Newsletter number 14
March 2024
Freebirth Stories by Mavis Kirkham and Nadine Edwards
Firstly this extraordinary book, somewhat dry and laboured is un-put-down-able. I am compelled to read every word, I usually skim read quite a bit of everything I read – not this book. Every single solitary word has to be pored over, digested, maybe re read, thought about, dissected and absorbed, in a way I haven’t with any book, for years.
What is it about this book that makes it so compelling?
Well, firstly it is quite obviously true. These are real women, telling their story as truthfully as possible. They are telling us why they went on to Freebirth, what their doubts were, why they needed to avoid the NHS and midwives and doctors. We learn about women who have decided right from the beginning that they didn’t want their space invaded and so didn’t engage with the NHS at all. We also hear from women who have gone along with their appointments and their scans only to decide to call the midwives only after the placenta had arrived. It is a disturbing mirror we are holding up to our profession. These women want professionals who are “holding the space” for their birth, who are respectful of the process, quiet, non intrusive and definitely not listing the “risks” they could be facing. Women are being met with professionals who don’t seem to have a clue as to what their true role should be, who tend to dominate and take over while a woman is trying to “go with the flow”. Professionals who don’t seem to understand the physiology of birth, who don’t seem to understand about the flow of hormones which enable the birth to take place easily and safely. A complete failure to understand that making the labouring woman use her rational brain only stops the process.
This compelling book has also set up all sorts of regrets within me. I’m 82 but I passionately want to give birth one more time, at home again, this time unaided. I also want to say sorry for some of my actions as a midwife -to the beautiful primigravida having twins who wanted them to be born at home, but I was too frightened and intimidated by the bullying “Supervisors” who were just waiting to report me to the UKCC (precursor to the NMC). She gave birth standing up - a lovely, natural twin birth in a sympathetic hospital, she was (of course) right, she could have had them at home easily. The woman who was expecting her third breech presentation, I had caught both her other two at home, but it was just after my UKCC Case and I felt bruised and battered so I insisted that this baby should be born in hospital and subjected her to a hospital birth and deprived her of the ecstatic times she had experienced previously.
So well described - the treasured moments following the birth of the baby and waiting for the placenta, with the parents snuggled in bed with the baby snuffling and feeding. Magical, mystical, enlightening. Inco pads to the fore – no mess anywhere, easily and cheaply obtained by Amazon. These are the very special times which just don’t happen in hospital with all the busyness and protocols there. I remember snuggling in my own bed after giving birth, with my snuffly little baby next to me and my beloved, somewhat shocked husband, smelling of his beautiful self and willing to provide tea/toast/kisses whatever, how secure and comfortable, what a wonderful way to start motherhood – a moment of bliss in an otherwise ordinary life.
I want to feel what so many of these women did, the baby coming down onto the cervix, the movements inside the body – I never felt that with any of my births, too busy being frightened at the thought of the stretching of the perineum. I am again immensely grateful to my first midwife – Nurse Harrop who enabled me, a 23 year old primigravida with a very nervous husband, to have the most wonderful experience of my life. An explosion of ecstasy aided by her inability to listen to the fetal heart because she was deaf (pinards) and her reluctance to do vaginal examinations – so a labour where she didn’t interfere, just made encouraging noises and said supportive phrases leading to me giving birth to my beautiful first son without trauma, intact perineum, very little bleeding, and when the membranes ruptured and the amniotic fluid was greeny brown all she did was to giggle and say “Baby’s done a poo poo” and that was the extent of her concern!
When Matthew (my eldest son) was 13 and I was a Community Midwife I wrote to her and said that I tried to be as kind to women as she had been to me. Her attitude had shaped my life and my confidence in myself as a woman, a powerful feisty woman, she was really the midwife that all these Freebirthing women were wanting – someone just holding the space, not interfering, not talking, just being respectful of the process and being encouraging to the woman.
This book brought extraordinary emotional responses in me. I have never felt so ANGRY. Women being “told off” for not calling the midwives. Women being punished and bullied for doing it themselves – interesting how many of these women were actually qualified midwives, what an indictment of our profession that even our own don’t want their peers to look after them.
How Social Services were called to some of the women or they were threatened with that. I have a lot of experience of Social Services (my husband and I were foster parents for twelve years) and my impression of Social Services is that they are always overwhelmed and the last thing they need are parents being reported to them for making a choice in birth that the Authorities don’t approve of.
Adult people, who have carefully and seriously considered how they are going to bring their baby into the world being “told off”. It’s outrageous. Informed choice is an unknown concept in maternity care at this moment. How can people taking on the most important and most difficult role in the world be “told off” by people whose salaries they are paying. Parents to be should be treated with politeness and respect and offered all the options that are available to them including DIY.
Thank you to Mavis Kirkham and Nadine Edwards on your diligent pursuit of so many women who have free birthed, this book should be compulsory reading for every person involved in childbirth. The descriptions of ecstasy in birth over and over again should be an example for the Government Inquiry into Birth Trauma, this is how birth should feel, this is how birth was designed to be, we are mammals, we give birth beautifully and usually safely, it’s not much to ask – just support women, don’t interfere and shut up.
Available for £14.99 from Amazon.
Email caroline.midwife@gmail.com phone 07973 657 642
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