Newsletter number 13
February 2024
IS CHILDBIRTH DANGEROUS in 2024?
This is the month when the All Party Select Committee are starting their investigation into Birth Trauma. As many as a third of women are traumatised by their experience of birth in the UK. Maternal mortality has risen by 16% in the past two years and so has infant mortality.
This despite approximately 50% of women having their babies delivered by caesarean section (a major abdominal operation which can affect the mother for several months) and at least 35% of women having their labours started artificially. With so much medical intervention, why isn’t birth safer than ever?
I am an 82 year old midwife, one of my best friends is a 72 year old midwife. Between us we have 25 grandchildren born from 8 diverse women. This could not be called a sample of any kind, just random women our sons liked, but what are the results of having a bossy midwife grandmother?
In this case
During 25 labours, 22 gave birth at home, 2 gave birth in hospital and one in a Birth Centre.
2 had epidurals, the rest (23) used water in labour and Entonox (gas and air) or nothing at all.
In the 25 women there were NO caesareans, no forceps, no ventouse.
One woman had stitches following an episiotomy, the other 24 women were unscarred.
They all breastfed for several months, their babies now range between newborn to 24 years old.
These figures could not be more different from today’s depressing figures which seem to show the dangers women are subjected to in maternity care.
Women at lower risk.
Ironic that in 2024, when women are at lower risk than they have ever been in the whole history of human kind they are being given more unnecessary treatments than ever before. The greatest risk to a baby’s safety is to be unwanted. To be the child of a 14 year old, or to be the 12th child in an impoverished family – this is dangerous. In 2024 British society unwanted babies are almost unknown. Women do not conceive unwanted babies either because they prevent their conception or they terminate an unwanted pregnancy. This means that unwanted babies are mainly a thing of the past, babies in 2024 are welcome and cherished and consequently safer.
Women’s health in 2024 is better than it has been for all previous generations. No tuberculosis, no polio, women who are fit – most women do some sort of exercise – if only running for the bus. Food is cheap and easily obtained (not for all but for the vast majority). Some women are obese but that has been shown by Dr Sara Wickham (one of our leading Midwife Researchers) not to present a problem, especially if these women are offered deep water to relax in and move around in during labour. Most diseases are treatable with the marvellous advances in medical care for cancers, infections, auto immune diseases and genetic diseases.
So we have healthy women being labelled “high risk” – for what purpose and in whose interests?
Then there are the headlines
BBC News Devon 26/10/2023
Devon Mum gives birth to baby in Tesco Superstore. Lauren gave birth to her son Edward in the bathroom of Tesco Tiverton. It was the first natural birth for mum-of-three Ms Ewings, who had emergency caesarean sections twice previously.
9 August 2023 BBC News Kent
Couple help woman give birth on Tunbridge Wells Hospital pavement.
A couple helped a woman give birth on the pavement outside a hospital after she was delayed enroute to the maternity ward due to road works.
27 October 2023 BBC News
Three friends help woman give birth on busy Leeds main road.
Three friends who helped a woman give birth while in a car on a busy main road in Leeds have been described by the new mum as a “blessing”.
4 January 2023 BBC News Birmingham
Aldridge woman gives birth on drive after being sent home from hospital .
Hannah Mitchell, 38, from Aldridge, Walsall, said she barely had time to remove her leggings before Ruby Lucia made an appearance on Thursday.
Mrs Mitchell had been told she could not be admitted to Walsall Manor and to return when in full labour.
Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust said it was investigating exactly what happened.
So what is happening?
So, we have an extraordinary situation where more women are dying, more babies are dying but at the same time more women are popping out their healthy babies in driveways and on pavements with the assistance of passing strangers and more and more women are choosing to eschew hospital and midwives and to give birth at home unaided because they don’t trust the present medicalised attitude to birth. We don’t know the numbers of “freebirths” for obvious reasons (women giving birth at home without medical or midwifery assistance) but as a midwife it breaks my heart that as a profession, we seem to have lost the trust of women. Women are mammals, mammals are exceptionally good at giving birth, look at cats, giraffes, lions, monkeys, whales, elephants – they rarely have problems.
As mammals, we nurture our babies inside our bodies and when the time is ripe we produce a flood of hormones that enable our babies to be born safely. It is rare for women who feel relaxed and secure to have a problem with their births. Darkness and privacy are the two over riding needs of mammals in labour, that doesn’t sound much like a modern Obstetric Unit to me and as for trauma. Childbirth is a natural function like defaecating or breathing, there will always be some women who have traumatic births but A THIRD of women!!! Something is not right.
Email caroline.midwife@gmail.com phone 07973 657 642
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