How Men Can Play Their Part in the Birth Revolution

I was extremely delighted to have my second article published by the Telegraph on the 18th April. It looked at the recent research that has made the news, suggesting that fathers are getting post traumatic stress disorder after witnessing their partners giving birth. Reading some of the coverage, I couldn't help but notice how readily the world seemed to accept that birth is a traumatic event, and wondered, as well as supporting fathers during and after difficult births, shouldn't we also be trying to make birth less traumatising for everyone - fathers, mothers and babies too?

Read the full article here.

Writing for the Telegraph, running The Positive Birth Movement, editing my book about water birth, trying to help in the campaign to Save Independent Midwifery, and gestating baby number three whilst looking out for one and two - well, I'm spread pretty thin, so apologies to all for my lack of blog posts at the moment.

Somehow in between now and Christmas I've got to finish Water Birth: Stories to Inspire and Inform, take The Positive Birth Movement to the next level, write some more articles worth reading, and bring another human being into the world. Oh, and we might move house too.

All this and I can't drink. Wish me luck.

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'Childism' - As Utterly Unacceptable as Sexism and Racism

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Life is tough: for everyone there are trials and sorrows, disappointments and heartbreaks. From a mental health perspective, the world loosely divides itself into two camps - those who cope, and those who don't. And as scary as it might be to contemplate, this coping ability or inability is pretty much entirely shaped by nurture - by our actions as parents. It's simple: the way that we respond to our child when they are in a state of distress will become the way that they respond to their own distress as they grow into young people and adults. If we distance ourselves from their difficult emotions, they will learn to distance themselves too. If we respond with anger or tension, they will feel anger and tension too in life's harder moments. If we placate or 'medicate' our upset children with sugar or TV, they will learn to do the same for themselves as adults. And if we cannot tolerate their distress, we will teach them that distress itself is intolerable and must ...

The Mule

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