AMBA News

Multiple Birth Awareness Week Blog 2024

Multiple Birth Awareness Week (MBAW) 2024

MBAW 2024 provides the Australian Multiple Birth Association (AMBA) with a wonderful opportunity to amplify our advocacy and awareness efforts. This year’s theme, ‘Multiples Unfiltered’, was designed to give the wider community an insight into the true nature of being a parent to twins, triplets or more. Throughout the week, we shared numerous unfiltered stories from parents, talking about struggles such as premature birth, mental health challenges, financial struggles and pure exhaustion. Our audience expressed that these stories made them feel connected, knowing they were not alone in their experiences or feelings. These anecdotes were also collated into a new report entitled ‘Multiples Unfiltered ’, giving life to the facts and figures presented in our 2023 report, ‘Multiples Matter’.

Both of these reports support AMBA’s recent federal budget submission, which calls for funding that would increase the capacity of AMBA to deliver volunteer training and support, expand our reach into regional areas and develop educational programs for parents and medical professionals. These initiatives are designed to improve health outcomes for multiple birth families across Australia who we know are doing it tough with limited resources and support.

AMBA was excited to once again head to Parliament House in Canberra for MBAW. At our two-hour playgroup event, AMBA directors and member families were able to share their unfiltered stories with close to 20 Members of Parliament (MPs) and a number of journalists who were in attendance. The Ministers, MPs and Advisors were excited to get down on the floor and play with the twins and triplets who thought it was just another ordinary day. Little did they know the impact their presence and stories would have in supporting our efforts.

We were very fortunate to have the Assistant Minister for Health and twin mum, Ged Kearney, facilitate story time. This was followed by a story time with one of our great supporters, triplet mum, Louise Miller-Frost MP. Louise Miller-Frost MP and Jenny Ware MP gathered signatures from fellow MPs at our event to establish the first Parliamentary Friends group dedicated to discussing the needs of multiple birth families!

We were thrilled to received some fantastic media attention throughout our MBAW campaign. AMBA Director Silje, conducted an interview at Parliament House which was aired on numerous networks, including the ABC News which featured Taylah, a mum of quadruplets. Jasmine, a mum of 11 month old triplets, spoke to the Canberra Times about her experience and Krista, President of the Ballarat Multiple Birth Association was interviewed on ABC radio, about the additional challenges families in regional areas face. We have seen the MBAW momentum continue with a wonderful opinion piece published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald by James Massola, a fellow twin parent.

The AMBA Board of Directors have our fingers and toes crossed that we will soon get some positive news about our budget submission. A big thank you to our wonderful sponsors Identilab, Wonderfold and Medela for contributing to the success of Multiple Birth Awareness Week, as well as all of our other supporters who donated to our fundraising efforts.