Podcast: Doulas and Understanding Labour with Guest, Natalie Meddings
Doulas and Understanding Labour with Guest, Natalie Meddings
Season 1, Episode 1
When you begin to understand what labour truly feels like; what it really takes from both a physical and emotional perspective; then you'll stop asking the question 'what does a doula do?'
In this episode I chat with Doula, Active Birth Yoga Teacher, Author, Mother & all round inspiring lady, Natalie Meddings about the role of a doula. What started as an episode about doulas, quickly morphed into one of the most inspiring and informative conversations I've ever had about birth. Bringing you a deeper understanding of what labour truly means.
If you are currently pregnant, you absolute MUST listen to the very wise words Natalie shares with us in this week's episode. Thinking about labour and birth in a whole new light, this is info you definitely don't get from a standard antenatal class! I have no doubt this episode will leave you feeling confident, inspired and excited about giving birth!
Transcript
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I know right now you have no idea what to expect from birth, what it's going to feel like, how it's going to pan out.
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Welcome to The birth-ed podcast, where we open up conversations about all aspects of pregnancy, birth and parenthood, so you feel fully informed, confident and positive about what this journey might entail.
I'm Megan Rossiter, founder of Birthed, and your host here at The Birthed podcast.
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Okay, welcome back to the next episode of The Birthed podcast.
I'm joined today by our guest Natalie Meddings, who is a doula, active birth yoga teacher, an author, founder of Tell Me a Good Birth Story, and mum of three.
My reason for inviting Natalie today was sort of first and foremost to kind of chat about the role of a doula in pregnancy, birth, and parenthood, which we'll hopefully uncover in this episode.
But sort of crucially importantly to me, also because of Natalie's unfaltering drive to make birth better for women.
So welcome, Natalie.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
So I suppose, let's kind of dive right in.
At this point, some of our listeners will probably know what a doula is, but probably quite a lot of us, quite a lot of the listeners are thinking, what is a doula?
What is this word that maybe we've never heard before?
What do you do?
So to really nail it, it's a birth companion.
Simply put, it's somebody who is with experience of birth, knowledge of birth, possibly a mother herself, who is really so familiar that they can guide a pregnant woman who hasn't experienced it before, or even second or third babies, obviously, but somebody who wants support, we guide them through.
One of the standard definitions is, we offer practical and emotional support, as opposed to anything clinical.
I think that that can sound a bit woolly, and the more I've said it over the years, you know, it sort of gets rolled out.
I still think that leaves a lot of questions, which is impossible.
I think, as well, there's a bit of a, what would you call it?
Some doulas and doula trainers would question the word support, because it tends to imply two things which are mistaken, which are one, that we're there to kind of coach.
We're not coaches, really important to understand that.
And we're not there to rescue.
So if somebody's definition of support is either of those two things, that we're here to tell you what to do, or we're here to sort of, yeah, that you're going through something slightly unendurable, and therefore we have to kind of lift it off you, that isn't, neither of those things.
The experience of the doula, her own experience and confidence in birth is imparted to the woman in the preparation sessions and antenatal meetings, then the relationship that develops in the pregnancy.
Can you imagine, like, so there's a trust.
So I, as a doula, will trust birth, and that trust then is imparted to the woman to trust her own body, to trust birth.
So it's a kind of osmosis thing.
And then on the day itself, or the night itself, or when the birth begins, we are really just enacting that, almost symbolically.
Like, we often, sometimes don't do anything.
We just be like, but probably you might have heard people knit, you know, the famous knitting of wife, or there's the knitting doula.
You know, we knit, crochet, read, sleep.
And it's just to kind of be there as a presence that makes the woman feel safe, secure.
We're protecting her, if you like, from stimulation.
There is, of course, some hands-on stuff.
Of course, we do massage, running a bath, reassuring words, helping them to get into positions that are gonna help things along.
But you wouldn't do that by default.
You would see how things are going.
You know, some birth, I'm literally lying down next to her, or not even there, on the landing or something, in another room, because she's just fine.
Other births, I can literally come out and hardly be able to walk, because I've been having people hang off my neck, or I've got loads of terrible arthritis now because of pressing people so hard with my thumbs.
So, it is literally how long is a piece of string.
Sometimes it is hands-on.
Yeah, so that's the first obvious definition.
I think the other thing I like to have started talking about more, and I did this, I talked about this recently to a few people, that was that I think the reason people don't or can't really grasp what a doula does is because really we don't really understand in our society what labour involves.
And if people in general truly understood what labour involves, as in the depth, the intensity, the stages, the what has to happen side to it, the need of a woman in labour, if people really understood their needs, the question about what does a doula do wouldn't even come into play.
But it's because there's such a gulf between the reality and what people expect.
And in that, there's a vacuum, actually, of knowledge, which I think is incredible in 2019, actually.
The average person on the street doesn't really have an idea.
We said this on Facebook the other day, a few of us were saying, it's like you have to remake the wheel every time because somehow our society, though full of knowledge now, as a result of the internet, and people really sort of, you know, they know everything just by a click of a finger.
Oddly, pregnancy and birth remain very subject to whatever message you come across.
So it can be, you know, subject to the opinion of a certain teacher.
It can be a particular book, or it can be who your friend told you.
Rather than what surely giving birth is biology, shouldn't there be an absolute foundation understanding, just as we all understand what we need to go to sleep, or we understand the process of aging, and we understand how to soothe a baby.
Most of us would know, you rock a baby to sleep, you walk them in the primary, this baby.
Having a baby, there's literally biological basics to it.
And yet most people would still think you lay on the bed in the hospital, or maybe even with your legs instead.
There's still that idea still is around.
Yeah, and I suppose it's perpetuated by the sort of mainstream media that, again, is kind of ignoring everything that we know.
I mean, don't you think that?
I find it almost, I mean, I bang on this quite a lot, but I find it almost amazing, the willful blind spot that Meddings has.
I mean, you just don't ever see any, what newspaper you've ever seen truly, truly look into it.
And you could say, oh, it's television, for example, so you get the one-born-every-minute thing.
And people say, oh yeah, but it doesn't make good telly, makes good telly is drama and blah, blah, blah.
And I always say, really?
Because actually a baby being born in a normal way, where the woman adopting positions of her choice and doing it as she would normally do it without being managed and measured and controlled in a structured setting is amazing.
Particularly because it generally would be quite surprising because it's not something that most people have ever seen.
And I've said it to television people over the years.
I said, actually, you wouldn't be in the room even because you shouldn't be, because it's a private thing.
But even having a TV, like somebody was filming it, they could, just the anticipation of hearing the sounds through the room would be interesting, or the hush of a bird.
I think people would be surprised how quiet, slow, and almost boring it is.
One of my favourite stories is how I watched-
Yeah, I know what you mean.
But that is another thing, I guess, that's surprising about birth is that when, I would say, when you're in labour, you live in like labour time, and five minutes could be five hours, and you're kind of in your total kind of zone.
Support, I don't know if you find this as a do-er, but particularly this is what birth partners often find, but as a birth partner or somebody who's not in labour, five minutes is five minutes, and five hours is five hours.
So it is generally surprising.
Yeah, I suppose how nothing actually happens, but outwardly for a lot of labour.
But yeah, I was gonna say-
And from a biological perspective, what you've just said would be an example.
So a woman in labour has no temporal awareness.
Why?
Because temporal awareness, time, space, is the arena of the cortex, the cortex.
Assessing where you are in any given day is rationality.
So the reason you have no time frame as a labouring woman is because you're not using that part of your brain.
You're in a very, very deep primal space that is a bit more like sleep or sex, you know, that kind of involuntary state where you're just in flow.
So even that, most people will imagine they're gonna be very conscious.
I've heard people say, when I'm in labour, I'm going to be there, and they'll point, say it's a home birth, they'll point to where they've allotted the space.
And I think to myself, no, you probably won't, because you think it's a rational decision like that.
But very often, a woman who's put a birth pool in a conservatory thinking it's gonna be nice to look at the view of the garden will end up in her laundry room, or in a tiny, tiny toilet, because she's not gonna be governed by rational decision by that point.
She's gonna be working on a primal script, which is her body telling her what to do.
But yeah, so that's one of my big things, I suppose, is that instead of unpicking the precise points of what Doulas do, it's first to understand that Doulas demystify on every level birth, I think.
I mean, our job has become broader and broader.
So we are now, the old Doulas of say, 100 years ago, of course they would have existed forever, they would have been the lady down the road helping, would have simply turned up, put the kettle on, hung out in the washing, supported in a very sort of non-verbal way, utterly.
We are now like that on the birth, but actually in advance of the birth, because there's so much fear, actually misconception, myth.
So we have to get to work quite earlier, especially with fathers as well, or partners and parents, mothers-in-law even sometimes, and explain what does a woman need to labour these?
And even if you are planning medical assistance that you want in epidural, or even to be honest, even if you're actually planning a caesarean, you're gonna need ways to stay calm.
You're gonna need ways to embody, to be inside your own experience, to understand your choices.
So it's even if it's that end, or either, and it's not, that is a definition to make that doulas aren't just about natural birth, which is also a myth.
People think that we're, some people say, oh, do you only support home birth, which is obviously not the case.
So talk to me a little bit about the kind of, I mean, obviously the kind of main difference between a midwife and a doula is that a midwife is clinically trained.
She's there to care, not only from a kind of emotional and practical perspective, but also from a clinical or a medical perspective, caring for the kind of physical wellbeing of a mum and baby in labour.
But I suppose lots of the things that you sort of mentioned, when I work with kind of women earlier in pregnancy, they kind of assume, or there's a kind of assumption that a lot of the things you mentioned are kind of what a midwife would do.
But obviously, kind of in the current systems that we've got, midwives can be kind of dragged from that a little bit.
And whilst I'm sure an absolutely ideal world back is what all midwives would want to be doing.
Can you talk a little bit about how the kind of two roles complement each other or how they kind of work together and the sort of need for potentially both of them in labour?
Yeah, so absolutely, as you say, there's an awful lot of demands placed on a midwife now, you know, note taking for one, and even before you've got to the actual physical checking of a mother, her blood pressure, foetal heart check, she doesn't have to write it all down.
I mean, obviously, it goes without saying that the vast proportion of midwives will be very emotionally in tuned and caring and kind.
But bear in mind, it's not really about how much the individual can do that, it's that the system pressures mean she doesn't know that woman, so she's having to hit the ground running from the off.
With the experience, she's gonna be able to do that quite easily, but it's a bit of a lottery.
So what do those provide?
In fact, maybe I'll give you an example.
Yeah, yeah, please do.
Okay, I got to hospital.
I had got around to her house, let's start there, and they had absolutely listened and understood and really grasped everything I'd gone through with them about what to expect.
That's one of my big things, what to expect.
Get people to understand what to expect, then they're not helpless.
So she, I got around there, and the father, who had actually been very frightened of her, and very sort of found the whole thing really sort of like, he actually laughed out loud when I told him, told them she wouldn't be on the bed, very unlikely to be on the bed lying back, because they're Americans, so they completely assumed, the American model is very, very obstetrically based.
So get around there, and they'd so taken it on that she was in the dark toilet on the floor, complete pitch dark, lying on the cold tiles of her bathroom floor, which often people report is a lovely feeling of solidity of bathroom.
It's like you've got Lou there, she's been in the shower, and then she hadn't got any further than there.
She hadn't managed to get back to her bedroom, and the clever, wonderful father, instead of kind of getting enough tears about that, he had bought her a duvet as well as water, her hot water bottle and her lavender, and he just got her comfortable there.
So when I turned up, I was just so perfect, and she was moaning and sighing and looking like she was really advancing.
So I said, go and get a little bit of sleep and we'll see how we go.
So very, not very long after, I thought, oh, you're really, really advancing here.
You know, it's amazing.
Time to go, because it was clear to me she was in strong, strong, strong labour.
So in we go, and it's about four in the morning.
Now this is what I mean by it being a lottery.
I don't mean a lottery is who you meet, but what the set up is.
You look into triage at four in the morning, you're gonna have some really tired midwives.
Now if my mother, the mother I'm supporting, hadn't known what to expect and how to go inside herself and stay focused, I think that would have been quite a scary setting.
It's brightly, brightly lit, as lit as a M&S frozen goods aisle.
I mean, it's literally the most ridiculous sterile atmosphere.
So the waiting room was filled with lots of strange other people, families, and she's moaning and she's on her hands and knees.
So you've got to understand what you're going to be going in like.
If you're going in in labour, which is what they request and require, that's a vulnerable state, you know?
And so there was no way to put herself for starters.
So then we get ushed into a cubicle and you have to wait 10 minutes.
And it feels very like stalling and faltering, like where's the person we need?
Now remember, why has a woman gone in in that moment?
She needs something in the way of care.
She needs somebody to take charge, not again rescue her, but to sort of say, amazing, on you go, this is it.
But because of triage now, there's this sort of juncture, a sort of crossroads where women are like, what, oh my God, what's going on?
If you don't get protected, it can be very industrial in that moment.
And this midwife we met was a bit of a flick of the curtain and take your knickers off and write that, that kind of, it can be quite-
Disruptive.
Disruptive, and women are like, I'm this, and you're in an intense play.
And so that's what I was meaning by, what's the difference between a Dula and a midwife?
Is that I suppose the continuity that I can provide, she knows me, trusts me.
She, I'm not saying you don't trust a midwife, of course you do, but it's a lot they have to do.
And you can't necessarily rely on something, they're gonna be rubbing your back, holding your hand, coming out with just the right word when you might need it.
And to end on this story, because it's a good example actually of what does a Dula do.
She had a vaginal examination.
You don't really need a vaginal examination to know where you are, but anyway, this happened.
And she was having all signed to my mind through my experience and knowledge that she was soon to have a baby a couple of hours away.
She has this check, and her midwife with quite a disappointed face, probably because she was tired, she went, oh no, you know when you're ready, you're two centimetres.
So you can go home, and the mother was absolutely devastated.
So she just thought she'd been labouring all night, she thought she was not far off.
She said, well, your only option really is to go and have morphine and pepidine.
So potentially, if there hadn't been a doula there, that could have gone down the track of what?
Oh my God, confidence knocked, it's just too painful now.
If I thought I was nearly there and I'm not, there's no way I can manage this.
This is a textbook thing that happens all the time.
She needed reassurance and wasn't really in the offing, right?
So, thankfully, then we were left.
And I don't know what made me do it, and this is what part of the Dula job is that you, I think every Dula will tell you this, that you respond, you do not react, you respond to every woman in each individual situation.
You find yourself doing things you didn't know you were gonna do, what you even knew, you know?
And I don't know why I did this, but I got underneath her tummy, it sounds really strange.
I don't know, I mean, it's hard to explain.
She had her hand on the bed and she put her bottom really back and she'd lengthened out her back.
She had a terrible backache and we were all a bit, oh my God, we're gonna have to go to Auntie Natalie Ward for this, because she did say she wanted this because she couldn't carry on.
And while, I think I was doing, without a ribosome, sort of gently, riposo is like when you, yeah, yeah.
It's like a Mexican scarf technique for a neighbour.
Yeah, that kind of releases tension.
So I was sort of trying to do a little bit of tension release, basically.
And while I was sort of, I've never even been under, at that angle, I was on my knees and she was stretched out and I was underneath her.
And she went, oh my god, I'm retching, right?
I'm heaving.
And I looked at her tummy, and the whole tummy was like when you're being sick, right?
I could see it was, it was downy, like a downy grip, like it was down with thrust, yeah.
Because we had been told it was two centimetres, neither her, even with my experience, or her, obviously, now she's just believing what she's been told, had it occurred to us that it was pushing.
Because you've just been told this set of facts that of course you trust.
It took me about three seconds to realise, but I mean, I must admit, even I was like, oh, is she gonna be sick or something?
And I still, she was pushing.
And then 10 minutes later, the midwife sort of heard the noise, and like, ah, okay, on to birth center.
We reframed it, got her back on track, had the baby an hour later in the birth center.
Very lovely, smooth birth.
But can you see in that incidence, now, I haven't described what I was doing as well as tension release, but was of course rebooting her energy, her focus, her, I was like, oh my God, you're amazing.
Do you know what?
It's exactly as we thought.
You are so doing this, you are amazing, this is happening.
It didn't take much, and the reason why it didn't take much is because she knows me, we've got a relationship, and she knows I know.
Yeah, and I suppose it's also that being there from earlier on in labour.
So obviously, if you are going to give birth on a labour ward or on a birth centre, or even if you're meeting a midwife for a home birth, the idea is that the midwife joins you when you are in what would be considered to be established labour, which kind of within the sort of medical system has some quite arbitrary rules about when established labour is kind of considered.
But when you've got somebody that's there earlier on and sees that progression and not the physical progression, not checking a cervix and sticking it in a box, but seeing how that behaviour of a woman sort of changes.
And again, this is something even, this is what a lot of very good midwives will rely on, is noticing the different stages of labour.
You can't measure a cervix and stick it in a box and say, yeah, you're in this stage of labour, you're in that stage of labour.
It's so much more holistic than that.
And it's so much-
There's multiple variables.
And also, it's because since we started doing, managing birth in the way we have, since the 70s, in the form it's in now, very mainly, 98% of people have their baby in hospital.
It's kind of, we've lost some of the most important wisdom.
You have to release in your head, your heart, and your vagina sort of thing.
It's a multiple, it's many layers, right?
When the stars align and all those things are happening and the mother gives in, gives way, and lets go, the baby comes.
So whether she's two, I mean, so many people, you must have had this experience.
You could be two centimetres and have a baby soon.
You could be 10 centimetres and have the baby hours away.
It's all about many things, and you can't really, it's unmeasurable in the nuts and bolts way like that.
And so once you remove the continuity of care, you can, the problem is that birth will self-fulfill.
Do you see that?
Because if you tell a woman that it's X or Y or Z, well, one, her brain wakes up, two, tension comes in.
You can actually make that happen.
So I always call that, I've got to conceptualize it.
I call it the three-centimetre woman, because of course so many women go in when they reach a point of death.
Now, it won't be quite labour-labour, because quite sensibly, they are going on what is now a kind of sense of give in their body, right?
That first sense of give, which is when the baby's just starting to press more open the cervix, is about three-centimetres.
So quite unsanity, the woman sort of goes into that point, but that is a quite established labour.
So now they get told, oh, sorry, you're not ready, you need to go home.
Now, the mother's like, oh my goodness, because her contractions will be very, very strong.
Is it gonna get way worse than this?
This is nothing, I'm only at the beginning, I'm not even in labour.
Now you set up a train of a lot of adrenaline, a lot of tension, a lot of fear, and you send them home with no resources.
I mean, actually, if the woman goes home, she probably understands the best chance of it unfolding normally.
But if she doesn't, she panics, she can so easily, that's why you end up with so many people having an epidural and difficulties and interventions and complications because of this sort of false, it's like a false assessment in a sense.
I mean, I know people say, oh, it tells you something, but it tells you, it's very, very small.
You can gather some helpful information from it, of course.
Just tell them the texture of the cervix.
That's the best, it's not the number, but how soft and giving and stretchy and elastic is the cervix?
That's gonna tell you much more than any number, but the few tell a woman she's two or three centimetres, she's gonna give up.
And there's a misunderstanding of what the cervix does in labour as well, I guess, is that people think that one centimetre is the very first stage of a cervix doing something, but you sort of forget that actually it's long and it's hard and it's pointing backwards, and all of that needs to change for most women before it starts opening kind of at all.
And equally, some women, particularly if they've had a baby before, might be sitting at three or four centimetres for weeks before they give birth, before they're even in labour.
Well, actually, that brings me to something I often would love to address, and I can say it now, which is that I think that so many of the problems have come in terms, when I say problems, what I mean is why is birth now a 50-50?
You've got now nearly 50% chance of having an emergency outcome, which is unbelievably shocking.
I think it's around 80% of birth have some kind of intervention in them now, which is so high.
So that's pretty depressing.
And that might not matter if you're in a society where that's what women expect and want, but that's not what the studies show.
Studies show that 75% of women want a birth and eat as naturally as possible.
So that's not right, it's a mismatch, and we need to work out why.
So the thing that I've noticed when I was writing my second book, Why Home Birth Matters, I started to really analyse by talking to some very old ladies actually.
I talked to people who would have been giving birth in the 40s and 50s, or 50s mainly, early 50s, and my mother, and worked out what is missing now.
And actually the main thing that's made things go a bit awry is exactly what you just said, this loss of understanding about what has to come first, combined with super duper focus on when am I going to hospital, which creates an unnatural disjoint in flow.
Because if all your focus is on what's next, when am I there, am I ready, count contractions, you're not moving through each feeling as you feel it.
You are anticipating, everything's about the next thing.
Basically turning birth into a linear project is like I've got to get to my destination.
So all the focus is about the journey in, and I get it, as Rachel Reed, or from Midwife Thinking, she points out it's a totally instinctive, natural thing for any mam or female to try to get to where they want to be, to get to where they're gonna be to give birth.
But the problem is it's made us, and this is the important bit, utterly discount what I call the build, the build to birth, where we should be ignoring it the best we can, distracting ourselves, doing a normal life.
And then when you can no longer ignore it, getting cozy, blanket, hot water, bottle of film.
And then there's even the third stage of that, which is more sort of, you know, yes, even a bath can help and for massage, but you're still kind of, if you are gonna have a hospital birth, you're still not really ready.
But that sounds like such a subjective judgment.
I don't mean they're not ready.
I mean, the hospital isn't ready for them.
I mean, I think they should be able to go in whenever, but their system can't accommodate them, right?
So, because we've lost this knowledge, and there's so much adrenalized focus, I'm not saying this judgmentally, but often from partners, completely understandably, they are quite shocked, I think, to discover what is on their shoulders at home.
And they're seeing their partner sighing, puffing, blowing on all fours, and thinking, well, my god, we've got to go in, you know?
And they're seeing the contractions are coming every three minutes, think, box tick, box tick, box tick, let's go.
But that's a strange benchmark to be guided by people who've never, somebody who's not only never experienced birth, but will never have seen one.
And yet, I mean, you're not supposed to technically phone the hospital and ask, but that's another, often they'd answer the phone, or you might not, you won't know the person you're speaking to.
And that, coming back to the Doulas, is like what we fill in that gap on the vacuum that is there.
We go to the home, and often we have interviews, people say, oh, so we meet you at the hospital.
No, no, no, no, no.
We're home for a long time.
Two thirds of what labour is at home.
Even if you don't plan a home birth, you are gonna be labouring at home.
And what my point is, is that women, sorry, let's put it this way, the baby and the mother's body should be the lead front and centre of what's going on.
You follow them.
The way we do it is that we expect the babies and the progress in the body to wrap around a pre-prescribed set of conditions, a pre-prescribed timeline.
And is there any surprise that the babies then don't, it doesn't sort of go to what we imagine, this one centimetre to an hour or whatever.
But if you're at home and you settle at home and you have the support of a knowing person with you, a doula, to guide you on what is normal, what is not, you then relax.
So by relax, I don't mean that really annoying word that we use now, relax, like be so.
I just mean be.
That's all the word relax means.
It just means stop anticipating, stop planning.
Don't think about where you're going to be next.
Just go and have a bar.
Like I'll often get people to sleep through the night, and they'll go, but how am I going to sleep?
How can you sleep through a contraction?
Well, of course you're not technically sleeping, but you're dose breathing and you're lying down and you're under your lovely cosy duvet and the lights are off.
Now you can get through a lot of contractions like that with really good propping and support and a hot water bottle in the back.
But instead, most people are pacing the house, timing contractions on an app, lights all over the place, you're pacing the hall, waiting to go.
And then you've wasted a whole night's sleep.
You're exhausted.
So that's the type of thing.
Doulas, fill in on that vitally missing knowledge, the build, exactly as you said, what is gonna happen before you even start dilating?
Yeah, and there's always, I always get from clients, I get a lot of, in that those kind of last few days, last few weeks potentially before a baby kind of decides to make their appearance, that for most women, that's the kind of time where anxiety tends to build again, even if they've been feeling pretty confident throughout pregnancy, that kind of, oh, is it?
Phone buzzing with exactly that right now.
And it's like, I guess it's that as well.
You can go to a midwife appointment, you can sort of phone up, but you don't get that almost like sort of friendly, motherly, that reassurance.
We will go to, Doulas will go to, and that's exactly it.
I say it now when we're setting up as an agreement, I make sure that point is made, because it can be really easy to say, right, we come and do these meetings and we attend you in birth, and this is how it works.
But I now put a paragraph where I say, just picture it, we are your go-to in the middle of the night if needs be.
If you work up in the middle of the night and you just felt a bit funny, bring us.
You know, that's okay, you know.
And somebody to say, or even like you say, I just feel a bit anxious, or I'm worried about this, or I'm worried about that.
There isn't anywhere where that, in our current culture.
And something I often say to partners actually, I do this little test and I say, right, I bet currently that when your partner goes to her midwife appointment, you think that she's having a sort of quite attuned one-to-one where she'll be having some checks, but she'll also be talking about birth, that she might have the odd question that she can have answered about what's the contraction or what does the placenta look like, or how does it feel?
And then I look at the mother and I say, and now explain what does happen, and they just shake the head.
And that's always a revelation to partners that there's no information sharing in those meetings.
Even-
Well, there's not time.
There's no before.
No, no, no.
No, I don't mean it's the midwife.
The midwife should do it.
It's not what it's for.
I mean, it's up, but I meant, when I said earlier about a mismatch of expectations, I didn't say it, did I?
But I think there's a massive mismatch of what women expect and what they get.
So I think women go into, I know I did, I was pregnant, and I remember thinking I was going to get lots of information or have it sort of individually attuned to me, like, how do you feel?
What's it gonna, I mean, of course, midwives are gonna say, how do you feel?
But there's no time for them to, I mean, the birth plan is discussed at 37 weeks or something.
And even then, often these days, it's a template in the back of the notes.
Yeah, we had a, I think it was a double appointment, which meant it was 30 minutes to talk.
It takes me 12 hours to talk through essentially birth preferences in our courses.
You're like, there's no, and within that appointment, you still have to test urine and take blood pressure and listen to baby's heart.
It's not a system failure that, or rather is it a failure, is that we just need to understand what is the system there to provide.
I think I keep saying, I'm sorry if other people are listening have heard me say this, but I say, okay, what does a doodoo do, right?
It's really what we're doing is we're compensating for this gap.
And what the gap is is that women underestimate what labour is going to involve, and they overestimate what maternity care can provide.
And it's not, you know, I really personally do not like the idea of hospital versus, you know, the medical birth or the nurse's natural birth, or somehow that there's them and us, or there's a sort of the doctors that we always laugh with earlier, didn't we?
That like, the doctor's gonna jump out of a cupboard and give you an epidural unrequested, and that people have kind of come to think that, oh yes, I don't want interventions, thanks.
You know, that's not what I want, a natural birth.
It doesn't work like that.
You know, everybody's on the same page, and everybody's on the same side, and they will listen.
And what does need to have awareness raised to it is that it is a process-focused maternity care system, in a sense.
It shouldn't be.
It should be more mother-focused, but it can't be because of the numbers, the sheer volume of through traffic, right?
So there has to be a kind of system.
So if you don't want to be like on Ikea, it's like those arrows in Ikea that you have to follow.
If you don't want your birth to go down that 50-50 chance, which you would, you know, you are gonna have, yeah, a 50% chance of normal-ish, but even then, as you said, only a two in 10 chance of having no interventions, hardly anything.
Then you need to pull yourself out from under that blanket, if you like, and find out what you physiologically need to give birth to these, what kind of support is gonna help you, which doesn't have to be a doula, can be a partner, absolutely can understand this.
It just needs to know very practically what to expect.
To know very much about that build bit we talked about, but not just say, oh, well, when contractions are coming in with three minutes, I'm ready, no.
It's gonna need, not only to understand what to expect, but also to be resourced.
I mean, I am amazed, amazed to see, because obviously I encounter lots of pregnant women that haven't got Doulas, that they sort of, for comfort and coping, they have done a course maybe, last, end of pregnancy, might have a TENS machine, and there's a plan to use the birth pool maybe, and that will be it.
And there won't be any hot water bottles, there won't be any sort of understanding of how your house is going to play a part.
So where are you going to lie?
Where are you going to lean?
Where are you gonna rock?
Where are you gonna sway?
How are you gonna use your bath?
Because you can't lay back in it.
How are you, you're gonna have to go through a night.
So how are you gonna go through that night?
I'm hopefully not pacing around, like I've said.
So one of the sessions I do as a doula is I very practically, literally move room to room, saying, look, you could sit here, you could lay there, you can do this, and start waking them up to the idea, oh, I'm gonna be here.
And the other thing that that does is that one of the big fears around birth now, I think, for modern women, is that they feel helpless.
There's a lot of helplessness and fear.
I think that's because there's a lot of uncertainty.
People, they hear these lots of difficult stories, they never seem to end the same, everybody's got complications, it just seems like a great big old lottery, right?
Not true if you, as we know, put a few things in place, but besides that, there are some absolute reliably, which is the first thing is you're gonna be there, two, unless you've got very medicalized, something really, really urgent issue where you're gonna start off in hospital, you are going to be at home.
So these are two immediately, two big facts that you need to work into your expectations.
Oh, so how am I gonna use my shower?
How am I gonna be in my bath?
Well, how many pillows have I got to prop between my legs?
And where's my husband gonna sleep?
Because I'm gonna need the whole bed, you know, things like that.
And is he gonna fill my hot water bottles and be queued up to fill my hot water bottles?
You know, people haven't got sort of an understanding of how much can help, how the simple things that can help.
Yeah, yeah.
It's still to me.
And something that you kind of touched on that I suppose kind of sort of answers this question, but this is a question that often comes up either from birth partners or from sort of women who do already feel quite supported by their birth partners is they wonder kind of, and I know this isn't the answer, but does a doula replace a birth partner?
But what does a birth partner feel about having a doula?
And I know it's often actually not what most people expect.
It's often a question that we get asked when we go for a first meeting or an interview, like how does it compliment, or is it gonna literally leave fathers out?
Completely not.
The opposite is the case.
In fact, we often find that we end up being more of a doula for the father than the mother in the end because she will be so ready to birth, ready and so confident that she just goes into herself and she's fine.
So often just us being down in the kitchen with the father, just I went to birth in the summer and we both made a meal for when they got back, or when the baby was born.
And so I'm sort of, I'm not even really talking.
We had the cricket on and he was brilliant.
And actually, he hadn't expected to stay at home at all.
They had the midwife come to them, but they did transfer.
And then he found to his surprise that it was in hospital that he felt like a spare part.
And then when we were at home, there was always something to do.
And I was saying, well, can you, there's always a hot water bottle to fill or a bath to run or go.
He used to go and lay with her and give her a cuddle and just tell her she was, you know, you're having a baby.
So there's no, what I find is that we lift the pressure of them having to be ironically the birth coach we said at the start.
I think sometimes it's a misunderstanding on the part of partners.
And also I think sometimes it's taught in birth education that you are the coach, come on, you're going to get her through this.
And that's not fair, because how can you load all that on the shoulders when they never felt it?
They don't really know.
I don't mean that patronizingly.
I think that would be the same with any experience that you've never had.
As a student middle-schooler, the first birth that I ever saw, I mean, I was essentially useless.
It was absolutely amazing.
But it was actually the mum's third birth.
And at the end, the dad just thought it was hilarious that he'd been at more birth than I had.
It was amazing.
But yeah, I was...
You have to have experience to stay relaxed.
So just my standing there, I mean, there's a fame that I mean, again, I've probably said this lots of times, but famously, I've had people say, I loved it when you put your slippers on.
I come in the house, first thing I have to do is put my slippers on, and I usually go and make myself a tea.
And actually, I quite deliberately make myself a tea, because I want to...
I mean, because I used to be by now.
And it's just sending a message, which is, oh, no, I'm here to stay now.
I'm just settling in.
And, you know, I'm a guest, but I've got enough of a license.
So let's just have a cup of tea.
And the reason I'm doing that is because we can hear, probably by now, the mother's noises and low moans or sighs from wherever she is.
And I'm sending a very powerful message to him, which is I'm not running in and checking on and like...
And he will have usually been thinking, wow, she's really in this, this is full on.
And then when they suddenly see your body not reacting like it's full on, and it's like, yeah, this is as it should be.
And even getting my book out or sitting on the staircase with my knitting or something, they're like, oh, okay.
So like the urgency kind of disappears a little bit.
And giving them license to say, right, you go to bed for a bit.
Or go...
I was laughing with a family last night that are telling this man about what is normal.
And I went to a birth a couple of years ago, and I'm sure they'll recognise themselves if they hear me.
And I turned up in the morning, and I could sort of, it wasn't, it was early days, there were strong contractions, but I could sort of feel that there wasn't time to do anything.
So she just sort of was comforting herself, she was lying, listening to radio play.
And he was really sort of wandering around going, what do I do?
Do I put the birth-pool up?
And I was like, no, no, no.
I said, what do you want to do?
And he said, I'd like to go to the gym.
And I go to the gym.
We're not even calling a midwife yet.
You're not even anywhere, and of course, there was no sense that there would have been a hospital of like, oh, we're not there.
How are we doing?
Where are we going?
The mother was completely happy, you know, resting on her side.
She wasn't doing anything, you know, like, focussedly.
She just was listening to this.
She loved listening to Radio 4, actually, in the background, and had a bit of lavender and a hot water bottle, and that was that.
So I read downstairs, he went to the gym.
And then he comes back with loads of Daniel's pastries and croissants, and we had coffee, and that was lovely.
Yeah.
And he was, and she was, she had a little bit, and then she went back, and she did some of the different positions, and she was just...
And then he sort of went, what now?
And I said, what do you want?
He said, I do need a haircut.
And he went for a haircut.
And then finally, about five o'clock, it ramped up, and suddenly went into action.
And he put the birth-pool up, and very, very, it started to move very quickly, we got the midwife round.
And suddenly he went into all the things that dads would imagine they don't.
He now became the primary birth partner.
I was very practically in the background, and he went forehead to forehead with his partner, and he made a sort of strong rope of his fist, if you like, and she could hang off his fist as the pushing feelings came.
And they sort of gave birth together.
You know, he was directing his energy down, making a clenched fist that she could grip and squeeze and feel.
And he's feeling the force of their child arriving, I mean, could there be anything more amazing?
So there's often not much, you know, to give him the permission, it's fine at this point to go to the, you know, to go to do it if you want.
Of course, if you haven't got a doula, you wouldn't leave a mother on her own necessarily.
But you would certainly be normal to go and do some emails or go down to the end of the garden to your shed or whatever you're doing, you know what I mean?
You don't have to be over the mother, but it's hard if you don't know that in advance, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, and something that we always talk about on our courses in terms of sort of the birth partners and what, something that I think is kind of really important and underestimated, which I guess the role of a doula completely provides is that normally as a, you know, partner of a woman in labour, if you are feeling anxious or nervous or worried or concerned or you have a question, probably the person that you'd normally bounce this around with is your partner.
And you can't, that's not, yeah, you can't disturb them in labour to be like, oh, you know, right.
The loneliness of this alone, it's a loneliness and you're alone.
And the hospital, you know, who are you going to speak to?
You've got no connect.
And that's the thing when you back to the what does a doula do is that fact that there isn't a someone to contact is a shame.
And also, of course, we're living in an era where even mothers and grandmothers of this generation having babies at the moment might not necessarily have a confidence to share.
I mean, I always tell people, you know, I'm a big believer in mother matching and hooking people up who so that you can share the knowledge, but I think people haven't always got a friend that they could.
So say the father in that moment to phone another family friend or guy and say, was this normal?
And they don't want to necessarily do that in the middle.
Yeah, it's the most obvious thing to do, isn't it?
Is it, you know, do you think we should do this?
Do you think we should do that?
The way that we live, most people that I teach don't have family locally.
And so it's that kind of sub that big, big support network of that kind of completely unconditional love and support.
And love is like a really big part of it, because you just need that's what you need to feel when you're in labour more than anything else.
When we were going back to the nuts and bolts and where you are, you know, a mother only has to sort of feel safe in that loved way.
And babies can, labour accelerates the way a baby can be born.
I mean, it is literally that, that unpin down-able, is that you can't, the factors that make a baby come are not easily measured, really.
No.
Because it's a feeling.
And it's not like a, I do a sort of give out a birth partner's checklist, and I'm very clear to point out that this is not a checklist of things that you have to tick off, that you have to have achieved by the time the baby's been born.
I'm glad you said that, because my book has got a few lists, and I always worry that it's shopping list-y, but it's so hard to give people an idea, and give them a lot of ideas without it sounding like something in our modern day that you have to do this, this, this, this, this, like homework.
Yeah, in early labour, you must watch a funny film, put on your favourite music, make a play, like you don't have to, they're kind of like a buffet, isn't it, that you can go and pick and choose from kind of what you want.
So you've mentioned your book a few, well, two books, actually, a few times.
So I suppose just before we kind of wrap up, Natalie's book, How to Have a Baby, is sort of, what would you say, mother gathered, professional?
Yes, on the front, it's called Mother Gathered Guidance of Birth and New Babies.
I think there is this very much this sort of isolation and this sense of having to remake the wheel every time and everybody enters pregnancy, like, in a way, from a standing start, and that's like crazy because there's this massive wealth of knowledge out there that isn't from an expert base or a theory base or a sort of midwife textbook or, you know, the maternity care system itself.
It's just sitting there with your friend down the road who found a bath at a certain point was amazing or, you know, that lavender oil to breathe on a handkerchief is just like an amazing penguiler.
You know, how do you sleep, like we said earlier, through labour.
So I wrote the book to kind of gather that very homespun, you know, and it's very experience based homespun advice.
There is biology in there because I say everything on biology, you know, that's I'm very sick to death of the cultural messages that we're continually receiving, you know, do birth this way, do birth that way, choices, choices, all the stuff that kind of is on the surface of birth.
So there is a much simpler thing, first page, first, when I sat down and wrote it, I thought where do I start?
Where do I start?
Because it's all very important.
And the very first thing I decided to write about was what I call be a blank page, be a clean page, it says here, and just to get the kind of facts front and centre of what their body needs and what is the female biology of birth, you know, what's and so on.
And the reason I said that, because I wanted them to do that was because it can't be argued with.
That's the main reason.
It's like it's not subject to personal opinion, it's not something that you decided.
It's not something I decided.
It's not something the lady up the road, because she had a terrible birth and she wants to worry and warn you.
It's not because your partner thinks it's all the lady at work thought that, or the doctor even thinks x, y, z.
It's absolutely inarguable, non-negotiable physiology.
Right?
So I sit on that.
And that's why I'm inviting people to challenge yourself, ask yourself, where did I get that idea?
Because you would have been handed all these ideas through your life, through a woman's life.
She would have started picking them up in the playground, you know, and often it results in a lot of anxiety, fear and mistrust of the birth process.
I mean, it would be no different sort of stuff.
I was thinking, this might be like a silly example, but I used it recently, so I might as well.
I was with a couple and the mother was sort of showing quite a lot of excitement and trust in the process.
And then the partner said, but do remember it's your first.
And this is one of the big myths, like as if first babies are always going to be quite, you know, I mean, they are longer labours, most usually first labours, but still the same physiology applies, right?
But mostly people don't think that.
And they sort of say, oh yeah, but come on, you don't know anything yet.
You haven't done it yet.
As if birth was something you learnt.
As if birth, a first-time mum is a rookie, like somehow she was a second-time mum.
Now there is a degree of experience and confidence that makes a second birth easier, of course, but the idea that she's not phyisiologically as competent in the second one is just total nonsense.
And so I went, but that isn't really true.
And when this, I said, when this baby comes out within the first hour, you know and expect that your baby will know how to wee and very probably pass the cone of poo.
You do not imagine you have to sit down with this baby and teach it to do these physiological functions that are automatic from its body and know what to do.
That's the level we're talking.
And he sort of went quiet.
I said that literally, even if you knocked her out, you know, you're unconscious, there's a coma.
I can't, you know, millions of examples of it.
Teenagers who don't know they're pregnant, you know, that birth will happen with or without you because it is a program, it's an inbuilt, you know, inherent.
Yeah.
And it's for some reason we doubt this system, even though we don't, you know, you don't wake up every morning and kind of like think about, oh, how am I going to breathe today?
But I understand why people have got confused because, you know, after 80 years of quite a medical model of birth, we imagine we have to be delivered of our babies and that someone has to manage us and measure us for it to happen.
And so anyway, to go back to the book, in that sense, it was a gathering of all those demystifying, you know, using biology as the basis, but to sort of explain it back in a way that is easily understood.
So that's how it starts, so it's divided into three sections, the first section is preparing, the middle section is about labour itself and how it feels, and the third section is life in its first days, you know, because landing, I always think, it's like landing on this new planet, you know, and trying to break down some of those feelings which don't always get addressed.
So that, I addressed that a lot in that third section about like early days, just kind of, just as a kind of gentle awareness raiser, yeah, in a nice way, you know, saying easily easily got through just, but certainly worth a think, you know, to be kind of aware of.
So yeah, so it's like, it's a self published it.
And, and in that sense, it's kind of different, I suppose, because it's not, I suppose, in the sense, it's not kind of out there.
So the one, I suppose the one thing that I loved most about it was in the kind of first of birth section, and obviously, so by the time I gave birth, I had seen a vast number of women give birth, I was very familiar with the kind of physiological processes, I understood all the kind of birth choices and stuff.
But something that I loved about it that I just hadn't even considered was the kind of the mental journey of labour.
And it's, you know, even having supported women in there, I just go, what's going on on kind of inside your head?
And now this is something that I, yeah, and this is something that I've now built into all of our courses that you know, I talk through labour kind of from a physiological process, what is literally happening inside your body.
And then on top of that, I always talk through now what like, what your brain is done.
So I like the your comparison in the in the book is that it's kind of like two separate rooms.
And I kind of talk about it as this kind of like line of labour.
And the kind of the first bit is that, you know, ideally pretending you're pretending you're not in it is for as long as you possibly can.
And then comes that kind of like zone where step change, to be quite honest, for my kind of own personal birth, I was on an antenatal ward at this point in time, I could have been anywhere in the world.
I did not have a clue what was going on around me.
And it's that was this kind of and that was something that I just hadn't anticipated at all.
I'm really glad that I never had a conversation about it from that perspective.
And I remember when I was writing it, I used to go away to this because I couldn't write it here because the kids are still little and I used to go away to this B&B in Lewis and I meant I can literally as you say that I can remember thinking, as you say, the narrative of birth internally, like going, how can I really explain those feelings because it is about, people often describe them from an ex-style viewpoint and they often you'll read, women retreat, women withdraw, they go into a zone.
But actually, why do we continually talk about birth from the outsider's viewpoint?
What does it feel like?
It doesn't feel like retreat.
It feels like expanse.
It feels like actually you become one with your environment so utterly that, as we said at the start, you lose a sense of time, you lose a sense of awareness of the room, in the sense, and you are everything and your baby is everything and you're like a big pulse.
You're a heartbeat.
You're just this.
It sounds sounding very hippie-dippie, but actually, you know, it's transcendent.
You are transcending and transforming.
I'm hoping that, well, through this book, but also through the site, Tell Me a Good Birth Story, when mothers share their experience with each other, that's the kind of thing like you've just wonderfully shared.
It doesn't, you learn so much more when you hear, how does it feel?
But just to end on that, my tip when I had a baby, my first baby, I often say this, I went and asked two friends how it felt in that way you just said.
But I also knew that somebody had a greengrocer and one of our managers had a midwife wife.
And I took her out for curry and asked her for her best tip.
And she said to me, as a mother and a midwife, she gave me both perspectives.
And she said, you will don't think you might.
She said, you will get to a point where you think enough.
I can't do this.
Forget it.
I don't mean transition.
Actually, one thinks you mean the end.
I don't mean that.
I mean, I think it's earlier than that.
I think it's like, if you really look at the technicals, it would be like seven, eight centimeters is when the baby is now so pressing and your pelvis is expanding and it really feels deep.
And she said, a new will might even happen twice.
She said, And trust me, everybody feels it and with the right conditions and the right support, you will pass through it.
And that's the kind of thing you need to know.
And when I felt it, I almost remember laughing in my head.
I mean, I didn't laugh.
I remember going, Oh, my God.
But I did think she said this would happen.
That I do feel that she's, you know, you know, Jenna, the doula, Jenna, she was a lovely phrase for it.
You know, she says, it won't get bigger than you, won't get bigger than you, you know, that those, that's where doulas can come in with that, that sort of, if you see a mother sort of slightly losing it and thinking, I can't do this, just helping her over that hump and, and always having told her in the first, you know, in advance, this is going to happen.
Yeah, that puts her in a state, a situation of power and an empowerment to deal with that moment and not be so frightened of it that she goes, Oh, my God, I can't do it, you know, and it would be, it's sensations like that, that I hope the birth, sorry, the book, leads a woman on a pathway, as I call it.
And each page has a point that sort of leads you through a yellow brick road sort of thing, you know, and so that, you know, that you keep going step by step through the pregnancy, through the birth, on and beyond, like a hand holding your hand.
That's how I hope it is.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I could literally make sure we could talk about this all day.
But to kind of wrap us up, then, things that I'm sure you've probably convinced everybody now that they definitely need a doula when it comes to preparing for their birth, what, if somebody wants to get a doula, what should they be looking for, where should they be looking, kind of on a practical level, how do you get yourself a doula?
I mean, you literally Google it, obviously, and you'll find there's two sources.
There's Doula UK has the, if you put in Doula UK, they'll have a find the doula page.
You put in your postcode and there'll be a selection of doulas.
And there's also Find My Doula, I think it's called.
There are a couple of ways to find a doula.
Once you're on the pages that give you the option to put your postcode in, my suggestion would be, because it can be a bit overwhelming, there's a lot of people and you think, where do I start?
How do I know?
Yeah, something that I always say about doulas and people like, oh, I don't know if a doula's unique.
You know, doulas are as unique as people.
Yeah, exactly.
So one doula will be right for somebody, and like how you could be friends with somebody and not have much in common with somebody else.
And that's why I say that makes it simpler, because I think what people do is they see the biogs and stuff and they think, oh my God, how would I know?
But actually, it's really simple, because you would first of all, it is a sifting process.
First of all, quite literally, like when you're doing anything, you will be drawn or your eye will be caught by something.
It might be a word, it would describe something, it might be a photo, whatever.
And then you would literally take five, maybe, phone five and have an initial first chat.
That will then take it down to two, probably, either because of their own availability or you just felt something they said because of quite you, whatever, and then two or three, and then you would meet two or three.
And they come to your house, and it's usually free, that meeting, and you just have literally a cup of tea, either with your partner or not with your partner, where you can literally have a few questions.
Usually the Dula can almost guide you on what you need to know, because here's the problem.
Women don't know what they don't know, so they don't know what to ask.
But never worry about that, because the Dula will, as you really rightly pointed out, no Dula wants to not, for their mother not to feel safe and relaxed.
So if you don't feel right with somebody, I wouldn't pursue that.
And I'd sort of, I mean, you would sort of, it's instinctive.
You know when it has a kind of-
Yeah, oh, of course you do, yeah.
And by the way, it's not an individual, you do have to connect, but it's not about, oh, are we gonna be mates?
No, no.
It's not intimacy.
No.
It's more like, can I completely feel at ease with this person?
Almost as if they're like wallpaper, like it's actually the opposite of friendship.
It's like, is this person's, I can take for granted?
Oh yeah, I mean, I've got some friends that I wouldn't want to have with me in labour.
So it's that kind of thing.
So they then would, once they've got it, usually it becomes a foregone conclusion.
Once you've met somebody, you kind of know, and then you book from there.
And it's not just to make a really important point.
It's not a, finance never needs to be an issue.
All doulas, as far as I know, will vary their payment scheme.
You can pay in installments.
It is a private, obviously, it is not on NHS, that is something to say.
But you can do everything from bespoke packages.
Fees get reduced.
Obviously, most doulas, if you're an unemployed student or low-income, huge reductions, you just discount, you just talk to the doula and ask her to explain.
And if she can't do it, she will know someone who is supporting in that way.
And we all spread it out so that that can be the case.
And that would extend even to some doulas at the moment.
I know they work in prisons, they work for refugees.
I mean, there's always a birth companion to be had.
Yeah, absolutely.
And the final question that we asked everybody on all of our podcasts is, if you could gift pregnant women one thing, what would it be?
I did think about this, and I hope this isn't gonna be annoying.
Their great-grandmother's confidence.
So in the sense that back in the day, in the 40s, 50s, 60s, women, birth was not something you worried about.
It was just you got on and did it.
And I mean, you can't say that for absolutely everybody, but the vast majority of women in this country, over 90% actually, in the 1950s, would have had entirely normal confidence, you know, it would approach birth as not a condition.
It's not an illness.
It's something that your body gets on and does.
And so if I could somehow package that, bottle it, I don't know what it was, you can't even put it down, and just give it to mothers now, so that they can trust, relax, be curious, excited about their birth.
Amazing.
Fantastic.
Well, thank you so much for joining me.
Do just remind us one more time the names of your books.
And we haven't talked too much about it, but your fantastic website as well.
So there's How to Have a Baby, and then there's Why Home Birth That.
So there are two books.
And Tell Me a Good Birth Story is the site.
So it's www.tellmegoodbirthstory.com.
And it's just to say in summary, it's a mother matching site where people tend to think it's a library of stories.
It's not a library of stories.
There is a library of stories on there for people to peruse, which gives them reassurance.
I've collected them over the years.
There are many, many, many.
There's a Facebook page, which is like almost a running blog of ideas, resources, thoughts, that's also of interest, quite buzzy.
But the site itself is actually me matching individuals together, literally by email.
So it's not phoning or meeting.
It's literally just sharing stories, but it's just a bit more personal.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
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