He's at it again 

James Titcombe, Midwife hater extraordinaire, the man who has made a career out of being a bereaved father and as far as I can see, no other qualifications, is midwife bashing again.

This time we are all leaving our poor colleagues in the lurch and going to work in abortion clinics!! Where has he got this from? How many of us is it? 3? 300? 3000?

And what about the Royal College of Midwives, are they going to respond? Tell him to back off? Tell him to prove what he is saying?

This is a man who is leading a cult to remove "Normal Birth" from the vocabulary. He even got the CEO of the Royal College of Midwives ap0logising for the term. Labour Wards have removed the helpful drawings by Helen Chown distributed by the NCT to encourage midwives to help women move around more in order to achieve more normal births.

James Titcombe targets prominent midwives and apparently bullies them and makes thoroughly unpleasant accusations against them. He is also shockingly employed by the NHS as an Agent of "Safety for Women". It is not right that the NHS should be using someone so biased against midwives, the largest workforce in maternity care. Why would that be helpful? As far as I can see he has no qualifications which would help with "Safety for Women" and he shows no awareness of any research which has been done.

James had a baby son who died two decades ago and has used that, and people's natural sympathy towards his situation to attack midwives and "normal birth". I am well aware of how awful it is to lose a baby. Dreadful. I had a foster baby from when she was three months old who lived with us, who was bathed by me, fed by me, loved by me, kissed by me, caressed by me, comforted in the night by me, read to by me, whose natural father came out of prison when she was three and a half years old and did not want her to be cared for by white people so to my great, great grief she went to relatives. It was so traumatic that I couldn't speak about it for years and years without sobbing. We have been back in touch now for some years and we enjoy each other's company very much but her loss made me understand grief and its tremendous and tragic effects so although I do not know the ins and outs of James Titcombe's experiences with midwives I understand the strength of his feelings.

It becomes more and more clear that the huge Obstetric Factories that we have fashioned really do not work either for women or for midwives. Women become de-humanised, they are treated like objects on conveyor belt, no-one listens to them, no-one listens to midwives so they try and hold out as long as possible but eventually can't hack it any more.

37 experienced midwives are starting to practise in Melbourne this month. Not the young "See the world before I settle down" but mature women, experienced midwives with husbands and children, who are being dragged across the world so that their mothers can find a satisfying way of being a midwife - what an indictment of our NHS - tragic.