Tag: parenting

maternity, midwifery, pregnancy, Uncategorized

UK Maternal Deaths Up 59%—This Is a Crisis

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MBRRACE 2024

Maternal mortality in the UK rose by 59% from 2013 to 2021. Even excluding COVID, it’s still up 37%—and the spike started before the pandemic.

MBRRACE 2024

So what’s going on? Staffing shortages? Not really—vacancy rates actually dropped. Obesity? Up just 8%. Gestational diabetes? Rising, but data’s patchy. Meanwhile, Black women are nearly 3x more likely to die, and Asian women and those in deprived areas are 2x more likely.

MBRRACE 24

The leading killers? Blood clots, suicide, and sepsis. And guess what increases clot risk? Amongst other things – C-sections (up 53%) and long hospital stays—like those caused by induction of labour, which rose 43%. Nearly 4 in 10 births are now surgical, despite WHO saying rates above 1 in 10 don’t improve outcomes. Sepsis rates tripled. And mental health? 79% of women report birth trauma. This isn’t just bad luck—it’s systemic. If I were Baroness Amos, I’d be listening to the families living this nightmare and the MIDWIVES that can make this better.

Because a 59% increase in women dying in pregnancy, childbirth and up to a year after is not acceptable.

References

Further Reading

Book Reviews

Book review – The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read… by Philippa Perry

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This beautifully kind, wise and compassionate book has been a wonderful reminder of the parent I aspire to become. It goes without saying, of course, that I am not a perfect parent. Who is? The joy of this book is that it does not set out to achieve perfection (which would only set you up for failure), nor does it reprimand you for mistakes made in the past. It gently encourages you to explore your words, actions and the examples you set to your child, observing how they might affect your child(ren), how they affected you when you were a child and the possible long term effects on your relationship with your child.

It’s not about how many times you mess up, lose your rag and end up crying in a corner (with at least one child screaming on the floor at the same time). It’s about accepting that these things happen, putting actions in to place to minimise them (ie recognising your own limits and how to manage them), and ‘repairing the rupture’ by being compassionate with yourself and authentic in your restorative actions.

It has great examples and case studies of where parents have struggled with their child(ren), even to the point of wanting to leave the family unit, and offers tender, considerate and often humorous responses to the challenges we all face in our parenting (and indeed all) relationships in our lives.

It ties in perfectly with the La Leche League philosophy of ‘loving guidance’, which is one of the many reasons I kept going back to La Leche League. I knew I wanted to follow the gentle parenting path, I think even before I became pregnant, and it was demonstrated so admirably by the mums present at the meetings.

It reminded me that loving guidance is a long term investment (it also has short term benefits too), that patience is a virtue (no one has taught me more about being patient than my son), and that if you’re not looking back at your life and cringing at certain moments, you’re not learning and growing as a person, parent and human being.