Many of us in the UK find ourselves quite conflicted today following the UK Birth Trauma Inquiry.

We need this discussion about birth trauma and damage being done to women and their families out in the open. But we also know that this is not a new discussion. It’s been going on for years and we’re absolutely sick of it.

Parents are still surprised when I suggest that for a healthy mum and baby, home will probably be the safest place to give birth. And I get it - that flies in the face of everything we’ve been told in film and television. Hospital is where you are saved…

…but what if the current maternity system is actually creating many of the problems that women are constantly having to be saved from?

For sure there will be births that will be safer in a hospital setting but with all of the unnecessary inductions and augmentations taking place, with the burnt out and reduced midwifery work force breaking under the strain how will these births be looked after? And how will any of the recommendations made today have any positive effect at all? How will they offer the gold service that is 'continuity of care' when they can't even reinstate the midwives training bursary nor invest any of the funds required? When the fish rots from the head down how can you fix things for the end user? How do we remind the entire service that birth is a normal physiological event and the more you try to make it work like a machine the more damage you will incur.

So my loves. Get educated.
Come on a course. Use our online course. Join our Facebook group.
Get onto the websites of Dr Sara Wickham, Rachel Reed’s Midwife Thinking, AIMS or Birthrights.
Don’t go into birth under informed and under prepared.
This is so important. It really, really matters.

Melanie x