Welcome to this podcast: My Positive Birth. A little corner of the internet where I will be collecting positive stories from women birthing their babies across the UK.
Series 1 currently live! New episodes released on Tuesdays.
Stories are a really powerful way of learning and growing. We know that from childhood. But I don’t know if you’ve noticed… all too often during pregnancy people want to tell us horror stories about their birth. And this reflects our current cultural expectation: that ALL birth is risky, dangerous, and something women and babies need to be saved from.
Together we can challenge the narrative, and positive birth stories are a way of doing this. This podcast is a space to come together and hand down the wisdom from one mother to another of how it is possible to have a positive birth and the difference that can make.
The title of the podcast is very specifically MY positive birth. Because the key to it all is the family at the centre. What a positive birth meant for me in my circumstances, will almost definitely be different to what it means for you. But research, and common sense!, tells us that whatever your actual birth – be it hospital birth, home birth, free birth, induction, abdominal birth, water birth… that having choices, being respected and listened to, feeling safe and having confidence in yourself lie at the very heart of a positive birth.
So come and surround yourself with positive birth stories, told in women’s own words, and I hope you’ll find a village here to calm you but also to inspire you and give you confidence in birth. All women and babies deserve a positive birth experience.
Welcome to this podcast: My Positive Birth. A little corner of the internet where I will be collecting positive stories from women birthing their babies across the UK.
Series 1 currently live! New episodes released on Tuesdays.
Stories are a really powerful way of learning and growing. We know that from childhood. But I don’t know if you’ve noticed… all too often during pregnancy people want to tell us horror stories about their birth. And this reflects our current cultural expectation: that ALL birth is risky, dangerous, and something women and babies need to be saved from.
Together we can challenge the narrative, and positive birth stories are a way of doing this. This podcast is a space to come together and hand down the wisdom from one mother to another of how it is possible to have a positive birth and the difference that can make.
The title of the podcast is very specifically MY positive birth. Because the key to it all is the family at the centre. What a positive birth meant for me in my circumstances, will almost definitely be different to what it means for you. But research, and common sense!, tells us that whatever your actual birth – be it hospital birth, home birth, free birth, induction, abdominal birth, water birth… that having choices, being respected and listened to, feeling safe and having confidence in yourself lie at the very heart of a positive birth.
So come and surround yourself with positive birth stories, told in women’s own words, and I hope you’ll find a village here to calm you but also to inspire you and give you confidence in birth. All women and babies deserve a positive birth experience.
Aileen is such a fantastic guest, as she describes her journey from tokophobia (a fear of childbirth), to getting pregnant and birthing her own two children, and then going on to work with families offering bespoke childbirth preparation, birth trauma recovery and running parenting groups.
There is so much wisdom and compassion in the way Aileen tells her story. I was actually greedy and got her to share a little about both her births: the first a planned Caesarean and the second a home water birth. She describes how these two very different, but both ultimately positive experiences, made into a reality for her that if birth went different to how she expected then she was not less of a person, and it wasn't less of a birth.
Aileen also shares some great thoughts on family centred Caesarean birth and how to mimic physiology to retain control over the way your baby is born and have a positive experience. And her description of supporting someone in labour during her stay on an antenatal ward, and all that this taught her about labour, is really quite magical. It's a deeply encouraging episode!
So do definitely have a listen... and if you want to contact Aileen then here is her linktree where you can access her website, newsletter, events and freebies: https://linktr.ee/Mybirthsupport