BirthStrong

"Birthrights alongside Pregnant then Screwed, Make Birth Better, Birth Bliss Academy, the Fatherhood Institute and AIMS have today urged NHSE to issue clearer guidance to Trusts about the need to remove visiting restrictions for companions of choice in maternity services.
The letter follows news at the weekend that Liverpool Womens NHS Foundation Trust was reinstating restrictions it had previously removed in response to rising coronavirus cases. Birthrights has made a request under the Freedom of Information Act to see the risk assessment and any minutes of discussions of the risk assessment that led to all visiting being suspended in antenatal/postnatal wards. The group of organisations who wrote to NHSE are keen that lessons are learnt from the past six months and that Trusts recognise the need for families to be together at this significant time in their lives."

"Partners are not visitors to maternity services" says Birthrights and partner organisations - Birthrights Birthrights alongside Pregnant then Screwed, Make Birth Better, Birth Bliss Academy, the Fatherhood Institute and AIMS have today urged NHSE to issue clearer guidance to Trusts about the need to remove visiting restrictions for companions of choice in maternity services. The letter follows news at t...

Dealing with unconscious bias and racism in maternity care is urgent. In 2018 MMBRACE released a report revealing that In comparison to white women, black women were almost five times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth related causes, and Asian women were nearly twice as likely. What can I do as an individual? Encourage more BAME women to join our free Positive Birth Movement meetings to be informed and empowered about birth. From today I will be doing just that...

I get asked from time to time to give concrete examples of systemic racism in maternity care. Here's one that came across my desk today.
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I've been looking at one of the Anti-D leaflets handed out in the UK.
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Not only is it full of pictures of white people, but it says that. "About 85% of people have the RhD Factor, and the other 15% do not."
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I have been researching this area for more than 20 years, so I can tell you that that figure is only true for people of European descent.
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In fact, one per cent of people of Asian descent, eight percent of people of African descent and 15 percent of people of European descent are rhesus negative.
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The fact that we give out information leaflets containing data and pictures which only represent and relate to white people is systemic racism.
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Photo by Emmanuel Phaeton on Unsplash
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It's OK to feel how you feel after birth

https://theconversation.com/worried-about-negative-thoughts-as-a-new-parent-youre-not-alone-145973?fbclid=IwAR2PSXwFN7KC82KZbRoFPOVGr-K5KA0K6ITGaa5sM-r3cchiJs3PRw2pdlk

Babies aren't pumpkins!

Too early for pumpkin pics? I hope not!
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“Dating pregnancy is not an exact science and there is considerable variation between women.
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It is normal that some women naturally have longer pregnancies than others.
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The idea that something terrible will happen if a woman remains pregnant for a moment longer than 42 weeks just isn’t true.
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The baby doesn’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”
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It’s so important that women have full information and are able to look at the pros and cons of different courses of action before making the decisions that are right for them.
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Part of that is sorting the myths from the facts. This quote is from my book, “Inducing Labour: making informed decisions." You can find out more about that and my other books and explore birth-related information and decision making at www.sarawickham.com/iol
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