We look around us. The sky, the sea, the stairs and the handrail.

We notice that the stairs are wooden, worn deeper in the centre and covered with a sprinkling of fine, white sand. And then we look to the hand rail.

‘For too long, women have been told that their bodies are the wrong shape and size, that they’re too hairy, too dirty, too smelly, too old, too fat and that they don’t work properly.’

While happily residing inside mum there have been dim lights, smooth surfaces and constant sound.

Your body is complex. Perfectly designed but complex. Labour is a delicate dance between both your baby’s needs and your own.

The most important thing I wish you to know though is that the placenta is owned by you.

I receive many questions about IOL and although a small blog post cannot possibly do justice to this thorny subject, here are some answers. Perhaps they may be of help to you.

Many women feel pride in this scar, but if it was not in the mental and emotional birth plan it can seem shocking, unsettling and can distance a woman from her body and birth experience.

But when in labour what does that actually mean? So many women I work with want something more tangible to go on. A checklist or timing. An app. Or just someone to tell them.

I am not a medical form, or a process. A risk or an inconvenience. A window in your schedule.

The idea that labour is a pass or fail situation and that the woman herself is the fault for this unnecessary mishap bakes my brain.

A doula is a non-medical support person, there solely for the mother and birth partner in the lead up to birth, during the labour & birth and postnatally.

Firstly, don’t fear change. It is what it is. Don’t feel that you need to jump into action the minute you hear of any alterations to your birth hopes. Just take the information and sit with it for a while.

Well, is that actually a problem? In short the answer to that is no. Your birth space can still be very much as you would like it to be.

It was a seismic shift in family roles. The pecking order reassembled.⠀And my heart just grew and grew to accommodate them all.⠀

Move as you wish. Stand, sit or lie as you wish. Focus on your wants, your baby, your body. ⠀Listen, listen, listen to yourself.

It’s okay to feel clumsy and clueless. To pore over parenting books and blogs. ⠀To ache when your baby cries, and cry when your baby aches.

Imagine if you were making love...and every time you were close to orgasm your partner stopped. Or talked. Or the phone rang.

Now, many women do not realise they have postnatal depression, because it can develop gradually. Inch by inch, it is as though your own mind is slowly gas-lighting you to believe that you are not worthy, not safe and not a good mother.

There has become a lack of familiarity with blood in birth. We see it as worrisome, concerning, wrong. But why?How have we become so disconnected?

You need to be able to notice when publications or practitioners talk about ‘coping’ as opposed to ‘thriving’. How language matters but actual facts do too.