Experienced, compassionate, realisticDoula support and hypnobirthing you can rely on
Choosing someone to accompany you and support you through this pregnancy and birth is all about rapport. Different women want and need different types of support from different types of doula. Here's some information that might help you decide if I'm the right doula for you.
If want to chat email me at charlie@thegoodbirthpractice.co.uk
"If a doula were a drug, it would be unethical not to use it."
Dr. John H. Kennell
There's a lovely strong evidence-base for the role of doula's and hypnobirthing in improving birth experiences and birth outcomes for women and their families. As well as sharing credible, evidence-based information and resources (that may not be provided by the NHS), and helping you acquire and adapt coping skills and strategies, one of the most important things we do is to facilitate space and time for you to talk about, reflect on, plan for and become comfortable with your birth to come and your new role as mother in a growing family.
There are lots of doula's and hypnobirthing teachers in Kent - but what is it about me that might make me the right one for you?
I know the NHS inside out
All three of my babies were born supported by wonderful NHS midwives.
I have supported women and families through NHS Maternity Services for over 12 years.
I am the Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (MNVP) Lead for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, and work directly from within Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board. This gives me an insight into the realities of maternity care, and where the tensions lie. It means I am compassionate about the conditions midwives are working in, and the powerful efforts of everyone in maternity care to create a better system.... and I also know where the flaws lie and the implications can be
I am research-based
I wrote a Masters by Research at the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of York, looking at what motivates women to write birth plans, what they hope they will achieve and how they are received in the NHS. In the course of my research I interviewed women whose birth plans led them in various directions, their motivations and outcomes. I understand the aspirations and anxieties the underpin birth planning, and the compromises and boundaries women make.
I was research assistant to Professor Jenny Gamble at Coventry University, a specialist in continuity of care. I was a core member of the team evaluating NHS maternity interventions, and co-authored papers and funding applications.
I'll help you develop a birth plan that helps you have a positive birth however it happens
Lots of women prefer a 'physiology first' approach to planning their birth, considering how their environment and support can optimise their body for a low-intervention birth. However, I have been a doula long enough to know that how your baby comes out of your body isn't the best indicator of a positive birth experience.
That's why I support your birth planning so you have confidence to create the birth conditions that make it more likely you'll have the birth you want and also the confidence to adapt if you - or your baby - want or need to.
I am realistic and practical... and I am alongside you throughout your pregnancy and birth
As well as the pragmatic birth planning and the useful hypnobirthing coping skills I am here for you and your partner throughout your pregnancy, labour and birth and the early days. I'm here to discuss how you feel, your anxieties and aspirations, to get to know you both, and understand your choices and support them. I'm your trusted companion.
Last thing. My Why.
I was bought up by a smart, determined, resourceful, resilient, gentle, loving mother. I was surrounded by women who worked hard and loved harder. I saw how their lives had been shaped and often compromised by the fact of their motherhood (and non-motherhood, but femaleness). By my teens, though, despite all this, the thought of motherhood repulsed me. I was terrified by the prospect of the agonies of birth. The notion of what my body might do in birth (without the consent or control of my mind) gave me the heebie-jeebies. By the time I was trotting about London in high heels and drinking cocktails on my clients account I had formulated the idea that mothers were soppy and vacuous and frankly I wanted not a bar of it. And then I got pregnant and I had to face up to it (after all, the body keeps the score).
I discovered is that women have been sold a bit of lie. Motherhood has been re-branded and de-valued. Women’s bodies have been maligned and misunderstood. Older women (and their stories) are silenced, patronised and monstered. All of which clears the path for young women to be love-bombed by a patriarchal culture that whispers sweet nothings in our adolescent ears, gas-lights us when we peer behind the veil to glimpse the dirty reality, and then drops us like so many hot potatoes when we fall in love, fall pregnant and then, inevitably, fall short and fall behind our male counterparts.
I do this work because it is not available to you via the NHS (even though 84% of women will become mothers by the time they're 45, and 100% of us are born, and therefore it is by no means a niche issue)
I do it because it is not taught in schools, and there is no adequate framework for young women to begin thinking about what pregnancy, birth and motherhood means before we’re already up the duff and on the path.
I do it because mothers are just left alone to sort themselves out. To learn about how birth works, what babies do, what’s ‘normal’ and what’s cause for concern. The phrase ‘…it takes a village to raise a child…’ isn’t just a cute little phrase. It reflects that humans are inherently social animals. We learn from observing each other, and interacting – all of which has been taken away from mothers, who are now secreted away and separated.
I could write much, much more on how this has happened, how it isn’t an active conspiracy but an unintended consequence of believing that men – and men’s business – matters more. I hope that my time with you will give you renewed faith in your body, and connect you with your baby and your family and your future.
