Can Fear Change the Way You Give Birth? | Life of a Midwife Ep. 11

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1:17Hope and fear so often walk hand in hand. And what can embody that duality more than birth? In this episode, we hear from two midwives who have spent years navigating that delicate balance. Natasha's own experience during pregnancy gave her a profound understanding of the sensitivity her job would demand and Marley, whose years as both a midwife and Antonito educator have helped her guide families through the uncertainty of labour I'm Joanna Fletcher and from Happy Mum, this is Life of a Midwife

2:02At the heart of Marley's practice is a simple belief. Every birth is unique, and that helping families feel truly informed and heard can shape everything that follows.

2:17I think most people are fearful when it comes to having a baby. They fear all sorts of different things. You know, am I going to survive? Is my baby going to survive? Those are the two biggest ones, you know, because we hear so many stories don't we hear so many traumatic birth stories and things that have happened and it's all too easy to think oh gosh is that going to happen to me

2:41the only thing i can really do is is to help to educate families on birth help them with their choices and their options and if they have any fears to talk through it with them because some of them are rational fears and some of them are irrational fears you know and it's good to get things out in the open and try and find out where these fears have come from but the majority of people who will come to me and say they're absolutely petrified of giving birth vaginally for example is because their their three friends who all had vaginal births you know they all had horrendous tears or they all had forceps or they all had these horrible interventions and then when you actually unpack the birth story and you learn why this happened you understand that well maybe this maybe this is the reason why you know why were forceps used why why did this happen why did that happen was this necessary was that necessary so you have to sort of start questioning things and then how can we avoid this happening to you you know but ultimately if somebody is that petrified of having a baby vaginally that they're well in their rights to ask for cesarean if they want to it's absolutely their choice it's a case of trying to talk through fears unpack unravel things and if we still come to the same conclusion then to see how best we can help somebody talking and explaining things is really helpful the way your birth is going to go it's not just about your body obviously things like nutrition how fit you are how healthy you are that makes a difference of course it does how your mum gave birth you know if you if your mum had an easy easy birth then you're more likely to have an easy birth you know it's not a given but you're more likely but it's not just physical and this is kind of the turning point that made me think actually it's it's also your environment it's also your sensory needs your mindset you know that has a big role in how your birth is going to go so i was in triage um so this is the area where if you think you're in labor then we get you to come into triage check you over first if you're not in labour go home if you are in labour labour ward or birth centre or wherever so she rang up very early in the morning and said that she's been having contractions on and off all through the night she thinks they're kind of picking up a little bit now every five minutes so is her first baby every five minutes or so you know what should she do should she come in so i said yeah okay come in let's just come in and i'll check you over and we'll go from there by the time she got to me because it was about an hour after i spoke to her that she finally made it in her husband had already gone off to work so when she rang he had already left for work because she had said to go to work because it's going to be all day or whatever so she came into the triage and by that point her contractions were very very very very quick they were like every sort of three to four minutes and then so we checked her and i said oh you know you um seems like you're in established labour now, we'll get you to go to labour ward.

5:45And when I told her that, because she must have been dilated, maybe four, three or four centimetres or something, she suddenly panicked. And she said, my husband, no, I can't have the baby yet, he's at work. She spent about 10 minutes panicking and she was in tears. And I noticed over that time, her contractions basically stopped. I remember thinking, hang on a minute, she's gone from having these contractions every few minutes. Now, the last 15 minutes, she's been worried about where her husband is. She hasn't, I think she had like one contraction. So I'm like, what's going on here?

6:27She rang him, told him that she was in labour. So he said, that's fine, I'm leaving now. I said, look, we're just going to observe you for a bit, just stay here. So she kind I just took a seat in the triage area. She was walking around, got herself a cup of tea. He arrived. People don't believe me when I tell you this. He arrived. Within about 10 to 15 minutes of him arriving, they came back. She started having contractions. People don't believe me, but I had colleagues that witnessed it, right? So they know, if any of them are listening, they know what I'm talking about. Her contractions started coming back.

7:04I think she laboured for most of the day after that I mean, you know, it wasn't like it was a quick labour or anything I think she must have given birth later on that evening but she started contracting again I think within about an hour of him arriving she was back to contracting every three minutes labour ward and then off she went I didn't see her after that because I handed her over to somebody else

7:24I had trained as a hypnobirthing teacher and I remember them talking to me this was back in 2011 I trained and I remember them talking to me the teacher and saying to me about the nervous system and and fight and fright and how when we feel fearful that can actually stop stop labor and when I first heard her saying that I was like no come on now you know the body the body doesn't just stop like that and I actually witnessed it she was so she tensed up so much and was so panicky about her husband missing the birth that her labor pretty much just I mean she had the odd sort of niggle but the the contractions are pretty much gone until he arrived that's why when I do antenatal education a birth education I always include the mental side of things making sure you are aware of what your sensory needs are thinking about your environment if you fall off your bike and hurt yourself if you walk into a cupboard like I did the other day the corner of the cupboard hit me on the head what helps you Is it a warm compress?

8:30Is it a hug from your husband? Is it a massage? Think about the things that help you when you're in pain and then apply that to birth. Some people like to have all their family with them because it makes them feel safe. Other people don't want that at all. Some people like absolute silence. Some people like a little bit of background noise. I've been to home birth where they've been playing drum and bass, you know, as I walked through the door. For me, absolutely not. You know, I could not have that. But for this woman, that's what she wanted. And that helped her. Birth needs to be individual.

9:05And if people think about what their sensory needs are and what makes them feel comfortable, safe, happy, and less fearful, then they're kind of halfway there to preparing for their birth. Birth is unique for everybody. We're all inherently different. Our birth stories are all going to be different. prepare yourself, your body, your mind, and your soul, and just remember that you are unique and you're different to everybody else when it comes to having a baby.

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10:58Natasha knows all too well the anxiety that can accompany a prenatal scan. Now a sonographer herself, she understands the weight of every word she speaks to her patients.

11:17I suppose it kind of goes back to when I had my own children I had two separate experiences so I had a sonographer who was a midwife who was amazing and she she reassured me and she explained everything and I just felt this lady knows what she is doing here and I feel completely happy that everything is as it should be. And then I had a second experience where, again, a midwife's stenographer, but she was very standoffish, she didn't communicate very well and I was sort of laying on the bed thinking, well, is everything OK? we had these really long silences and me and my husband were sort of looking at each other and you start to get really anxious and and I was a midwife then at the time she said something and I always remember this she said oh baby's legs are really short uh is it okay what what does that mean is is that normal you know because I wasn't a I didn't have the knowledge, right?

12:34But then for like three weeks afterwards, and obviously you've got pregnancy hormones and your mind runs wild with you, I honestly thought, well, there's something wrong with my baby's limbs. You know, there's got to be. She said they were short. I always think I don't ever want to practice like that. Because I've had my own experiences, I've also had a pregnancy loss and I think that's part of maybe the reason why I feel so passionately about open communication, no matter how difficult that communication is. Moving forward, that was a really pivotal moment for me. I used to hover around the sonography suite, being like, is there any training?

13:20Is there any training? So yeah. For the last five years, I've been a midwife sonographer. I got there in the end.

13:33it was during covid very early on in my sonography career and obviously we had all of the rules and restrictions for appointments and scans this lady pops up into my mind really often she was an ivf pregnancy she was 39 weeks and six days she'd attended the day assessment unit with reduced fetal movements. And luckily, our sort of scan department is adjacent to the de-assessment unit. And this midwife, who had been a midwife longer than I've been alive, she came and said, there's something wrong here, can you scan her immediately? If she's telling you something's wrong, something's wrong.

14:22This woman is on her own, so her partner's in the car. And we scan her, and sadly the baby has passed away.

14:37In that moment, so not only are you having to break the bad news that this baby that you've longed for, that has taken years for you to get, has died, you're having that news on your own, and then we're having to ring your partner to say, please come into the hospital immediately but we can't tell you why over the phone and that that whole situation I think really made me reflect on really what what is cruel that we should never have cancelled those appointments in terms of not letting the partners in because not only that woman is going to remember that situation for the rest of her life she's going to remember my face how I how I dealt with her but she's going to remember that her partner wasn't there and vice versa her partner is going to be thinking well I wasn't there either it it was just quite frankly dreadful

15:56this isn't about me I'm not living her journey but for my own practice moving forward that kind of paved the way for me in terms of how bereavement care and particularly how breaking bad news should be done. And it's with kindness and compassion.

16:25Fundamentally, I'm here as almost like a vessel of support for that woman and her partner. I know that as long as I've done the best that I can do in that situation, I can leave that at work and then go home but when I first started scanning in particular I think I really underestimated the gravity of having to break bad news and you know I've been scanning for five years now it never gets easier it's not like the more you do it the kind of easier it is it's not and every every woman is different every family is different and so for me again I think midwives have a an innate kind of skill where we read energy we read body language and we adjust our practice to what we're given there's nothing that I can say that is going to make that news any better.

17:37But as long as I deliver kindness and compassion and space to communicate, I feel that I've done a good job.

18:02Thank you so much for listening. Please do like, subscribe and leave us a review. We would love to know what you think. And if you're a midwife and would like to take part in this series, you can find contact details in the podcast description.

18:22Thank you.

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