Keeping your newborn baby safe is an issue that I spend lots of time discussing with my clients. Midwifery isn’t just about pregnancy and birth, it’s also about creating families. I aim to help you to start out as a family feeling confident. Very often in my time as a midwife I have met people who have spent huge amounts…
The term high risk pregnancy often causes concern to clients. They may feel well ad healthy, and have always been. Sometimes at their first appointment in pregnancy they find that they are classified as having a “high risk” pregnancy. Sometimes some new information arises during the pregnancy and you are told that you have become high risk. Why? What does…
Midwifery in the UK is very different to midwifery in Malawi, and to midwifery in many other countries. For those who have grown up in the UK with the NHS, there is a general acceptance that healthcare is freely available, and an acceptance that the system is under a great deal of pressure and there are often significant delays. For…
One of the issues I thought a great deal about during my time in Malawi is the issue of interventions in pregnancy and birth. Are interventions a bad thing? Are they good? As with many things in life, it all depends…. In the UK it has become widely accepted (and much debated) that hospital-based practice around birth tends to include…
So here I am, back in the UK as the new year starts. I have returned immediately to my work as an independent midwife in Sussex, and I’ve been reflecting on volunteering as a midwife in Malawi. What have I learned, what surprised me, and what this might mean for me in the future? I really didn’t know what to…