Birth, blame, and the stories we’re not telling
If you’ve felt a bit on edge reading anything about pregnancy or birth this past month, you’re not imagining it. January has been loud in UK maternity services. Loud with headlines. Loud with opinion. Loud with policy talk, staffing pressures, safety conversations, and yet somehow still very quiet about the actual lived experiences of pregnant and birthing people. So here’s a gentle, grounded roundup — minus the drama. Doulas getting blamed in the media again… Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen (again) the familiar themes surface: stretched services, workforce shortages, increased scrutiny of outcomes, and a lot of fear-based reporting that tends to land squarely on the shoulders of pregnant people. Home birth, induction, place of birth, “risk”, and responsibility have all been thrown into the spotlight — often without nuance, context, or compassion. One article in particular has stayed with me — the recent Guardian report on a coroner’s findings following a neonatal death after a h...
