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About
Michaela Kalusova
Specialist in trauma-informed maternity care training
Founder and Lead Trainer, SAFER Birth Project
14 years supporting women and birthing people through pregnancy, labour, and the postpartum period. Thousands of people supported through antenatal preparation and education, hundreds supported directly as a doula at their births. And a question that would not go away.
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Why were some women, women who had prepared thoroughly, whose labour was progressing normally, whose baby was fine, suddenly unreachable? Frozen. Panicking. Gone somewhere else entirely.
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The answer changed the direction of my work.
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​Michaela leads the project across both its arms: SAFER Birth Project CIC, providing free support to women, and SAFER Birth Training Ltd, providing professional training.
How SAFER Birth began
The pattern I kept seeing
Women and birthing people would come to me for antenatal course or doula support during pregnancy. We would prepare together. I would teach them about their bodies, about labour physiology, about what to expect. They would feel ready. They would feel empowered.
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And then labour would happen. And something would shift.
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Some women who had seemed fine, calm, organised, prepared, would suddenly become distressed in ways that did not match what was clinically happening. The labour was progressing normally. The baby was fine. But she had gone somewhere else. She was frozen. She was panicking. She was unreachable.
At first, I thought I was failing them. I thought if I just taught better physiology, better coping strategies, it would not happen.
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But it kept happening. And it was not about the preparation. It was about something the preparation could not reach. Something that had happened long before pregnancy.
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I began to study. Penny Simkin and Phyllis Klaus (When survivors give birth). Pre-and perinatal psychology. The neuroscience of trauma. How the body stores what the mind has tried to forget. And I began to see what had been invisible to me for years: that many of the women & birthing people I was supporting were survivors of sexual trauma, and that pregnancy, labour, and birth were activating responses rooted in those earlier experiences.
I also realised something else. It was not just the women who needed help. The professionals caring for them did too. Midwives, obstetricians, nurses, they were seeing these responses every day and did not have the language, the framework, or the skills to recognise what was really happening. They were misreading trauma as anxiety, non-compliance, or difficult behaviour. And the care they provided, with the best intentions, was sometimes making things worse.
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That is where SAFER Birth began. As a response to something I could not unsee.
MSc Psychology
University of Portsmouth (2024-2026)
When Survivors Give Birth
Practitioner and educator training with Penny Simkin and Phyllis Klaus (completed 2015 and 2018, including advanced educator training in Seattle)
Trained with Dr Michel Odent
Paramana Doula Course, pioneer of natural birth and birth physiology 2012
Hundreds of birth plans and debriefs
Direct experience of how trauma shapes the birth experience
14 years teaching self-regulation and coping techniques
Breathing, grounding, mindfulness, and body-based techniques for managing anxiety, fear, and trauma responses during pregnancy and birth.
Plus extensive continuing professional development in evidence-based maternity care including induction, birth biomechanics & spinning babies, VBAC, home birth, breech birth, waterbirth, breastfeeding, and bereavement support.
Training and experience
Background
BA (Hons) Business Management
Birkbeck College, University of London (2007-2011)
Pre- and perinatal psychology
APPPAH (Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health), 2014-2017
14 years of doula experience & antenatal education
Thousands supported through pregnancy, birth and postpartum; hundreds directly as a doula
Autism and neurodiversity awareness
National Autistic Society (2025). Understanding the intersection of neurodivergence and perinatal trauma
Mentor and supervisor
Supporting doulas in developing their practice, including supervision around complex and trauma-related cases.
E
Control
Empower
F
Safety
Foster
A
Consent
Ask & Affirm
S
the Survivor
SeeÂ
R
Don't react
Respond
OUR FRAMEWORK
The S.A.F.E.R. Model
Our approach
Why universal, not specialist
The training is built on a simple principle: you do not need to know who is a survivor. Care as if trauma may be present, whether disclosed or not.
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This is not about treating survivors differently. It is about treating all women and birthing people with the kind of care that happens to be exactly what survivors need: care that prioritises consent, communication, dignity, and control.
This approach benefits all women and birthing people, not only survivors. It reduces retraumatisation for those with hidden histories. And it improves the experience for everyone.
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This is not specialist accommodation. This is safer care.