Holding and carrying your baby all day is just what every woman does here. It isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity, but one which seems to work very well for both the woman and the baby. In the UK we have many options including prams and buggies, car seats, and a wide array of slings and baby carriers. In Malawi,…
Hygiene and handwashing are integral to professional healthcare practice in the UK. It is astonishing to experience a society where this just isn’t understood to be a priority. In the hospital here there is usually running (cold) water, but soap is not often available. It is simply not seen as a priority purchase. The irony of the posters on the…
If you are thinking about where your baby will be born, have you thought about a homebirth with a private midwife? The NHS midwifery teams in Sussex (University Hospitals Sussex, Surrey and Sussex Healthcare, Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells and East Sussex Healthcare all aim to support homebirths, but all are facing significant staffing issues. They will aim to support anyone…
Receiving unexpected news in pregnancy about your baby’s development is extremely difficult. Most people start to picture their baby very early in pregnancy, imagining who that little person will be and what they will be like. If you then are given the news that your baby is not developing as expected it is a shock, and hard to accept. This…
In the UK, most people access pregnancy, birth and postnatal care through the NHS. However, an increasing number of people are now choosing to look outside the NHS and to employ someone directly. Once you start exploring options it can get very confusing. What exactly are midwives, doulas and birthkeepers? In this blog post I aim to explain a little…