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: NHS
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 ...
Bounty Packs vs Mama Packs
When you have a baby in an NHS hospital you are given a Bounty Pack. There are now 5 in the series, some given out by the NHS and others available to collect from certain high street stockists. Billed as a useful bag of kit for new mums, babies and their families, they ...
Diabetes pill to reduce obese babies
A trial has started in the UK to assess the use of a drug that normally controls diabetes to see if it could reduce the risk of obese mothers giving birth to obese babies. The drug, metformin, has been prescribed for use in gestational diabetes with little apparent side effects and so Dr Shehata ...
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 ...
HypnoBirthing in the press
British RCT on HypnoBirthing A randomised control trial (RCT), the gold standard of medical trials has got underway in Lancashire and is attracting press attention because it is assessing the effectiveness of HypnoBirthing. Written up recently in leading newspapers (Daily Mail, Mail Online and The Sunday Times) it appears to attract mixed feelings. The ...
One born every minute: The little ward of horrors
The beginning of Series 2 Described as the most gripping thing on TV by the Guardian this programme is definitely eye opening. Sadly for some of us it may not be as the victims, sorry parents, perceive it. Whilst portraying a maternity unit of dedicated, kind and caring midwives several of whom have clearly spent ...