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 ...
Tag Archive: midwives
“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 ...
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
Diary of a free range pregnancy: another way to monitor health
The reason pregnant women regularly see their midwives is to regularly monitor their health. In theory they are meant to be building up a relationship of trust and understanding so that the midwife learns what is 'normal' for that woman and the woman gets to know her midwife and trust her so that at the ...
NHS modernisation listening exercise
The Department of Health (DH) has instigated a consultation exercise to find out what people think about their proposed NHS reforms. An online form provided the basis for feedback and Maternal Link took the opportunity to share 7 years of experience talking to everyone from Trust managers to individual midwives around the UK, summarised under ...
Diary of a free range pregnancy: What is free range care?
Understanding Husband took a slightly weary sigh when I announced that I wanted to have another home birth, no scans, minimal engagement with the NHS and to ask a Dear Friend (who is an Independent Midwife) to care for me. The point of compromise was that I would have the anomaly scan (between ...