Obstetrics

For most of their lives, women have been inundated with negative birth stories. They’ve been conditioned to believe that excruciating pain is associated with labour, and because of this, women hold an unprecedented fear of giving birth. This extreme fear causes their bodies to become tense, and that tension stops their bodies from easily performing […]

What does a successful birth look like? If you’ve had a baby, or are going to have one, then it’s likely you’ve had it defined to you as ‘healthy mother, healthy baby’. That is, one where both the mother and the baby come out the other side alive. This approach acknowledges two truths about birth

‘This is not what I expected.’ It’s now 14 years since I heard my patient (who I’ll call Jane from here on) whisper those words as she sat across from me, cuddling her four-week-old baby. At several points during her pregnancy she’d mentioned to me how much she was looking forward to motherhood. We’d talked