My thoughts and ideas
In 1910, suffragist Helen Todd highlighted the importance of women’s voting rights for improving working conditions, coining the phrase “Bread for all, and Roses too.” While maternity services focus on physical health (Bread), there is a pressing need to enhance women’s emotional and experiential birth outcomes (Roses), fostering joy and meaning in the process.
Prevalence-induced concept change is a psychological phenomenon where the meaning of a concept shifts due to declining frequency of related events. Over time, the definition of “high risk” in maternity care has expanded despite reduced perinatal mortality, leading to shifts in CTG usage.
2024 was a big year for me. And 2025 looks set to be even more amazing! This is what I got up to this year, and what I have planned for the next.
This week I explore flawed beliefs in the effectiveness of fetal monitoring technology through a circular argument. It highlights three steps: assuming success when bad outcomes don’t occur, blaming individuals when they do, and declaring some cases unavoidable. It’s time the research to settle this was done.
From time to time, I encounter women saying some version of “I’ll only have (insert birth intervention here) if it is medically indicated“. I completely understand the sense in which this is meant – that if something bad is highly likely to happen, and the proposed intervention is highly likely to stop that bad thing happening, then it makes sense to choose the intervention. People use this language as short […]
The third part of a series critiquing common myths about fetal heart rate monitoring. It emphasises that fetal monitoring is not essential for good outcomes, and intermittent auscultation IS fetal monitoring.
Does CTG misinterpretation harm babies? Or is something else going on?
Today’s post shares the back story behind our paper. #CTG #EFM #PerinatalMortality #CP
@TransformingMCC
@ProfJennyGamble
@MarySidebotham
@GriffithMidwifery
This week I’m returning to an exploration of the literature about water birth and the perineum. The recently published paper by Sanders and colleagues (2024, in press) has already generated two letters to the editor. I want to start by looking at their criticisms and considering their validity, before making some conclusions about what I think the POOL study can teach us. Letter number 1 The first of the letters […]
Birth Small Talk 