She Said: “I’m demanding some serious changes”

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0:33Louise: guys i just wanted to let you know that in today's conversation i am going to be touching on birth trauma and some quite harrowing statistics around childbirth so if you're someone that thinks that they might be sensitive to these issues then i'd recommend skipping this episode and maybe trying one of our other ones hi guys welcome to he said she said the podcast that i do with my partner ryan hey howdy hello we talk about honest stuff that's happened to us the unusual bits the nuts bits of our lives that we don't talk about anywhere else really um sometimes they're good sometimes they're bad often they're relatable and we want to encourage you guys at home to have tricky conversations which is why we talk about the hard stuff publicly on this forum so should we get into it let's go this one's going to be a little bit different i think i'm looking forward to it it's going to be an education for me have you got a she said I do actually, yeah.

1:25You do? You came back yesterday and you said, I was in the House of Commons today. And I looked at you and I was like, were you? Turns out you weren't. Where were you?

1:40Louise: Yes, that's a very good question. I think I went somewhere called Porticullis House. I ended up in Parliament. I was in room 13. Which is not the House of Commons. Which is not the House of Commons. And so after I had this very important meeting, which I'll tell you guys all about in a little bit, we had a bit of a tour of parliament, which was really nice. And we went into a room. Who's we? So I went with Sam. Right. I went into this room and it was, it looked very impressive. It had all of those benches that go sideways. Was it like green leather and rich mahogany? Green leather, a lot of rich mahogany, a lot of gold buttons.

2:18Louise: and I said to the lady I was with um it looks a lot smaller than when I see it live on tv and then I and then I thought wait a second like have I ever even seen anything live on tv from parliament but it was actually a different room it was a room where they have where they wave their papers and yeah I thought it was the the big the main room the main event it was the room where they have their votes of no confidence so when things go really awfully in the party they They all congregate. So whether it's the conservatives or the Labourers, whoever's in charge at the time, they go in and they go, this is going terribly.

2:53Louise: And they have that discussion. What were you doing there? I have no idea why you were there. So it was quite last minute, but I was invited with Bauer, who own Hits Radio, who Sam works with, who I did a feature with around birth trauma when my book came out last year. And it was a very powerful feature. I spoke with a lady called Kim Thomas, who's the chair of the Birth Trauma Association, a charity that I'm connected with. On the radio. On the radio. Anyway, they wanted to kind of create a continuation of that. So they opened up this opportunity for me to go to parliament to actually sit in on an AP, well actually to chair an APPG meeting.

3:29Louise: Not chair, to have a discussion. Please be seated. So we can begin. Basically, I went in with Sam to meet a guy called Mick, who's one of the news presenters at Bauer. And I met with a lady called Rosie Duffield, who is the chair of the APPG, which is the all party parliamentary committee. And because it's all party, it means that it's not biased. And did you actually speak? Yeah. Oh, wow. What, stand up in front of people? No, so it was, so we went underground and we ended up, it felt very cool. Secret tunnels. We went into secret tunnels. Yeah, we went through secret tunnels and we ended up in one of the rims.

4:13Louise: And it was actually Sam's first time being in Parliament. So he was very excited because he obviously thought it resembled Harry Potter. And it was really nice to have him as a wingman. That's cool. And then we, yeah, we sat down in a room full of people, 20 people, 20 odd people. All women? No, mixed men. A combination, a mixed bag. And discussed, I suppose, largely like my story so that they could get as much insight as possible. It was really like a sounding board. It was, let's go through Louise's story and give this person an opportunity to speak up about what she's been through because she's already spoken publicly about it.

4:54Louise: And given that myself and Sam have public profiles, They wanted to learn a bit more about what we do to highlight important issues, but also they wanted to connect what I've been through and what other women have been through to try and guide what policy changes should be made in the future. And they are working on a maternity review, which is due to come out in December. And what you're telling me is that you've got influence on this new review. very excitingly and feeling you know in a huge position of privilege i got to be a spokesperson for a lot of women that i communicate with on a daily basis via platforms like instagram and other social media platforms and to yeah and to basically speak on behalf of them about the things that we think need to happen all right so you're in the room with 20 people mixed bag different parties but they're for the collective reason to explore birth trauma with the view of at the end of the year put something better and more safer and secure for women so you don't go through similar experiences yeah so obviously for me this is something I'm hugely passionate about and when I brought out the book last year I wrote about my experience and it attracted a lot of media attention and I did a lot of public speaking about it and I connected with an awful lot of women who had been through something similar and I got like really into it I don't know whether you remember like around May June July summer of last year and I tried to be a bit of a spokesperson in this area to speak up for all of the women that have suffered and then to be honest like I've slightly um removed myself from that space for a period of time because I've had to focus on like rebuilding my career and our relationship and you know focus on our family and so and it was interesting because this was this is like completely set me on fire again like I have a fire in my belly to get going with this project so last year a lady called Theo Clark, who's an MP who I've met several times before, who happened to go to the same prep school as me and same secondary school.

7:16Louise: She launched this big birth inquiry that just so happened to coincide with the launch of my book. So it got published the same month that my book launched. She had been through a horrendous birth trauma herself and she spoke publicly about it in the House of Commons to try and get things moving and to try and get the conversation started because there are a lot of people that for a very long time it hasn't been spoken about enough so it was this lady here yes the when you went there yeah she was there yesterday i'm actually doing her podcast next week so again to chat about all things birth trauma and what's her podcast podcast is called breaking the taboo and actually her book launches this week and i've got a copy of it so i'm going to give it a bit of a read for me yesterday felt like a really important step to get back into this space it's really funny like politics sits over here and the world just sits down here and it's quite it's similar to like the medical space which also people that work in it or in hospitals they sit up here we sit down here and there's a bit of a barrier you don't know how to cross that barrier i've found that i've struggled to cross that barrier you know i've spoken to you many times before it's very hard to get in contact with the consultants that are behind my care you don't have them on speed dial in a similar way I know what I would like actioned when it comes to change in the maternity space.

8:38Louise: But I've not always known who the right people are to get those changes in motion. I've worked with the Birth Trauma Association charity and I speak openly about what I've been through. And I think that that helps people, women that have already suffered because they feel less alone and they can see me as a hopeful emblem. of, you know, they can follow my journey knowing, oh, well, she was awful and practically vegetated. And three years later, she's in a position where she can live her life and live a fulfilling life. So I feel like I'm kind of serving my purpose there, but I feel like there's so much more that I want to offer.

9:15Louise: And now I have contact details. And that was why yesterday it was really important for me because I got an opportunity to share my story in a lot of detail with a few people that are very important, that are basically going to be critical in the decision-making process and they hold quite a few of these APPG meetings to discuss maternity care because it is such a big problem in this country. I think the government spend around 150 billion pounds each year on the NHS. A very small portion of that is actually spent on maternity care and that's where a big part of this problem stems from. I've had many conversations with maternity nurses and they're not happy.

9:50Louise: They're leaving very quickly because they're not being paid properly and they're not being treated properly. I've spoken to student nurses at the hospital where I've had many surgeries I've had to spend a lot of time with and people have said to me that none of their colleagues their student friends want to work in the maternity space they don't even want to trial it so they tend to spend time in different departments within the hospital because people that they know have been asked to empty out cupboards of dead bodies dead babies as students like it is just not a place where people are wanting to work and that is a major problem and that needs to change.

10:28Louise: And I was also looking a little bit at the kind of medical negligence side of things, because that's a really good way of pinpointing whether a hospital is basically performing well or not. It's very hard for the government to actually get a lot of data from these individual hospitals because they all act as like individual trusts. So there's not one big marketplace where they can access everything, but they can look at the litigation cases that are going on and look at the quantity of them. And then they go, oh, there's a problem there or there's a problem there. But often it takes for someone like me or people in a worse position than me who have had babies that have been killed to speak up and to actually whistleblow, is that the right word?

11:14Louise: Yeah. to then for them to then actually form a case like against a hospital like it takes one person or a group of people to come together and go okay we need to actually start shouting about this anyway in terms of medical negligence between 2023 and 2024 the nhs have paid out close to 3 billion in medical negligence claims and 41 of those were for maternity oh my god inadequate to quit maternity care. That's nearly half of all cases. If you think about all the operations that are taking place, heart surgeries, hip replacements, someone having a fall and being picked up in the wrong way. Organ donors, transplants.

11:55Louise: All of that, like cancer misdiagnoses, people not being listened to. Nearly half of them are around the maternity sector. That's alarming. Isn't that seriously alarming? and these hospitals will just factor that into their finances. So each year they get a budget and they go, okay, sweet. Well, we know we're giving 10 % to the insurance companies to pay out for these negligence claims. When instead, if we could be working on changing some policies, which mean that women are better educated and informed, so they know exactly what their options are when it comes to labor they can choose and they can be listened to effectively um and they get the right care you know in the build-up in all of that antenatal care and also in the hospital and then leaving the hospital then that would save an awful lot of money as a woman who has nearly died giving birth and lived through three years of pain when you found out that stat how did that make you feel?

13:00Louise: I honestly, I had no idea how many people went through this kind of thing. And that's not me sitting here trying to fearmonk everybody that's pregnant at the moment, because it is something that's beautiful and natural and can be a beautiful, wonderful experience. And we have, you know, many friends who have had amazing birth experiences. but when i went through that first year postpartum i felt like the only person in the world that went through that i couldn't imagine right anybody going through that but what you're telling me is that there's absolutely loads of people who are going through this well okay so as an example before i had this meeting yesterday i panicked because i only was told about it two days before I decided that I wanted to share an Instagram story telling people I was going to Parliament.

13:55Louise: And then I popped up a question box asking people, well, let me get it up. So I said, birth trauma sufferers, I need your help with something. I'm fortunate enough to be attending a roundtable in Parliament later today, which contributes to the maternity report at the end of this year. I need to know what you think could or should have been done differently in the maternity care you received. So I did a little box. Okay. That's quite cool. So you've basically taken your microphone from the House of Commons and you've gone wallop to the nation. Have your say. Because that's where my skill set lies.

14:22Louise: That's great, isn't it? That's what I can do. And I showed them this. That's not your skill. That's just your, that's your. What I have access to. What you're able to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. What is it? As in I'm not going to sit there and pretend that I'm a politician, but I want to be able to show them what I can offer. And so I did this story. You will never have seen anything like it in your life. Look at this squirrel. Oh, well, get that on camera. Get that on that camera right there. It never stops. I've never had this ever on Instagram this is a list of people's responses that never ever stops I can't get to the bottom of it there's thousands, tens of thousands here I've never seen that before I can never get to the bottom of all these responses as in there's thousands thousands, I've already just next time you go to the House of Commons or whatever room it is room 13, show them that I showed them this, Ellie it actually makes me feel quite emotional there's so many people out there that have been through this Right, so what you're telling me is that you're involved in a really, really massive...

15:22Problem. Problem that has touched a lot of people in this country.

15:26Louise: So they're all people that want to feed back to make positive change. Can you give me an example, please? Anonymous example. There are lots of things. I mean, examples are of straightforward things that they could change, would be giving mothers or parents access to the birth notes. Birth plan. Well, just know all of their birth notes when they leave hospital. So I learned yesterday that actually it's the obstetrician that owns the birth notes. So one of my good friends who I connected with, I say good friends, we weren't particularly good friends at Edinburgh, but we became good friends because she's struggled really badly with postnatal depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

16:07Her heart stopped in her surgery.

16:10Louise: So she nearly died. she couldn't get access to her birth notes so she couldn't find peace or comfort in reading through what had happened to her she had to get in touch with her local mp who had to demand that the notes were passed over to her everyone should just be given access to their notes so that they can comfortably read them in their own home in their own time and feel like at least they have some kind of control over what happened to them i think everyone should be encouraged to download the apps patients know best in the NHS app before going in to give birth so that at least when you have blood tests you have scans they will you'll get access to all of that that's great online and you don't have to beg for results and look I know that me saying that is going to cost the government a lot of money because once people start taking agency over their own health care they are going to be in a position to be requesting more and to, you know, get more answers.

17:11Louise: That was a complete game changer for me with all of my subsequent surgeries. I had no idea what that was when I gave birth. It was only people like the doctor who was in the same high dependency unit when I was finally in a place when I was well enough to be in there. There was a GP who was next to me, who was asking for x-rays and special tests to be done because she knew what to ask for. and people had these apps. You're involved in something huge here, right at the front of it. God. It's so easy to try to put it to one side and just to focus on the things that are just sort of the day-to-day, all of the other bits and pieces that we get on with.

17:57Louise: But when I was there and I got into this, Like I felt so passionate about it. Into what? Well, into just talking about the problem that we have in this country. Well, kudos to you because what you just did then with the endless scrolling and your access to millions of people. I don't even know what the word is to describe that, but that's going to change the landscape of many people's lives. One of the things that Rosie actually asked me, which was kind of towards the end, she said... Rosie Duffield? Rosie Duffield, yeah. She said, do you feel like you have been scared to share what you've been through or you're apprehensive about sharing what you've been through because you're worried it will have a knock-on effect with work and opportunity?

18:53And your future care.

18:54Louise: no she didn't say that but that was my answer and I said to her actually no at the beginning for that first year I was in such a state of survival that I really didn't have the foresight to think that I would ever work again I really didn't care about money I just wanted to to live and I would share because actually selfishly it made me feel better sharing publicly and then being able to speak with with other women that had been through something similar and it was like a form of therapy for me so I wasn't brave and valiant about it I literally shared because like I needed to be able to focus on something and then actually I didn't think that it impacted work too much because people I guess like appreciated the honesty and also then I thought that people who employ us are normal people so whether they're a PR at a company or a CEO of a company or the person in charge of making financial decisions.

19:51Louise: You'd hope that they're all normal people at the end of the day and they'll all have dealt with some version of trauma, whatever that looks like. And whether they're a man whose wife might have had a tricky birth or post-nosed depression or whatever it might be, or a woman that has directly suffered with that themselves. These are people that have compassion, so I don't think it should affect the work that we do. No, I agree. But what I did say that I was very scared to vocalize what I'd been through because I didn't want people in the hospital to treat me differently because I was very scared that I felt like it wasn't the end of the road for me in terms of having more surgeries.

20:31Louise: And I kind of knew like instinctively that I'd be back in there with more problems because I just never, I didn't feel like I was fixed. Like I knew that there were things going on inside me. And I was so petrified that if I spoke publicly in a way that was remotely damning, that I wouldn't get treated unfairly because people would form a bias around me. And they'd go, oh, I don't want to touch her. And this is quite interesting, actually. So I've had a few medical appointments recently. I had one fertility one. I actually had a breast screening a couple of weeks ago. In both of those appointments, the consultants asked me what my job was.

21:07Louise: and I now don't know I'm found myself in a position where I don't know what to say because if I say author they're going to be really interested um if I say oh I just own a few companies I sound dismissive so I feel it feels like a weird question for me to answer that moment and for a weird reason because if I'm truly authentic and I say what I do do I'm worried that they're going to treat me differently. And so I've, in both of those appointments, I've gone, oh, I do like a couple of different things, but they've really wanted to know. And I don't know whether it's because they know who I am and they want me to tell them what I do, but they've not let it go.

21:55Louise: Like they've been like, oh no, no, no. Like what do you do? And then I've say gone away and to have like a scan or another part of the appointment, and I've come back and they've, they've asked again about what I do. And so in the fertility appointment, I ended up crying at the end of this appointment. This guy was lovely. And I said, look, in all honesty, I don't feel like I can tell you who I, what I do or who I am because I've got a public profile and I went through some awful medical stuff and I wrote a book about it. And I'm really worried that people like you are going to sit across from me and judge me and not want to treat me and try to pass me on to somebody else because you don't want to get caught up in the mess that's brave did you say that to him yeah yeah and the guy probably responded very well responded very well that is a great example of vulnerability and what people like shook my hand brought me in for a hug there you go and then started telling me lots about his life good good for you that's a that's a big moment but it was hard to do that 100 % and i do i do that's the one One thing I do worry about when it comes to opening up, because I love to talk about obviously all of the positive stuff that the NHS has afforded us, you know, living in this country and living close to a brilliant hospital for the most part, but equally like then where do I sit?

23:11That's a really beautiful example, by the way, of being backed in the corner feeling uneasy.

23:16Louise: Yeah. And you decided to be really vulnerable with your truth and you saw a really positive reaction as a result. but that is like it's all good and well about you know people talking about oh be vulnerable and you know that's like such a big moment in your life where you displayed being vulnerable yeah that's really amazing yeah it's not it's not easy and then i think you know sam's response was different because he's got a different perspective on the whole thing and his sponsors really that it's not his place to tell our story so he gets asked about it all the time he's very sensitive when it comes to talking about what we've been through but i think that they can recognize that he's also got this huge like mouthpiece that you can pop in and and you know turn up the volume and reach a lot of people and like the impact can really be phenomenal so so that's that's important so he might go on the journey more with you that work i don't i don't think necessarily i think it was just good to get like our foot in the door and then to come away with email addresses for um the relevant people so there was another lady there who heads up like all of the maternity appg meetings who is an mp who incidentally had gone through her own birth trauma five years ago so she's hugely passionate about it now so you just really need to find and we're very lucky that then there are people that have have experienced it who work in that environment who can then try and keep things moving along do you i'm sorry i'm still thinking about this scrolling of millions of people what are you going to do with that as in like is it just a demonstration of like the amount of people that you have access to or I'm sort of sitting here thinking I know you write a column for a certain title I'm like why don't you bring these stories to life and let that be your like your way of helping and bringing this to the surface more so there are quite a lot of things that I want to do with that one of them is when I was then traveling there reading through all of them I thought I'm going to start doing a lot of research by creating forms and getting people to fill out these forms so that I can have a lot of data that can be passed on.

25:34Louise: And I thought that's something that I've wanted to do anyway when it comes to my health, because obviously there's a lot of research going into inflammatory bowel diseases at the moment, but I can access a lot of people that have an inflammatory bowel disease. And I'm connecting dots around inflammatory bowel disease and fertility and hormones and bleeding and flares and that sort of thing. So I'm in a position where I'm trying to do a bit of research around that. But also, now that I have the email address, I'm going to communicate with the charities that I work with, the people in parliament and my audience to try and get some really powerful statistics to then send across to the powers that be.

26:18Louise: And then hopefully I can have a conversation with Wes, who's the health minister, and try and put forward a case for the proposed changes, of which I've made a list, extracting many ideas from the people that have written into me. Lots of people have said the care in the Netherlands is very good. I think we definitely can learn a lot from what other countries are doing well. In Scotland, they have a different system where, as an example, they give a baby bundle to parents that have had a baby, which kind of sets them up in that initial first week, especially for the underprivileged. You can't really afford lots of things like milk and nappies.

26:57Louise: Is that free? Yeah, for free. there are lots of things that different different cultures do and i think that and that's actually something that they are that theo is working on is kind of creating this maternity alliance where they pull out um different people from different countries and they get together and have conversations about what's working and what's not working this is fascinating these are things that are still new and you'd think that this sort of stuff existed but we have to remember that there haven't been like an awful lot of women in positions of power up until fairly recently so if we look back to when parliament was only blokes like they it wasn't really going to be a huge priority for them to talk about birth trauma even though you know they would have to deal with the consequences at home when they're living in a toxic environment when their wife is severely unwell or you know which is then having the knock-on effect to a child as well because that's a big part of it too is is the impact that it has on our children which is then the next generation and the cost that that will incur if kids are brought up in broken homes where parents can't handle the trauma they break up or a parent god forbid kills himself or the environment is so toxic that they're then enduring the pain of the you know the challenges the fighting and everything at home like it's it can be really really dark and I think if there's anyone out there that's listening that was going through this just know that you're not not alone but it can feel like you are like the world has been ripped away from you i think that's what people also struggle to understand because unless you've been through something like this it's very difficult to connect with somebody's emotions like you know when you just people could people people might just be sat at home listening to this thinking this whole thing is crazy because they would be thinking, oh, but Louise and Ryan have such a fantastic life.

28:59Louise: Like how can it have really been that hard? But it can feel really bad because it's not easy going through something, especially as a first time parent where you've never had an experience of giving birth before. Just very little education going into that hospital medical environment potentially having to overcome a surgery to heal from that to process that but then also to be thrown into looking after somebody that you've never met before

29:34Louise: it's not always as easy as people make it out to be especially on on social media and I guess the proof is is here when I literally have people that are I mean some of these people are I had like hugely influential people reach out to me after my book came out like people with like millions and millions and millions of followers saying that they'd had experiences but these people haven't said anything publicly but you have oh so why is that then no but this emphasizes the position that you're now in you because you've had the the bravery to do it you've now been catapulted right to the front of the conversation in parliament but is that because are my my brain just went so doolally afterwards that it took me to the rock the most bottom place that I've lost all fear in speaking up about it now that might be part of it yeah but you have an innate desire to help people and you want to protect other women and steer clear from what you've experienced so you have taken that and you've told your story publicly and now people are looking to you clearly so almost i want to say fly the flag but that sounds a little bit so i just need to keep people in the loop then well let me ask you this well no but this is gonna be my next question like i think this comes i think this conversation is absolutely fascinating and monumental how can i help you on this journey i think it's condensing the list of things that we would like to see change if i could run through like my really quick notes that i made when I was in a rush, like trying to get there.

31:10Louise: You don't have to do that. But I think that as an example, I believe that there should be consultant that care for all first births. So that means you have access to a consultant if you need to speak to them. That shouldn't be reserved for the privileged who can afford it, but it also shouldn't be reserved for people that either considered old, so like the over 40 or people in high risk groups. It should be available for people that need to speak to somebody who isn't a midwife if they need more. I believe that a post-birth debrief should always be offered and often people won't take it, hopefully if they don't need it.

31:47Louise: I've mentioned about the transfer of medical notes. I think that there should be more mother and baby units to look after extremely vulnerable people who are suffering with really poor mental health. And Theo and I are going to go and visit some mother and baby units around the country. I think there's still only three in London. There's actually one in her constituency, which is quite rare because there aren't a huge amount when's that happening well we're speaking next thursday so we're then going to make an onward plan this is bloody great i want to follow this journey and i guarantee people will listen to this but want to as well i think people need to know about what their rights are i think the big part of it what they said um that they were working on at the moment is giving at 30 at this 36 week mark giving women like a really kind of like educational having a proper conversation with them where they explain what forceps are an episiotomy is a perianal tear is how many what the stats are of people having a c-section versus an emergency c-section versus a natural birth versus an at-home birth what the likely outcomes of those are based on up-to-date data not outdated guidance which is is the current case also lots of trusts have different policies and i think there needs to be more of a universal like umbrella of of care that everyone has access to like i know some people who got to go and have like swan around birth suites and stuff so don't have a look before can i say something i mean i wouldn't i just would have wanted basic hair would have been nice i also think that they can't have skeleton staffing on the weekend it's not fair actually do you know what four of the women in that room gave birth on a sunday surprise they'd all had medical trauma is that but is that surprising because because they're understaffed hospitals on weekends people giving birth on a weekend deserve the same amount of care as someone giving birth on a monday wednesday or a friday but that's that's well actually so that's one of the things that then i will do when it comes to my research with the form if you experience a traumatic birth yes what day of the week did you give birth on if it was a saturday or sunday problem you know that they have quotas so they They have quotas on when...

33:51Louise: We're in deep. No, wait. Okay, and then I'll shut up. They have quotas on how many, what percentage of births they can allocate C-sections for. So a C-section on average costs around 3 ,000 pounds and a natural birth costs around 700 pounds, like unassisted. That's very interesting. There's a bit of a, let's encourage parents to go down the natural route. That's very interesting information. But then if you have an emergency C-section, more expensive, and then think of the aftermath of that with all of the therapy that people need, the extra support they need, the extra days they need to spend in hospital, the extra scans they need, which are all very expensive, the radiologists to report on those scans, the blood transfusions, all of that is hugely costly.

34:33Louise: And one of the parents who lost their child up in, where was it? Northampton? No. Somewhere where there was one of the big scandals. They wanted to have a plant C-section. They couldn't have one. and the guy literally was like hang on a minute so if we'd given birth in april versus whenever they gave birth like later in i don't know it might even be like the tax year they that their their child might not have died there shouldn't be that lottery you've got as i say a big opportunity but i think it's really important to say at this point because when we started this podcast we were at a time in our life where we saw a good reason to share our story we thought that we might be able to reach a lot of people and help them and we've been going for eight months or so 40 odd episodes and by having this conversation I still I feel quite overwhelmed by it because we've started with something that doesn't feel that long ago in in in reality I can remember the first episode we shot in the kitchen and we've moved into here since and along this journey we we've we but you have told your story and we've shared bits along the way and meanwhile you're now having conversations in parliament and you're part of a whole change of legislation around birth birthing and deliveries and birth trauma and the care for women and maternity and it's this is i think this is one of those moments where you need to hit pause and be like this is this is huge we're you brackets we i think that we need to prioritize this on the podcast and follow what you do next because you're you're leading a charge in a very big topic for the country it is big isn't it if you look at the i know we've got a low birth rate or whatever at the moment but you know fairly even split of men and women and lots of women will have children inevitably so well done basically is what i'm saying well done because we've started off in our kitchen yeah we've had conversations where we've connected through something that we've struggled with we've realized that it's resonated with people up and down the country and abroad you've got yourself into the room with some very senior politicians you're now part of something that's going to implement change and protect people so we you've done an amazing job so we need to follow that now and and when people email and send you messages like that what an unbelievable like show of leadership but all the you know people are just looking up to you it's funny because part of me still just feels like a little Charles right well no yeah I get that but I guess that's why I'm doing this whole spiel right now so you acknowledge what's happening I do feel very proud because it's important to not just breeze past this and be like oh yeah I just skipped my way through houses of commons yesterday with my brother no no this is huge this is really huge

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38:55Louise: I think given the kind of quite heavy nature of this episode, it would feel weird to move on to a listener submission. I think maybe change heavy to poignant. It's not heavy. I think it's like really, this is amazing stuff. Powerful then. Powerful. I would like to read out some of the suggestions from somebody that wrote to me because they've taken quite a lot of time to write, to really think about it and to write something that actually looks really sensible. And I'd like to get your opinion on this as well, Ryan. Hi, Louise. I hope you're really well. I'm sadly in the club of traumatic births.

39:28Louise: Here's my list of things the NHS could do to improve. I'm sure you will be flooded, which must make for difficult reading. Why is it? It is quite emotional. Would you like me to read it? thank you so first of all she says thanks so much for working to change the system it's gonna have a deeply profound impact on so many women again important to acknowledge that inadequate medical feedback had a major hemorrhage uh from forceps and was not actually told i had hemorrhaged therefore didn't take care of myself in the way i should have um she was told by a midwife that there was a vaginal infection on day five and to get it checked at day 10 she went to A &E on day nine and was treated for five days with an operation as all my stitches had become undone and infected uh mental preparation there should be mental preparation for birth where they explain the common mental states that you will go through that includes all emotions with a realistic picture of how little time you have with yourself preparation for actually taking care of the baby um there's no actual class to teach you how to burp what this is actually so true there is no class to teach you how to burp feed sterilize swaddle and set a bait settle the baby.

40:35Louise: Isn't that crazy? You never actually get told how to do any of that. Mate, sorry, I shouldn't say mate. You were so unwell they wheeled that baby in, our baby, after however many hours. I had to go straight into all of those things, by the way. Burping, feeding, swaddling, settling, sterilizing. No one showed me what to do. I never even changed a nappy. Literally, we press a call button, no one will come for half an hour. We could have all imploded, killed each other and no one would have even known. Also needs to be education on what silent reflux is and what reflux is like. Good point, because Leo had reflux and I didn't know what the hell was going on.

41:11Louise: Should we write a manual, Ryan? Too much focus on the merits of breastfeeding. They put so much pressure on you to breastfeed in the first couple of days. They obviously blasted past their medical knowledge and understanding of what the contractions or the process of breastfeeding can cause contractions in the uterus, which for you was the absolute worst and last thing that you should have been doing. And yet they continually, sorry continually put pressure on you doing it so yes too much focus on the merits of breastfeeding that's completely true hospital conditions on the ward much too hot oh my god well there was someone that was a woman who was in that same hospital as us that ended up in intensive care um following a birth and they no one in intensive care was educated on how to look after a baby by the way in the hospital so they didn't even have access to milk well the woman's in a coma so obviously she can't breastfeed and no one could get access to milk in the hospital so they had to go out across the road to a boots to buy formula to take up is this yeah by the way i'm gonna skip through because there's so much but this is unbelievably accurate to our story well yeah because everyone's saying the same thing because it's not actually rocket science no it's not rocket science but i haven't seen this before yeah and i i'm not privileged to these messages okay discharge too early yeah too few facilities and resources what you were just saying about milk and whatever else hesitation for c-sections partner or helper shouldn't be told to leave i couldn't get back into the route into the ward every time i left let's go through the same like vetting process who you're here for how long you're gonna be i haven't left i've been here for seven days you had to sleep on the floor mate it's unbelievable they make it almost impossible this is amazing I'm in tell me how you want me to help and I'm in we should just create like a bit of a kind of document with the things that we want to achieve and then the things that everyone that we're in comes with wants to achieve so everybody out there and then find the best way to achieve those things but make them feel like easy changes inexpensive changes well I'm just going to finish on this because we've got a very close mate who's just had a baby and even by even through awareness of our story he's managed to steer clear of almost all issues yeah and he's had a great birth and they're at home they're happy they're healthy and everyone's great and mine's a godfather yeah which is wonderful so it's an important thing to also look at by even just having a conversation and creating a level of awareness so people know what to look out for this is obviously quite deep talk about writing a manuscript and going in heavy with stuff like that but having a child is beautiful be aware of some of the things that we got tripped up with that's what we're doing yeah one of the the really common messages from people was that they just didn't feel like they were listened to when instinctively they knew what was going on in their body and i think that that's one of the most important things is to trust your gut trust your instincts and if you think that something isn't right then please speak up about it because it's actually very hard for someone to be able to feel the amount of pain that's going on inside your body just from looking at you so push look forward to following the journey that you're about to go on sounds really amazing and if you've enjoyed listening leave comments maybe we maybe this will be a an avenue or a platform where people will get into the conversation themselves yeah i feel good about this great well there you go i feel really proud about yesterday i slept really well well actually i was so exhausted after the whole thing because it is fairly triggering that i passed out in leo's bed at eight when i put him down and i stayed there all night it's true i was yes it's You got the bed to yourself.

45:07But that's a sign that you're on the right track because you're doing things that fulfill and enrich and give you purpose. So I think it's great. So we'll see you again on Monday with an AUA, which no doubt will be snappier, lighter kind of conversations. But thank you for listening.

45:27Louise: Watch this space.

45:39At Boar's Head, we've been going back to school for over 115 years. And this year, every school lunch is reason to celebrate with the flavors your kids love and the exceptional quality you expect. Helping you make school lunch fresh, easy, and delicious. Ring the bell. The deli is open. Orzette. Committed to craft since 1905.