesterday heard creating that awareness also involves getting the medical profession to listen to women.

"It's only until you start to make noise that they start to listen ... it's not just hospitals but generally in the medical profession here, they're not listening to mothers," event organiser Elise Penton said.

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"I think they need more education on what they need to be looking for when women are coming to them saying 'I don't feel right'."

Denise Preston went through an "incredibly traumatic set of circumstances" during birth.

Ms Preston said the government needs to do more to attract medical staff to the regions, and retain them, to improve the levels of care and aftercare for mothers in Wagga.

Miss Penton agreed and said that a dedicated mother-baby unit was needed for the region.

"I think our hospital is doing a really good job, I think they're really understaffed and overworked," she said.

"But there is room for improvement."

Elizabeth Fife, a student nurse and the mother of two boys, said that the first step was making the people of Wagga aware. Ms Fife suffered trauma during her first birth.

"There were things that happened that I wasn't aware of and I wasn't educated about. And things that happened left me wanting answers," she said.

First-time mums especially need better support, she said, and more needs to be done to prepare women for births that might not be perfect.

"They don't really talk about that and that sets women up to believe you've failed in some way. It's really hard, it's a strange setup ... it's not a bad thing to talk about when things go wrong," she said.

The trauma Ms Fife experienced affected her ability to breastfeed and bond with her newborn and she wants better care to be the norm so that other women don't go through that experience.

"That's the goal, so even if they do have a traumatic experience while giving birth, having that support network after is so important," she said.

"This sort of stuff can have a really large impact and can affect things like postnatal depression."

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