According to Alfie Kohn, there is ample research to show that children develop best into independent, free-thinking, compassionate and hard working adults if they have parents who give them unconditional love, who steer clear of punishments and rewards and practice “working with” rather than “doing to” parenting.

“Working with” parenting includes giving your child control over their own life, with appropriate limits, of course; so for example, allowing your child to choose their own clothes each day and dress themselves, to the best of their ability! Parents aiming to work with their children might also be sure to give explanations for boundaries, rather than expecting them to be adhered to without question. You won’t hear a working with parent saying “Because I said so!” Negotiation and compromise feature heavily in the working with household. Instead of rewards and praise, a working with parent encourages their child with descriptive responses, such as “I see you doing forward rolls, you really controlled your body and landed just where you meant to.” This gives the child the opportunity to evaluate their performance for themselves and decide how they feel about it. The child might respond with “Yeah, but I was a bit wobbly as I stood up, let me have another go,” or perhaps “Actually, it made me dizzy, I think I’ll stop now.” They learn to motivate themselves and take pleasure and pride in their achievements and to recognise their own limits.

“Doing to” parenting consists of using punishments and rewards, forcing children to behave in desirable ways. The foundation of this type of parenting is the belief that behaviour is more important than understanding. So for example, a doing to parent might force their child to apologise for accidentally hurting another child, with no regard for whether their child actually is sorry or not. When a child does not immediately follow the parental rules, a doing to parent might confiscate a favourite toy, force the child to isolate themselves for a period of time (time out) or possibly even use physical force, such as smacking. On the flip side, a doing to parent may use rewards and praise as well as, or instead of punishment. Rewards might be very material, such as food or toys, or they might be in the form of a sticker chart. Praise is the verbal reward system and is also quite damaging. Dishing out “good job”s or “well done”s is Pavlovian, pure and simple, it is behavioural conditioning. It teaches children to do something solely for the treat, like a good little puppy. This means that when the reward is no longer offered the child is not motivated to do the task. Alfie Kohn references many studies that have found this result in his book Unconditional Parenting.

Conditional, or doing to parenting hinges on the belief that children are inherently wayward and bad. How many times have you heard phrases such as “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile”, “You’re making a rod for your own back” and so on? These comments come from a very dark view of human nature, one that asserts that children must be trained to behave in acceptable ways through systematic use of punishments and rewards. Bad behaviour must be discouraged through punitive measures and good behaviour must be encouraged with rewards; because no normal child could possibly be capable of doing the right thing for its own sake and all will be utterly selfish without punishments to keep them in check.

I don’t subscribe to this view at all. I have seen for myself how kind, well mannered and thoughtful the Munchkin can be and we have never forced him to say sorry, please or thank you. We have never put him on a “naughty step” or told him to do as he is told with no explanation. Today he pushed over the Bean in a scramble to get trains out of the toy box, I swooped in and picked up the Bean as he was very upset. The Munchkin was told, sternly, that he isn’t to push his brother over because he could get hurt just like this. The Munchkin took himself off for a minute and came back to us looking very solemn and said “I want to say sorry to him.” And he did, and gave his baby brother a cuddle.

I’m not going to sugar coat things. Does the Munchkin sometimes (often?!) refuse to eat his nutritious home-cooked dinner because he would rather eat chicken nuggets? Yes! Does he get in a strop over the slightest thing and refuse to help tidy his toys away at the end of the day? Yes! Sometimes it does not matter what we do or say, he will not be cooperative and we find ourselves tearing our hair out in frustration. It is so tempting to yell, to punish him in some way. In truth, that would be the easy option. It is easy and on some level satisfying to yell “Go to your room!” in those situations. Would this be the lazy option? Sometimes, yes. Though I think most parents don’t realise that there is an alternative way, all they know is what they experienced as children and what well meaning friends, family and strangers are telling them to do, as well as what they see on TV or read in baby training manuals. Working with parenting is certainly not the easy option. It is so hard to push aside your own anger and pull your stubborn child into a loving hug instead of yelling. It is utterly exhausting to repeat the explanations for the dozenth time in 48 hours.

But he is three.

This is what I tell myself when I have to remove myself from the room in order to avoid shouting. I take a moment to breathe deeply and compose myself and I say to myself “He is only three”. When I am calm I can go back, give him a big hug and explain to him gently why I would like him to do, or not do something. Even if I just had to explain the same thing five minutes previously. Because he is three and he is still learning. It would be unreasonable of me to expect him to be able to control every impulse, to totally understand and have mastered his anger, jealousy and fatigue.

What about as children get older? Do punishments and rewards become necessary then? How about in schools? Do teachers need to use these tools in order to control their classrooms and get through the curriculum?

Well, I believe that as children get older unconditional love becomes more and more important because they become much more able to comprehend consequences and subtle behaviours. For a fantastic and thorough exploration of communicating with children of all ages, I highly recommend the book How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I hope that my teenage sons will be able to come to me or their dad if they are being bullied, or have feelings for someone that they need help understanding, or any other problem they may have. Knowing that they are truly accepted by us, no matter what they do or feel will be the foundation for open and honest communication. If they feel that they will only be valued or respected if they behave a certain way they will be less likely to come to us with the difficult problems life can throw at us.

As for schools, well that would be a whole other blog post, I fear. I strongly believe that schools can employ working with principles and some alternative models of education do so very effectively, such as Steiner and Montessori. However, very few, if any, state schools even try to do this. The “better” schools may steer clear of punishments as best they can, but they seem to feel the need to compensate for this with praise and rewards. Alfie Kohn has written books and run seminars for educational professionals, but I haven’t read any of this work. I assume it is of the same high standard as his Unconditional Parenting book and gives teachers and school administrators the knowledge and inspiration to change to a working with model. However, this is difficult within the current state system here in the UK as schools have little autonomy and are inspected by a governing body (OFSTED) that is unsympathetic to alternative models of child care and education.

I feel that sending a child to a “doing to” school can undo a lot, if not all of the good work that “working with” parents are doing at home. I would hope that children would still feel secure in their parents’ unconditional love and that this would be a good enough springboard for them to go into adulthood with all of the things parents wish for their children. However, I fear that detentions and A grades would be the undoing of most children from unconditional homes. My parents raised me in a pretty unconditional manner, but I can’t honestly say that I don’t see in myself the same weaknesses that Alfie Kohn talks about and I attribute this to the schools I attended. I think it is important for schools and parents to work together with children, to have the same foundations and approaches, in order for children to truly thrive. The alternative, and the one we are intending to pursue is to home educate. Though we have applied for a place at a couple of local schools and are crossing our fingers that our local Montessori or Steiner schools get free school status, just to keep our options open. If the Munchkin did end up at the local state school, well, we’ll be buying the principal a few books to read over the summer

I am talking, of course, about “journalist” Martin Daubney and his sickening confession in the Daily Fail. He describes how he threatened to leave his wife unless she went along with his plan to abuse their three year old son. She agreed and they proceeded to fit a bolt to the child’s bedroom door and leave him to scream and throw himself around the room for three hours. The reason? Little Sonny wouldn’t stay in his room on his own and his parents were exhausted, desperate and ignorant.

They knew nothing of childhood development. I believe it is very likely that they had made a string of parenting errors and failed to seek reliable support and take appropriate action. With no support, bad information and no better ideas, they resorted to imprisoning their child and letting him potentially harm himself in the quest for some R&R for themselves.

In this earlier article, Daubney describes their son’s traumatic birth and his own consequent birth trauma. Had he done just a little basic reading, he would have known that a traumatic birth can have a lasting effect on babies. Sonny “nearly died” at birth, so I have to assume he had a stint in the NICU, where he was probably left crying by overworked nurses with little grasp of the importance of attachment in newborns. Daubney does say that when they got home Sonny slept in the family bed for the first few months and in a cot in their room for another six months after that. Thank goodness. Until I read this second article I had assumed the couple had gone all Gina Ford on this poor baby, but it appears not.

I would love to know how their baby slept in those early months, what signs of readiness he had shown before they moved him to his own room and why on earth they kept him in a cot until he was nearly three years old! When he started climbing out of his cot they restrained him in a sleeping bag, which he figured out how to get off and one night fell out of his cot when climbing out. It’s one case of restraint, followed by another, then another. Snowballing out of control. Daubney also mentions in passing that they leave Sonny locked in his room until 7am, even though he wakes earlier and that the child goes to nursery, where the day after his three hour long torture he fell asleep on his lunch. I am struggling to find a point in the day where this poor boy enjoys quality time with loving parents.

Babies who have gotten off to a shaky start in life, who have not necessarily formed a secure attachment to at least one parent, often exhibit insecurities as toddlers. This poor boy was desperate to get out of his room, to not be on his own. Interestingly, he didn’t run to their room, he would explore the house. They fitted a stair gate across his door, but at three years old he could figure out how to unlock it and one night ventured down two flights of stairs in his sleeping bag and opened the dishwasher. Clearly, this is exceptionally dangerous and I absolutely do not blame these parents for being desperate for a solution at this point. But I cannot on any level condone their chosen action.

According to the article, Daubney and his wife did not give any thought as to the reasons why their son might be having such terrible anxiety or try to address his deeply rooted insecurity. All they cared about was putting an end to the behaviour by any means necessary so they went for a quick fix. Daubney then describes his mother’s advice and her confession that she had locked him in his room as a small child. And here we come to the heart of it. No doubt she would be the first to follow up this revelation with that old chestnut “and it didn’t do you any harm”. Well no, I suppose not, if you consider very obvious intimacy and attachment issues both with his wife and his child as perfectly healthy.

The research is overwhelmingly clear that poor attachment in childhood leads to difficulty forming trusting and loving attachment with others as an adult. Daubney was himself a victim of abuse (being locked in his room) and has gone on to have the kind of relationship with his wife where he views her body as his to possess, ruined by witnessing her traumatic birth and he resented their baby for sharing their bed and needing his mother and at the point at which his little boy most needed to be held and reassured, he told his wife he would rather leave them both than hold his child and tell him he was safe.

No doubt little Sonny was a high needs child, probably because of his birth and the immediate aftermath, all the more reason to treat him with sensitivity and compassion. But what he got was abuse. Not only does he now know no one comes when he cries, but that he also cannot escape.

You can train children not to cry out when they need their parents, you can crush their spirit and teach them that no one comes to their aid when they are distressed and children learn very quickly. They may become very compliant and obedient for many years, maybe even decades, but still waters run deep and these very same children are the ones most prone to excessive and destructive behaviour later in life, perhaps in their teens, but maybe later.

The response to this article is perhaps, the most shocking thing of all. Most of the comments are supportive and the negative ones have received hundreds of “dislike”s. Many comments state that the readers have done this same thing and make reference to children needing boundaries and so on. Daubney and his wife will not face a social services investigation for their action, whereas a family from the wrong part of town in receipt of benefits almost certainly would. The double standard is as sickening as the abuse itself.

My heart goes out to Sonny, and to his mother. I hope that some how they are able to heal together.

The Munchkin rarely goes to sleep before 8.15 and the Bean won’t settle to sleep until about 10pm unless I am in bed with him. He won’t even settle in the living room with us, he cluster feeds and when he isn’t feeding or dozing in my lap he wants to play. The Munchkin doesn’t nap at home any more, only if we happen to be out in the car at the right time and the Bean naps on the go for the most part. At home it is rare for him to sleep more than 20 minutes at a time, so I have no time to myself in the day either.

I’m finding it challenging, to say the least and I have bleak moments where I feel tearful and frustrated. But I know that this time is fleeting and they both really do provide a lot of joy. So I guess it’s all worth it.

The Munchkin is utterly in love with his baby brother and now that the Bean is sitting up and laughing all the time the two of them can and do play together a bit, with the Bean grabbing the Munchkin’s trains and trying to suck them and the Munchkin tickling the Bean and laughing at his expressions and noises.

The Bean is massive. He was big at birth and has resolutely stayed that way. We don’t weigh him, but he has been consistently in a size or two bigger than his age, he is currently transitioning into 9-12 month clothes and we are constantly getting remarks about his size. Thank goodness we declined all involvement from the health visitors, I don’t doubt they would have been trying to persuade me to wean him early with such silly remarks as “He’s big so he must be hungry and you’ll never be able to feed him yourself”, I have heard this exact comment from a supposed health professional. Sigh. Well, to the naysayers, our little man has had nothing past his lips but breastmilk. Or at least, not until this week… at lunch one day I had just finished feeding him and sat him up in my lap. In the two seconds it took me to re-hook my bra he had snatched some lettuce off my plate and shovelled it into his mouth!

So we’re taking that as a sign of readiness for solids and so begins another adventure in Baby Led Weaning. We used this method with the Munchkin with great success and pleasure and are really looking forward to doing it again. The Bean has had a play with some pasta, carrot and turkey, but so far has just managed to break the food up with his two little teeth and then spit it straight back out. So he’s definitely just in the exploration stage and so we’re not presenting him with food on a regular basis, just every now and then.

He has also decided to forgo rolling and move straight on to standing. He wants to be up on his feet nearly all of the time and is almost cruising the furniture already. He is currently stood in hubby’s lap, grabbing hubby’s face in both hands and slobbering all over it. Ahh, happy times

G’Night all.

Midwives are there for women and their families on one of the most important days of their lives. Midwives nurture women in their care, guide them emotionally and physically through pregnancy, birth and early parenthood. Midwives save lives and witness daily the amazing entry into the world of new little people, quietly, confidently and with compassion. Midwives know when to sit back and be invisible, trusting women to birth their own babies and only coming to assist if the need arises.

Or at least they should.

Unfortunately the systems that midwives have to work within don’t allow them to do their job properly. They are forced to place time limits on the women in their care, to intervene unnecessarily on a regular basis and to persuade women to birth in big obstetric units if their employer is under the false impression that these units will prevent law suits from happening. The fact is that home is the safest place for women to give birth, it is also the cheapest place. Continuity of care from a trusted midwife also results in better and safer births. It’s utter madness that the system doesn’t grab hold of these facts and embrace genuine with-woman midwifery.

All over the world, women and midwives face persecution and legal action against them if they dare to step outside of that system. Agnes Gereb, Hungarian midwife and obstetrician, is currently under house arrest for attending women birthing out of hospital. Even here in the UK, NHS midwives who work with women at the centre of their care face the possibility of harassment in the workplace from their colleagues. AIMS has a Midwife Defence Fund that people can donate to, this fund helps secure legal representation and cover other costs to assist midwives facing persecution. You can donate here: http://aims.org.uk/MDF/

Independent midwifery is scheduled to become illegal as of October 2013, due to red tape. The EU has declared that IMs must have indemnity insurance, but no provider on the market is willing to insure midwives working outside the system. Therefore, by default, midwives will no longer be legally able to practice independently.

IMUK has been tirelessly searching for a solution, but there is no option available that will allow them to continue to provide care during birth for women who are anything other than “low risk”, that is, “risk” as defined by an extremely conservative legal team in charge of defining NHS protocols, which is not always the same as genuine medical risk. Even if it were, women should still have the right to choose their care provider and place of birth.

If I am ever to have another baby, I would not be able to be cared for by a skilled and experienced midwife of my choice in my own home, as I have had two previous caesareans and am therefore “high risk”. The actual risks of a home birth in my situation are tiny and I should be free to choose to birth there with a midwife of my choice. The changes in the law mean that I am extremely unlikely to ever have a third baby and if I do, I would be forced to choose between the luck of the draw NHS service, who treated myself and my husband so appallingly three years ago, or to not have a midwife present at my birth at all. Basically, I don’t want another baby at all if I can’t have the same amazing midwife that I had for the Bean’s birth.

So today, on International Day of the Midwife, I’d like to shout out my support to independent, with-woman and invisible midwives everywhere who are striving to care for women and their families despite great personal risk. You are all superstars.

The love we feel for our children is so different from any feelings we might have for anyone else. It is completely unconditional and without question. Even when they drive us crazy love is still there. It’s there in the middle of the night when they just won’t sleep. It’s there in the park in the bright sunshine or trapped indoors when it’s pouring with rain (or snow!). It’s there when they’re sleeping in your lap and when they’re stamping their feet refusing to get dressed or eat or go to bed. It’s particularly strong when they are hurt or upset or unwell. And every time they tell you they love you? Pure magic.

He is a real challenge a lot of the time; he is stubborn and fickle (yes, he can be both at the same time!), has a tendency to just completely blank us when he doesn’t want to do what we say, has complete meltdowns at the tiniest upset and is a bottomless pit to feed. But he is also bright, cheerful, gentle, loving and hilarious!

Bedtimes have become a battleground, much to my dismay. Bedtime now largely consists of the Munchkin refusing to stop playing in order to have his bath or go to his room for stories, refusing to take his clothes off, insisting things get done in a certain order and then changing his mind half way through, complete meltdowns followed by laughter-inducing games of chase around the house. I try to go with the flow, we are child-led in so many areas so it makes sense to me to be at least a little bit child-led at bedtime too, rather than mummy and daddy turning into these dictatorial monsters. I don’t want to fight with him. If he’s not ready to stop playing yet, then why not let him have another half an hour? If he wants 15 stories, then so be it. IF, and it’s a big if, at the end of it he will go to sleep a little more easily.

The problem is that’s not how it works. He gets overtired and even more prone to upset the later we leave bedtime. We have also learned from experience that that old adage “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” is actually true. For example, one cup of juice every once in a while had turned into complete refusal of water and tantrums if he didn’t get juice ALL of the time. We are working our way back from that particular situation and today he had lots of water without complaint. It helps if we don’t ask him if he wants a drink and just get him some water and put it where he can get to it himself when he’s thirsty.

I think there must be some middle ground somewhere with bedtime. The balance I try to go for, though I don’t always succeed as I’m often tired and trying to see to the Bean at the same time, is to compromise. “You can have one more go around the track with your train and then we’ll take your clothes off.” I also try to make things fun and not get cross with him for running around and making it a game. I’d rather he be laughing than crying.

The problem with this is that hubby is NOT on the same page at all. He wants the Munchkin in bed, asleep, by 7.30pm, as opposed to the 8.30pm that the Munchkin finally fell asleep tonight, so that he can have some time to chill out. I get that, I want that too, we’re both the kind of people that need some child-free time in order to recharge our batteries. But I am also realistic. We did have a really good routine a few months ago and what with the support of my parents, we had quite a lot of child-free time. But we have a two month old baby now. My availability for the Munchkin is dramatically reduced because I’m the only one with the boobs to feed the baby. Then there’s the massive emotional upheaval that the arrival of the Bean must be for the Munchkin.

Don’t get me wrong, on the surface, the Munchkin appears to be absolutely fine with the Bean, he is very gentle and loving with him and he comes home from Montessori or a day with my parents really excited to see his little brother. But it is noticeable that the Munchkin’s behaviour has become more challenging since the Bean’s birth, he also wakes in the night again now, when he had been sleeping through for months. When he does wake he is really upset, more than once he has told me he can’t sleep as he’s too sad. He can’t articulate what is upsetting him, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that he misses being the only child and the centre of our world.

We made a big fuss over his birthday. He had a big party at the weekend, with all of his friends at a local farm park and today we went out with my family for a nice afternoon in the glorious sunshine. We’re trying hard to stick to our post-Christmas promise to minimise the presents and make the occasion about being together and enjoying new experiences, though it is very hard to convey the importance of this to others.

The clocks also went forward last weekend, so the evenings are suddenly much lighter and I am certain this has something to do with the Munchkin insisting that “It’s not bedtime yet!” He is also getting older and as children get older their body clock does naturally shift. I think he’s probably a little young for a 9pm bedtime just yet, but I accept that all of these factors are going to be having an impact right now. Hubby doesn’t. He gets so stressed and angry with the Munchkin that I find myself hoping that the Bean won’t need feeding during the Munchkin’s bedtime so that I can put him to bed instead of hubby doing it. But the reality is that by the end of the day I can be just as stressed out and short tempered as he is. Last night I had to walk away from the Munchkin as I got so upset with his refusal to cooperate.

I’m far from perfect, but I understand the Munchkin’s behaviour and I want to be flexible on this, I don’t want our household to be an angry one, not even for one hour a day, not when it’s every day like it is at the moment. So I am about to embark on a reading spree! I have a booklist, some of which I already own, others are on my Amazon Wish list (family – take note!)

• Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn
• Screamfree Parenting by Hal Edward Runkel
• Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph
• Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves by Naomi Aldort

It’s not that I believe in blindly following the advice in parenting books, far from it. I’m all for instinctive parenting; tuning in to our own gut feelings about the needs of our children. But sometimes you hit a blank wall and a few ideas to help you move forward are a good idea. And sometimes you are at loggerheads with your partner and need some proof that what you’re saying makes sense and has occurred to other people too.

After the Munchkin’s birth, someone suggested I try a rebirthing in order to heal emotionally from the trauma I experienced. But he was already about three months old, I wasn’t ready to let go yet and wouldn’t be for over two years, and the more time passed the less like a newborn he was and it just felt wrong to try. The very thought of getting my birth pool back out again made me burst into tears. So we never did it. I had to find healing from his birth the long, hard way and we’re finally there after some intensive therapy and an empowering second birth.

That second birth, however, was not the experience I longed for. Though it wasn’t traumatic in any way, it left me grieving. Within days of the Bean’s birth I knew I wanted to try a rebirthing. I needed to physically recover from the caesarean though and I needed to prepare in practical terms. I thought I wanted my midwife and doula to be there and was considering having the Munchkin there too, though at other times I felt I didn’t want him there. Getting everyone together at the same time looked unlikely when my doula gave birth to her own baby a few weeks after the Bean was born.

As the days turned into weeks I started to feel a bit desperate. My little newborn was rapidly developing into a strong baby and I was afraid it would get too late. So I decided to grab the opportunity as soon as the Munchkin was staying at my parents’ house for the night. Finally that moment came, 8 weeks after the Bean’s original birth.

Today, after an absolutely beautiful day out with friends to celebrate the Munchkin’s third birthday, he went home with my mum and hubby and I made our preparations. We inflated and filled the pool, lit candles and put on my birth music. I got into the pool and listened to the song that had been one of my hypnosis triggers that I used during pregnancy and labour, Chimes, a song by an unsigned band called Glow. I thought about being pregnant, remembered my blessingway and the hope and anticipation I had felt about my forthcoming birth. These memories touched some raw emotions for me and I began to cry silently.
I changed the music to the song I had wanted playing as my baby was born. I had played it on repeat for a long time during my actual labour when it seemed I would be holding my baby imminently: Firework by Katy Perry. Cheesy? Maybe, but when I first heard it I felt it was the perfect song to accompany birth. What a strong message of the power and awesomeness of a birthing woman.

Hubby got into the pool with the Bean and passed him to me under my arm and through the water. I brought him straight to my chest and held him, I told him how much I love him and explained that this was how I had wanted to meet him. The tears flowed with overwhelming sadness and joy and hubby snapped away with the camera to capture the moment.

The Bean was calm and alert, looking carefully at me and around at the strange surroundings. We spent a few minutes in the pool and then moved to the sofa, wrapped up warm, where I fed him and hubby brought me some food. It was the post-birth chill that we should have shared but were denied by the circumstances of the Bean’s original birth.

This rebirth doesn’t undo that birth, nor would I want it to. His birth was truly awesome, in so many ways, but it wasn’t joyful. Now I have new memories, the memories I had hoped to create and that does undo some of the emotional damage of his birth.

But it’s late now, so I’m signing off to go and curl up in bed with my baby.

No VEs. Vaginal examinations are often thought of as an essential part of labour, few women seem to question their use and a great deal of emphasis is placed on “knowing” how dilated a woman is, both by health care providers and by many mums. The fact is that the use of routine VEs is not evidence based. Experts in normal birth agree that women do not dilate in a linear fashion and that time limits placed upon birth are unrealistic and have no place in normal birth. How dilated you are at any given examination tells you nothing about how quickly your labour will progress and some, notably Ina May Gaskin, speculate that the vagina behaves as other sphincters in the body and can actually close up upon intrusion.

For women planning a hospital birth or a water birth in or out of hospital, they will be led to expect VEs in order to assess whether they are in “established” labour or not and whether they are “allowed” to get into the pool. The whole idea of latent and established labour is undermining. It implies that women in the early stages of labour do not need or are not entitled to support and for women experiencing a long latent phase, repeated examinations with little to no progress can be extremely demoralising. As for getting into the pool, it is thought that getting in too soon can slow down labour. Well so what? If that does happen then surely she can just get back out of the pool. Besides which, what is the rush, exactly? Women birthing at home with a pool should feel free to use that resource as and when they feel the need for it. They do not need permission to use it.

An experienced midwife should be able to assess the progress of labour without these intrusive examinations, the woman’s behaviour, the noises she is making, the dark line that extends up from the anus and up the back and even the smell in the room are all signs that midwives can look for to give them an idea of how the birth is unfolding.

I have to emphasis at this point that about six or seven hours into my second labour, all the signs pointed towards a very imminent birth. I laboured in much the same state for another twelve hours before consenting to a caesarean. So these signs are not always reliable, but I would argue that they are no less reliable than VEs and in a normally progressing birth they are probably more reliable.

On a personal note, I felt that VEs were the cause of my first caesarean. I had intended to decline them, knowing how pointless they generally are, however when I was in labour I was told that I “had to” have them every four hours and I wasn’t in a state to refuse. Had I had a doula who could have reminded me that I didn’t want them and that I was entitled to refuse then perhaps that birth would have been different. I was having a long and intense latent phase, it took me twelve hours to reach 4cm. Each examination was painful and intrusive, disrupting my labour and crushing my confidence. This was reason enough for me to decline them second time around.

I did, however, ask for them when I was in labour because I knew that something was not right and I knew that some useful information might be gathered from one, such as the baby’s position, which can be found by the feel of the skull plates. I had to work quite hard to persuade my midwife that I really did want to be examined. She knew how strong my feelings on the matter were and she, quite rightly, wanted to make absolutely sure that I wanted one. I asked her not to tell me how dilated I was, I knew this information was irrelevant, but I needed to know if there was a reason why I had been pushing for hours already and felt no closer to birthing my baby.

No induction or augmentation. As a woman with a previous caesarean under my belt, the risk of uterine rupture was a hot topic. The real risk is tiny, 0.2%, but the use of drugs to induce or accelerate labour dramatically increase that risk. Even without a uterine scar, there are risks associated with this intervention, chiefly foetal distress. There are very few good reasons to induce labour, in my opinion. As long as the pregnancy is straightforward, and even some complicating factors warrant only a watch-and-wait approach, then there is no reason to interfere. I certainly wouldn’t accept induction for going “overdue”. You can see what I think about the length of pregnancy here.

As far as I am concerned, there was no good reason to augment my labour. Either birth will unfold in its own time, or urgent assistance is needed. My first labour was augmented. I was persuaded that my body wasn’t up to the task and I needed help to “coordinate” my contractions in order for my cervix to dilate. I begged for time, I really did not want to open myself up to all of the risks associated with the use of syntocinon, but I was bullied into it, told that my body had had plenty of time already and was clearly failing.

I can see how the use of synto has become so common, it is very normal for women to not labour well in hospital, the conditions are so far removed from those needed for birth to unfold naturally. In some situations augmentation may help to undo the damage caused by transferring into hospital, but for me, planning a home birth, this was irrelevant. I was only going to be going into hospital if me or my baby were in danger and needed immediate assistance.

Leaving the cord alone. I planned and had a lotus birth. I recognise that this is an extreme most people will not be interested in, however, the principle of leaving the cord in tact at least until it stops pulsating, is one that is gaining popularity. Research now shows that babies whose cords are cut prematurely are deprived of up to half of their blood volume and are more likely to be anaemic, suffer brain damage or develop autism. In a straightforward birth there is no reason whatsoever to interfere with this process and doing so is potentially very harmful. Where my view is considered a little more radical is in the belief that even in a complicated birth, leaving the cord alone is possible and even advisable. If a baby is compromised at birth then it needs all of the blood and oxygen that it can get, cutting the cord deprives them of both. Many people seem to be under the impression that a nuchal cord, that is, when the umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck, is an emergency situation and that cutting the cord is necessary in cases when it is tightly wrapped. This simply isn’t true and this article explains why.

I’ll leave it there for now, but if there are any other aspects of my Birth Contract that you would like to know more about, please comment and I will do my best to explain my reasoning. Thanks for reading.

My recent birth genuinely was healing and empowering. It was a positive experience, by and large. I was incredibly well supported, I was respected and listened to. I had all of my wishes listened to and accommodated where at all possible. I came out of it feeling elated that I had done something so rare and thrilled that people were talking about it. It might make a very real and positive difference for other women. My relationship with the Munchkin has improved massively. I can say with absolute sincerity, finally, that I gave birth to him. For years I could not say that, he was surgically removed from me, my caesarean wasn’t the same as giving birth. Now I feel differently and because the Bean’s birth followed such a similar pattern to the Munchkin’s, I can also speculate now that no amount of support would have resulted in a vaginal birth with him either. For years I was carrying this heavy weight around my neck: what if we had just done x, y or z? Well this time we did do x, y and z and it still didn’t result in a normal birth.

But there is a dark side to that realisation. For the first few weeks after the Bean’s birth I felt lighter. I felt relieved. But as time passed I realised the consequence… if nothing I could have done would have made any difference then why did my births both end in caesareans? If it was nothing to do with the support that I had, nothing to do with my antenatal preparation, nothing to do with the external conditions of my labour, then what is wrong with me? Because that is where my mind wanders, towards a reason. I’m not the sort of person who can just accept that “these things just happen”. Maybe once they do, but twice? Twice the same thing happened to me and my babies. To me that means something. To me that means that there is some sort of problem with me.

That’s a dark place to be. No matter how much those around me bent over backwards to make my birth as positive as it could be, no matter how close my bonds are with my children, I am still left aching emotionally. I am grieving for the birth I did not get. Again.

I know there will be people who think, and indeed, say, that I should shut up and be grateful that my babies are alive. I’ve heard it before, I’ve been told that I have “lost sight of what is really important” and to them I say: I matter. My mental health matters. My scarred uterus matters. My obstetric future matters. I don’t intend on having any more children, two has long been my theoretical limit, so right now I’m trying to come to terms with the idea that I will never, ever have a vaginal birth of any kind, never mind the beautiful home birth of my dreams.

There are three little words that I have read dozens of times in VBAC birth stories, three little words that carry such depth of feeling that I don’t think many people could fail to be moved by them and I expected to be uttering them myself: “I did it”. I will never say those words and that hurts.

So to all those wonderful, Very Brave And Courageous women out there who didn’t get their VBAC, or whose births have not taken them on the journey that they expected or wanted: I love you, I am crying with you and it is OK to cry, to grieve.

Today is International Women’s Day, so I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the wonderful women in my life and write a bit about what the event means to me.

The theme this year is “Connecting girls, inspiring futures”. I think it is so important that young girls and women are encouraged to think about their sexual health, their futures and their relationships, to value themselves enough to make positive choices. The only way that happens is through the examples of positive role models. There are far too many pop tarts gracing the magazine covers and television these days. Hyper-sexualised “singers”; super-skinny celebs who are famous for being famous and make a reputation for themselves as lacking intelligence; lost and desperate starlets who poison their bodies and have their own rooms reserved in rehab for their frequent falls from the wagon. It’s a sorry state of affairs.

There are a small handful of alternatives out there, such as Tyra Banks, who not only represents a more healthy body type these days, but who works to help girls and young women value themselves. That’s not to say she isn’t also making a lot of money out of the good PR of her apparent altruism, but I think that’s true of most philanthropists if you look at the whole picture. Then there’s one of my favourite singers, Pink, whose attitude and music set a wonderful example to young girls, showing them that they can be themselves in the face of peer pressure.

It’s really important to me to recognise that even in the UK, there is still inequality between men and women. Women still earn less than men in the same jobs; women fill more service roles and less professional roles than men; the socially valuable role of mother is extremely undervalued financially and culturally (how many times have you heard a woman say “I’m just a mum” when asked her occupation?); women bear the brunt of the government’s spending cuts too. Women often seem to be the ones to take responsibility for their contraception too and many of the options are hormonal; that is, they work by changing our biological functioning. What are the physical and social implications of that?

Teenage girls were routinely paraded through the school nurse’s office in the last couple of years, to be given the HPV vaccine, with the promise that they would be protected from cervical cancer. There is some concern that this vaccine gives girls a green light to have unprotected sex, as they, and their male peers, may believe that being vaccinated against one STI makes it safe to have unprotected sex. Not the right message for these young people at all. A number of my friends with daughters of the appropriate age talked about the issues with their daughters and helped them come to fully informed decisions about whether to accept the vaccine or not.

As mothers we are censored and discriminated against for the way we feed our babies, both breastfeeding and formula feeding mothers report being discriminated against or judged, sometimes by businesses but all too often by other women. Whether women really are judging each other is not easy to determine, we often project our own insecurities onto onlookers and read judgement where there is none.

It’s acceptable for the female body to be depicted as a sexual object, but not as a mother growing or nourishing her child. Men’s nipples can be shown in public, but women’s nipples can’t. For a very thorough exploration of the topic of infant feeding as a feminist issue, please see this blog post by The Alpha Parent, particularly points 4 and 5. Caution: If you are offended by the facts of formula feeding it’s probably better for your blood pressure to simply not click the link.

Birth is also a feminist issue, both for the women giving birth and the women providing care. Midwives who refuse to conform to the medical model and instead provide woman-centred care, are bullied and harassed in the workplace, in some cases risking their livelihood and even imprisonment. Pregnant and birthing women are taught to expect to lose all of their dignity during birth, to have decisions about their own bodies made by someone else. This is, of course, absolutely unacceptable and untrue, it is perfectly possible to retain both one’s dignity and bodily autonomy in birth, no doctor or midwife can legally force a woman to comply with hospital protocols against her will, to do so is assault. But the language used by maternity care providers often hides this fact. Women are told that they are “not allowed to do x”, or that they “have to have y”. Care providers who use this language should be reported to their supervisors.

The global picture for women is even more bleak. The very fact that we need an International Women’s Day is itself a telling sign of the huge inequalities and difficulties that women face. I think it’s vital that we take the opportunity to reflect on the situation and see if there is anything we can do to change it. One day a year isn’t much, it’s a token gesture really, unless people really take notice and do something positive. One off events like this are intended to do that, to draw attention to an issue and have an impact reaching beyond that one day.

An individual can contribute in a number of ways, from simply letting those important women in their life know how special they are, to mounting a campaign against a sexist corporation or government! Check out the IWD website for ideas on how you can make a difference.

I’m already a birth and breastfeeding activist, albeit on maternity leave at the moment, so I will mark today with a huge thank you to some very special women:

My mum, Linzy; my dear friends, Jo R-D, Lisa S, Vicki M-W, Debs R, Lori F, Sarah C, Kellie R, Sally P, Chloe B, Gillian S; my friends and colleagues Beverley B, Nadine E, Debbie C-D, Jo W, Ruth K, Ruth W, Caroline W; fellow campaigners Emma K, “Mrs BWF” and everyone else who is working tirelessly to inform and empower other women. Thank you all for being amazing women.