The Mule

Independent Midwives...where do I start with what I owe to them? Without Independent Midwives, I don't know what kind of birth I would have had with my second baby. Traumatised and scared after my first birth (induction, forceps etc), I discovered, right at the last minute, that you could 'opt out' of the NHS. I contacted Independent Midwives Caroline Baddiley and Chrissy Hustler, and as soon as they walked into my living room for our first meeting, I knew that everything was going to be different from that moment on. It's awkward to 'big up' IM's because doing so contains the implication that there is something wrong with NHS midwives. And of course, this is not the case. There are many many fantastic midwives in the NHS and many women have fantastic positive births under their care. The problem that I had, and that drove me to seek an alternative, was that I could not guarantee that I would know the midwife who attended me. In my local area at the time,...

Yesterday I was honoured to be a part of the Birthrights Dignity in Childbirth Forum, held at the Royal College of Physicians in London. I gave a short presentation about my organisation The Positive Birth Movement , which I'm reproducing here for those who were unable to attend and might be interested to read it. Below the presentation I'm also sharing the 'submission' that was made to Birthrights about the Positive Birth Movement, which gives more detailed information about the organisation, including some fantastic feedback from those who facilitate and attend our groups. Please come and join the PBM on Facebook , Twitter , or get in touch with me if you would like more information or want to be involved in any way. You can find your nearest Positive Birth group on our website: www.positivebirthmovement.org . Presentation: My name is Milli Hill, and a year ago this month I set up the Positive Birth Movement. It all started with a very little idea – the ...

I once read somewhere that the goal of psychotherapy is to reveal the secrets we are keeping, even from ourselves. We all do this. We all keep a few bits of reality out of sight, sometimes because they are painful, but more often, perhaps, simply because to acknowledge them would be a difficult admission of a lifetime of misguided beliefs, misdirected energy, and mistakes. We see this a lot with the birth issue. Sometimes it's as if simply talking about birth in a positive way is too much for people to tolerate. The cultural attitude that birth is dangerous and downright unpleasant has become so engrained that many people seem to no longer see it as an attitude at all - they see it as a solid FACT. To challenge this would involve accessing ways of thinking that, whilst they may exist, are completely beyond everyday awareness, like rooms in a mansion that have been put under dust sheets and long forgotten. In the media, journalists with the power and influence for positive cha...

Pregnant women are offered medical interventions so often that it's almost hard to imagine getting through an entire pregnancy and birth without having one. Whether it's injections, induction, or an intravenous drip, there are so many choices for women to make, and often they feel, quite understandably, that the best choice is to place their trust in the experts, who are, after all, offering them 'evidence based care'. But if midwives and obstetricians are offering 'evidence based care' - that is to say, they are making their recommendations based on good quality research - why then does the advice that individual clinicians offer, and the policies that individual hospitals and trusts implement, vary so greatly? A new report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) suggests that the disparity between hospital statistics has finally come to their attention, although I'm not clear why it has taken them so long to notice informat...

This week, the fight to save Independent Midwifery intensified, as five hundred people congregated in London in silent protest. I wasn't able to be there, but I was thrilled to play my part in the day by writing this article, Why Independent Midwives are key to the fight for birth freedom , which appeared in the Telegraph online on Monday morning. Of course, this was very exciting for me on a personal level too, as this is the first time I have had an article published at this level. It's amazing what can happen when you "Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead" - two years ago I started out writing tentative little numbers about fish fingers and my daily struggle to leave the house , and today I found myself sat at a table in a London studio, with cans on my ears and a fuzzy mike in my face, being asked to make sense of some of the issues around the current state of birth freedom in the UK. I was joined my ...

The following article appeared in the Huffington Post today. Independent  Midwives, the only alternative to NHS maternity care available in the UK, are currently under threat. This Monday – 25 th March – they are taking to the streets of London in protest at a E.U.Directive that requires all registered health professionals to have mandatory insurance. Independent Midwives (I.M’s) won’t be able to get this insurance – due to their low numbers and the potentially high cost of claims the premiums would be prohibitively expensive – and unless the Government answers their call to help them find a workable solution, they face becoming illegal and extinct from October 2013. I first came across I.M’s during my second pregnancy in 2010. Having had a hospital forceps delivery with my first baby that, both physically and emotionally, took a long time to recover from, I knew the impact that a birth experience could have, and planned to have a home water birth with baby ...