The Mule

Freedom for Birth, a new documentary film about human rights in childbirth, was screened in over a thousand locations across the world last Thursday, and I was there, keen to take part in a 'Mother's Revolution' supported by leading lights from the field - Ina May Gaskin, Sheila Kitzinger, Michel Odent - all calling for women to 'take back birth'. The film took as its focus the plight of Agnes Gereb, the Hungarian midwife currently under house arrest for attending women in illegal home births, and the related case of Ternovszky vs. Hungary, in which the European Court of Human Rights ruled that every woman has the right to choose where and how she gives birth. Quite clearly, there are some circumstances in which the compromise of freedom and the violation of human rights are tangible, for example when imprisonment is involved, or, as in another case touched on in the film, a woman's baby was taken away on the grounds of negligence because she has refused med...

Today is Halloween, and it's also Samhain, the Celtic equivalent of New Year's Eve. This ancient festival looks towards nature for its symbolism, and celebrates endings and beginnings; taking seeds of hope for the future, spiralling deep into the dark of winter, facing our fears, waiting and enduring, and emerging anew when spring finally returns. What better time to bring you the first of a week long series of posts on the subject of birth! Back in July I ran another Birth Special, and the most popular post by far was Michelle's story of how her planned home birth ended in an emergency c-section. Perhaps one of the reasons it spoke to so many people is because the tale is, sadly, all too familiar; of a birth in which hopes and dreams of a natural and positive experience slip slowly and painfully away and are replaced with trauma and disappointment.  I'm delighted to say that for Michelle, healing has come in the form of an incredibly empowering second birth, and her...

This week on the blog, I'm running a Birth Story Special. Every day I plan to publish a different birth story, with the hope that by gathering together the threads of different women's experiences, we might be able to weave a picture of what it is like to give birth in the UK today; of what is being got right, and what might need to change. So today I faced a difficult choice, which story first? A Caesarian might seem an unlikely place to start, but in fact this honest and gripping tale speaks volumes about having a baby in the UK today. For so many women, the dream and hope of a natural experience or even a birth at home, ends in a difficult, painful or traumatic way that they were not hoping for. Approximately 15% of births end in an Emergency Caesarean, and less than half of all births proceed 'normally' ie with no medical intervention. These traumatic experiences leave us with questions; most particularly, was there anything I or anyone else could h...