In the current economic climate when families are struggling with everything from employment to food it is incredibly heart warming to know that a dedicated band of midwives are coming to the end of the beginning of their long standing battle to improve the UK maternity services. Campaigning for normal birth The Independent Midwifery Association (IMA) has ...
Category Archives: Midwifery
“Rediscovering Birth” By Sheila Kitzinger
Guest blogger Sarah Buchanan reviews 'Rediscovering Birth' by Sheila Kitzinger. Giving birth is a shared experience by women all over the world and no matter your experience, age or societal status it is a unifying act. However, the physical and spiritual methods of how the world’s different and diverse cultures give birth is fascinatingly complex ...
Birthright by Betsey Dewey
I give enormous credit to anyone willing to stand up and shout about their positive birth experience and their views promoting natural childbirth and doubly so in America where the maternity care situation is significantly more dire than in the UK. It puts the UK in a good light, which if you think the UK ...
HypnoBirthing Midwives Win National Midwifery Award
Take 2 Scottish Midwives.... In January 2012 midwives Donna Burns and Alison Fyfe won the Royal College of Midwives Award for Promoting Normal Birth by using HypnoBirthing, The Mongan Method to help women achieve a calm, natural birth. Since July 2009 Ayrshire and Arran NHS Trust have audited the referral of women by medical staff to the HypnoBirthing ...
Call The Midwife
Last night was the first in a series dramatising the writings of Jennifer Worth based on her experience of being a midwife in the 1950s and '60s in the East End of London. As green as she was when she first arrived I doubt even a seasoned midwife from any era would have been ...
The Birthplace cohort study: health outcomes by planned place of birth
What is the Birthplace cohort study? This 2 year English study (April 2008-2010) looked at 64538 low-risk births involving 90% of all midwifery units in England to consider the safety, cost-effectiveness and availability of current maternity services in the 4 available locations: hospital obstetric units (OU), alongside midwifery units (AMU), freestanding midwifery units (FMU) (collectively ...
Diary of a free range pregnancy: Birth
My Uber parenting day Got up, had irregular twinges through morning, had friend for brunch, put toddler down for nap, told friends coming to tea to come, continued twinging lying on the sofa, farmed toddler out to neighbours for tea, told friends coming for tea not to come, birthed baby, champagne and sausages for supper, in ...
Diary of a free range pregnancy: preparing older children
Into the home straight, a couple of weeks to go (give or take, still no nearer to believing in EDD) and feeling great. Some iron pills from the holistic health centre Rapha, not the NHS so no side-effects from iron overdose (potentially: constipation, heartburn, nausea, vomiting) just the desired effect of eliminating fatigue. Nature has an ...
One World Birth
An incredible new project is coming soon called 'one world birth' that proposes to give a new platform and voice to the international scene campaigning to improve birth for mothers and babies around the world. Watch the trailer and then sign up at the website...inspirational stuff. http://youtu.be/sCPZrK8C2ZY
‘The Business of Being Born’ by Ricki Lake & Abby Epstein
In 2007 two friends decided to make a film about the current state of childbirth in America. These friends just happened to be Ricki Lake, a popular television personality and Abby Epstein a film director. The result is a personal, heartfelt and sincere documentary about their own experiences of childbirth and a film which ...