Category: Pregnancy and Birth
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What Happened To Continuity Of Care?
A small pilot scheme aiming to improve maternity care has been axed. It’s left some pregnant women suddenly without the care they were expecting and wondering where to turn now. It also raises questions for maternity services nationwide. It was announced this week that Neighbourhood Midwives is to close. The group operated an NHS continuity-of-care pilot…
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Comments On Maternal Request Cesareans
A couple of days ago, the charity Birthrights published a report into maternal request cesareans. It found that 75% of UK maternity units were going against NICE guidelines and refusing women this option for giving birth to their babies. The story was covered by TV and online news, including this piece by Rebecca Schiller from…
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Consent
Is it consent if you don’t really want to, but you say ok anyway. Because it doesn’t seem worth the argument, and you don’t want to piss off the person who’s asking? If you make a thought out choice to agree to a big thing, can it be assumed you also consent to something lesser…
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Getting Involved Offline – The National Maternity and Perinatal Audit
I’ve set myself a few challenges for this, my third (and final) round of maternity leave. With my older two children at school and a severely diminished interest in group singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I’m doing things a bit differently. I’ve ditched (most of) the baby groups. Instead, I’ve been looking for opportunities to get…
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The Slightly Sweary Caesarean Recovery Plan
I’ve had three caesarean births. I still wish I had a detailed plan about how to recover from one. If you look for the pros and cons of C-section V vaginal birth, the recovery is always a big deal. Caesarean recoveries are much harder we’re told. But that’s about all we’re told. When I first…
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Welcome To The New Southwarkbelle
Notice anything different? Well if I’ve managed to do this properly then southwarkbelle.com will now bring you here, my new WordPress blog. I decided it was time to try swapping over as WordPress is easily the main platform for blogs now and I need to use it for my reviews over on Festivalkidz.com. So it’s…
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Michael Odent Wants Me Dead
I’ve written about Michael Odent before here and here. For those not familiar with him, he is a retired French obstetrician, credited with, among other things, introducing water births. This weekend he got himself a piece in the Guardian to promote his new book: The Birth Of Homo, The Marine Chimpanzee. I’ll be honest, I’ve not…
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Better Postnatal Care
Our new baby, MissA is here. When I’m a bit less sleep deprived I’ll write more about her but for the moment I want to share an old post. The Mumsnet Better Postnatal Care Campaign began not long before MissA was born, when the subject was very much on my mind. Even when facing a…
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Thinking About Birth, Third Time Around
I’ve been awaiting the invention of fetal teleportation for more than seven years now. I mean seriously world, I can instantly access all of human knowledge, every pop song ever recorded and eleventy zillion cat videos all from this slab of metal on my lap. But when it comes to the seemingly minor task of…
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The Real Magic Of Pregnancy
I heard something wonderful last week. It came from a pregnancy* exercise teacher at a class I had just joined: “This exercise might be good for the birth, I mean *knowing laugh* it won’t stop it hurting of course, but it might be useful” Embed from Getty Images //embed.gettyimages.com/embed/462946585?et=oGUQF9ltTMtO0rYnENBe5A&viewMoreLink=off&sig=rpTV9ysvT9lS_iMEY6HYnQCCYGXJY4XczEq4tQVJTZc=&caption=true It seems like a pretty minor…
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