Stephanie Tsalacopoulos is a Melbourne-based doula and former registered nurse of 15 years. She joined Kath on The Modern Mother Podcast to talk about what birth support actually looks like, why fear-based content is changing how women experience labour, and the thing nobody tells you about coming home after a caesarean.
Most mothers don't think about hiring a doula until they're already pregnant. Some don't think about it at all. And a lot of the ones who do are met with a version of the same question from the people around them: why?
Why, when you have a midwife. Why, when you have a partner. Why, when you've done it before.
Steph Tsalacopoulos has been answering that question for years, first as a registered nurse specialising in IVF and anaesthetics, then as a doula who started getting asked to births by women who had known her through their fertility journeys and simply didn't want her to leave.
Her answer is not what most people expect.
A Doula Is Not There to Work Against Your Medical Team
This is the misconception Steph unpacks first and she is direct about it.
She is not there to create conflict. She is not there to advocate against interventions or push a particular birth philosophy. She brings lollies for the midwives and introduces herself before anything else happens. She has worked hard to build relationships with the teams she encounters and she will tell you plainly that if you are paying for a private obstetrician and then working against them, something has gone wrong in your planning.
What she brings is something the system genuinely cannot provide at scale: continuous, undivided presence for one mother. Midwives are under extraordinary pressure. They are stretched across multiple patients, multiple rooms, multiple competing demands. A doula's entire job is to be with you and only you for the whole time.
The outcomes data supports this. The research on doulas and birth outcomes is consistent. When mothers feel supported, informed and not alone, things tend to go better. Not always. Not in every circumstance. But consistently enough that it is no longer a fringe argument.
What Social Media Is Actually Doing to Birth
Steph made a deliberate choice that surprises a lot of people. She does not post birth education or information on her social media. On purpose.
Her reasoning is worth sitting with.
She sees a pattern in her work where women arrive at birth having spent months consuming fear-based content online. Other people's traumatic experiences, cautionary stories, lists of things to refuse, procedures to be terrified of. And when things do not go exactly as they planned or hoped, they have no framework for finding the positive in it. The anxiety that follows can be significant.
She told the story of a mother who had been absolutely certain she did not want a forceps delivery. She had gone deep into TikTok and Instagram about it. She ended up needing one. And it was quick, it was effective, it meant she had the vaginal birth she wanted, and she was able to bring her baby to her chest herself. Her words after: why did I dive so deep into that? I feel so empowered. My team did everything they could for me.
That is not an argument against being informed. It is an argument for where your information comes from and what kind of space it creates in you.
The Part Nobody Prepares You For
The conversation Kath and Steph had about coming home after a caesarean is one of those moments that will sit with you if you have been through it.
Sent home on day two. Seven layers of your abdomen cut open. Sometimes with nothing stronger than paracetamol and ibuprofen. Expected to breastfeed, hold your baby, function.
Steph talked about her own second birth, a second degree tear, inadequate pain relief, and the way unmanaged pain tipped her into postnatal anxiety. Not because she was fragile or unlucky. Because she was a human being in significant physical pain without enough support, and that is exactly what unmanaged postnatal pain can do.
The postpartum period is where Steph believes the gap is widest. The casseroles and the visitors and the partner's parental leave tend to concentrate in the first two weeks. But the six week mark, three months in, the point where life is supposed to have returned to normal, that is often when mothers are at their lowest and most alone.
Doula support that extends into the postpartum period is about having someone to sit with you while you work out where you are going to feed the baby and how to manage the pain and what you actually need. Not tips. Presence.
The Line She Lives By
At the end of the conversation, Steph offered the thing she returns to when someone wants to tell a mother how her birth should go or how she should feel about it afterwards.
If it is not your body, it is not your business. If it is not your birth, it is not your business. If it is not your baby, it is not your business.
It is not a polite sentiment. It is a boundary. And it comes from someone who has spent years watching what happens when mothers absorb everyone else's opinions about their own experience.
Listen to the Full Episode
This blog gives you a sense of the conversation. The actual episode goes further into what to ask when you are considering hiring a doula, what Steph looks for in a good fit, what doula support during fertility treatment looks like, and what she thinks needs to change in the maternal care system.
You can find The Modern Mother Podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
To find Steph, she is at stephthedoula.com.au and on Instagram. She books quickly. If you are pregnant or thinking about it, she says call her sooner than you think you need to.
Published by Bubba Cloud. Being held is not a luxury. It is essential.
