Crucial evidence uncovered on influencer’s phone amid free birth inquest

Crucial evidence discovered on the mobile phone of a wellness influencer who bled out after free birthing at home has led to an adjournment in the inquest into her death.

The Victorian Coroners Court heard on Thursday that contents discovered on Stacey Warnecke’s phone had raised “issues that are going to require some further investigation and perhaps the gathering of further evidence”.

“Some time ago as part of the investigation, your honour obtained Stacey’s phone and made a request that it be forensically examined as to its contents,” counsel assisting the coroner Rachel Ellyard said on Thursday.

“Some of the fruits of that analysis became available to the court for the first time yesterday, and it seems to me that the contents that have been made available raise issues that are going to require some further investigation and perhaps the gathering of further evidence.”

Warnecke died last year after giving birth to her son at her home in Melbourne’s south-east, where only her husband, Nathan, and a doula, Emily Lal, were present.

When questioned on Tuesday, Lal told the court she no longer had any messages or correspondence between herself and Warnecke because she had replaced her phone soon after the young mother’s death.

No details about what was discovered on the phone were aired in court on Thursday, and it was unclear whether text messages or videos of Warnecke’s labour might now form part of the investigation.

Ellyard requested a delay in the final submissions to allow for further investigation of the mobile phone and for evidence to be gathered from it, which was accepted by coroner Therese McCarthy.

“I take the view that this material is of such significance that the court must delay making any findings and hearing submissions until we’ve had an opportunity to undertake a proper analysis of that material,” McCarthy said.

Almost immediately after passing her placenta in the early hours of September 29, Warnecke began to haemorrhage but twice refused the offer of having an ambulance called. When asked a third time, the 30-year-old agreed and was transported to Frankston Hospital, where staff exhausted their blood supply trying to save her life.

Earlier on Thursday, the court heard evidence from Dr Mark Jeffrey Tarrant, the service medical director of obstetrics and gynaecology at Casey and Dandenong Hospitals, run by Monash Health.

He said that a vital window in which the haemorrhage Warnecke suffered after she gave birth was lost due to the delay in calling emergency services.

Tarrant said that in order to prevent postpartum haemorrhages, trained birth attendants undertake measures including an external abdominal massage and administering prophylactic oxytocic medications within one minute of the placenta being delivered. In Warnecke’s case, however, no medical interventions occurred until roughly 30 to 40 minutes after the first visible signs of major bleeding.

“Minutes make a difference,” Tarrant said. “I think if she had midwives with her, she would have survived.”

The doula, who has since been banned from practising and was reported to police by medical professionals on the day of Warnecke’s death, said she had been paid $6000 for a “full free birth support package”.

Lal estimated she had spent between 15 and 20 hours with the first-time mother before the birth, and told the inquiry she saw her role at the birth as primarily that of a friend or big sister, saying she did not believe it was her role to make the birth “safer”.

When Lal was asked about the alleged delay in calling an ambulance for Warnecke, she told the court: “I don’t know how many times I can reiterate this … Her autonomy was very important to her. There was no way I was going to call an ambulance against her wishes.”

The inquest was adjourned and will return to the Coroners Court at a later date.

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