Hi there! I’m Dr Hazel Keedle and I am a midwife, nurse, researcher, author and public speaker. I’m also a mother to two amazing teenagers and wife to my best friend, Warren Keedle. I am based in Sydney, Australia and migrated with nothing more than a backpack from the UK in 2002. I planned to stay for 1 year but I’m now a citizen of Australia.
I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which I live and work and pay my respects to Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty has never been ceded. It always was and always will be, Aboriginal land.
I live on the Ngurra (Country) of the Gundungurra and Dharug Traditional Owners and work in Burramatugal (Parramatta) on the Ngurra of the Burramattagal people, a clan of the Dharug Traditional Owners.
I started my training to be a Registered Nurse when I was 19 yrs old in Cornwall, UK at the University of Plymouth and my nursing career took me to London, Bristol, the jungles of Borneo, a remote island in Indonesia and Australia. I worked in emergency, remote and expedition nursing, hyperbaric and intensive cares for adults then children and then babies.
I changed professions to be a Registered Midwife in 2006 and I have worked across the maternity models of care including small and large city and regional hospitals, an Aboriginal Medical Service and as a privately practising midwife supporting women birth at home.
In 2017 I became a full time midwifery lecturer at Western Sydney University and I finished my PhD in 2020. I am currently the Director of Academic Midwifery Programs and Senior Lecturer.
My main research areas are birth after caesarean and women’s experiences of maternity care and I am the lead researcher of the Birth Experience Study - International Collaboration. You can find out more about BESt-IC at: https://birthexperiencestudy.com/
I love midwifery and I feel that was always my calling in life, after all check me out in the photo of me as a child!!!
I would like to pay my respects to my paternal grandmother Anne Lee. My Granny was a proud midwife and trained in the East End of London and worked in Buckinghamshire.
I always knew she was a midwife, even if I wasn’t sure what a midwife did! I remember walking through her village by her side and women would stop and chat. When I would ask her who they were, she would say “I was their midwife” or “I was their mother’s midwife”! I believed that a midwife was an important woman in the community, and I still believe that.
When I was 15yrs old my Granny told me I would be the next midwife in the family and she advised me to become a nurse and get a variety of experiences, but I would know when the time would be to become a midwife. I followed her advice. I proudly received her nurses buckle when I graduated as a nurse. Although I then moved to Australia, my Granny was so proud when I became a midwife and would ask me if babies were still born the same way. My answer would be to her, less and less now!
My Granny lived into her 90’s and she was loved and respected by her family and by many women and families in her community.
Thank you for being an inspiration to me Granny Anne Lee.
