Let’s trust women’s bodies to give birth

Let’s trust women’s bodies to give birth.

I see lots of women in the last few weeks of their pregnancy preparing for birth. I also see lots of women who have passed their estimated due date and want to encourage their baby along. I am seeing more and more women anxious and distressed as they feel pressured to have an induction.

With both my children I went past my estimated due date by some time, and I remember the pressures well.

The impatience – from within and from excited relatives. Booking me in for an induction at 40+10 even though I was only just at 40 weeks. The amused confusion about how they could be so sure about a date that they’d moved 3 times already. Facing down consultants who used guilt, shame and percentages to weaken my resolve that my babies would be along when they were ready.

Nobody is 100% sure what triggers labour but until recently it was thought to be a hormonal change in the mother. Now it is thought that it is more likely to start from a change in the baby, who knows when it is ready to come.

I wonder, what minor adjustments are going on in there over those last few weeks and days? Tiny finishing touches that perhaps we can’t measure or account for.

There are, of course, times when an intervention is needed. There are a minority of cases where there is a real danger to the mother’s or baby’s health. Although an emergency intervention might require a c-section rather than an induction. But we seem to have moved from a place where these instances are few and far between to one where women are being routinely offered inductions from as early as 38 weeks.

Who exactly does this benefit?

When we go down this road, we create a narrative around women’s bodies that they are not capable. That they can’t be trusted. That it’s not ok to wait for our bodies. To listen to our own bodily intelligence, to listen to our babies and their bodily intelligence.

I trust women’s bodies to give birth and I trust babies to come when they are ready.

But it seems many maternity services have lost that trust.

How can I help?

We will also have the conversations you might not be having anywhere else – about what you need to do physically and mentally to prepare. What you might need to let go of and what you might need to welcome in.

I’ll encourage you to build a support system around yourself for before and during the birth.

I’ll give you strategies for how to ask the right questions so you get all the facts before you make a decision.

I work with the body and the mind to prepare you and your baby for birth. Together we will get the body into balance so that you are ready, whenever that might be.