From the home to our mental and physical health. From our bank accounts to the environment. Our relationships and interactions with the world around us mean everything. So we have to think about how we move away from the metrics of care and back towards its meaning. In August this year my 99 year old Grandmother developed an infection in her eye. As it was the summer holidays my nearly-13yo son came with me, twice, to collect her from her care home, take her to her hospital appointment in East Kent (wait for an hour and 45minutes for a 10minute assessment with a registrar) and return her back ..read more

Everything is more complex and more nuanced than ',there are two sides and one is morally superior to the other,'. This requires more effort and investment from us that simplistic moralising. Watching Owen Jones and others use the death of children, the massacre of civilians, the terror and the horror of the last week to score political points has been honestly gut-wrenching. I’ve long thought that Owen likes the sound of his own voice, and his own opinions, a bit too much to be considered altruistic. This week he spent much of this time airing them on tv and online to nobodies benefit. Owen ..read more

I am - finally - properly back to work this week. I have written a review of a book about maternity activism for AIMS (look out for it in the December journal) - simultaneously a joy and a kick in the head. I have supported two births, and continue to support another family as 'Pocket Doula', so I'm right back in the ring, witnessing the hard, painful realities of the midwifery crisis in action. I'm also listening, with gritted teeth, to the news, and I have to tell you, I have had an absolute gutful of it. In the not-to-missed podcast The Rest is Politics (Thursday 29th September 2022 - and ..read more

For most of the last 2 years I’ve been thinking about, reading about, and interrogating the concepts of choice and control in relation to women’s positive experiences of childbirth. I have argued – persuasively – that choice and control, despite having been the basis of maternity care strategy in the UK since Changing Childbirth in 1983, are not consistently appropriate paradigms in practice, and have the potential to be as harmful to some mothers as they are empowering to others. Interviews with mothers and midwives, and my experience in the birth room tells me that intrapartum decision-maki ..read more

It was way back in 2013 that I briefed this logo to a trusted art director I'd worked with in my previous life. Back then I had a 4 year old and a new baby, and was coming to terms with the reality that life was not going to return to what I'd been very comfortable with before. For the foreseeable future I would be primarily mothering, and teaching hypnobirthing as a side-hustle. This gear change was always more evolution than revolution, though, and from the start, while I loved the calm embodiment I knew hypnobirthing could bring, I knew two things; 1) a 'Good Birth' is more complex than br ..read more

This is the transcript of the paper I gave at the Open University GCRN this week (7th June). It's slightly packed in because I was on a panel with my lovely friend Rose, and a really interesting doctoral candidate from Oz, Amy Mowle. This is the basis of my thesis, and my approach to my doula work. The system isn't currently working for anyone - mothers, midwives or medics - and we need more than pithy patches to make meaningful change. We need to shift our paradign and begin to think about how we value mothers and maternity in an entirely different way. It's deep, Babes, but read on (and ver ..read more

Birth plans have become a rite of passage in pregnancy. Everyone from your friendly neighbourhood hypnobirthing teacher to the NHS recommends them, Google ‘birth plan template’ and you’ll get at least 815,000,000 results (yes, really). There’s an inconsistency here, though, because the refrain I hear most frequently about birth plans is ‘…it all goes out the window once labour starts’. Only last week a mother of 3 shared with me that her advice to pregnant women is not to waste time writing one because no-one bothers to look at them, and even if they do, birth is never what you had expected ..read more

I’m a doula not because I’m a birth junkie, and not because I’m soppy about babies. I’m a doula because birth has the potential to be potently positive, to augment women and reveal their power and potential. Every birth I go to reinforces my view that we just don’t give either women or birth their due. After this week’s emotional & impressive, intense & epic home birth, here are some reflections... 1. The first thing – always - is the privilege of being invited in. Birth is intimate and personal, and I get to see the visceral connections which are usually shared in privacy, held withi ..read more

Are you a midwife with 10+ years experience under your belt? Will you talk to me about birth plans to inform an academic study? My name is Charlie. I am writing an MA at the Centre for Women's Studies, the University of York. I would like to speak to midwives based in the community (and supporting home births), based in a birth centre and hospital maternity units to hear their views on birth plans. What is the purpose of the study? The purpose of the study is to gain a deeper understanding of why pregnant women write birth plans, and how they wish them to be used during late pregnancy, labour ..read more

Have you had a baby in 2021? Could you give up to 90mins of your time to talk about your birth plan? About Me : My name is Charlie. As well as supporting mothers and families as a doula and hypnobirthing teacher, I am writing an MA at the Centre for Women’s Studies, the University of York. I’m looking for women to take part in a research study looking at the purpose and use of birth plans by mothers in their second and subsequent pregnancies in the UK. About You : You're a mother of two or more children. Your youngest child was born in 2021, either at home, at a birth centre or in hospital. W ..read more