Australian food influencer Stacey Hatfield twice refused to call an ambulance as she bled out during a homebirth last year, according to a report.
Hatfield – who went by @naturalspoonfuls on Instagram – died on Sept 29, 2025, hours after delivering her son Axel without any assistance from a midwife or nurse. She was just 30 years old at the time.
During a coroner’s inquest in Melbourne this week, the court listened to the 12-minute emergency call made the day Hartfield died as well as testimony from her doula, Emily Lal, who has been banned from working as a birth companion, the Sydney Herald reported.
Her husband, Nathan Warnecke, also provided a statement to the court, explaining that his wife was adamant about delivering their child without medical intervention.
Lal echoed the sentiment.
“Her autonomy was very important to her,” she said. “There was no way I was going to call an ambulance against her wishes.”
Hatfield repeatedly declined their suggestions to call for help, the inquest heard, but her condition quickly deteriorated and she finally gave in upon their third offer.
“My wife’s just given birth, and she is having trouble breathing,” Warnecke tells the operator in the emergency call.
“We’ve got help coming as quickly as we can for her, OK?” they reply.
By the time paramedics arrived on the scene, Hatfield’s skin was cold and yellow. She was lying on the floor in a dark room, between the couch and the birth pool, and she was highly agitated, according to the Sydney Herald.
The wellness influencer was subsequently rushed to the hospital, where she lost a “big gush of blood,” triggering a severe obstetric emergency, the coroner’s inquest heard. Her cause of death was later determined to be “postpartum hemorrhage in the setting of a home birth.”
Her son, the couple’s first child, survived the incident. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
