If you are pregnant, or have ever been pregnant, you will be more than familiar with birthing horror stories. And maybe, just maybe, you have been told that having any expectations about the kind of birth you want is silly and frivolous.
Ignore that noise, says Milli Hill, founder of The Positive Birth Movement, who has heard every birth story there is to hear – terrifying, beautiful and everything in between.
Hear Milli’s interview on This Glorious Mess, here:
Milli argues that the current trend to tell women to rip up their birth plans and hand over all control of their birth experience is disempowering women when they are at their most vulnerable.
“I was absolutely terrified when I was pregnant for the first time,” the birth guru says. “[But I learned] women are the permission seekers in the labour room when they ought to be the permission givers.”
Milli argues that telling women their birth doesn’t matter and that a healthy baby is the only thing that does is trivialising the suffering of an upset and traumatised woman.
New mum Kylie Ostle shared these beautiful photos of her newborn. Post continues below.
“What that’s saying to them is your experience and what happened to you isn’t really important, so let’s not talk about it any more,” Milli says.
“It goes without saying that a healthy baby is the absolute main thing that we all want from birth. But I think it should be the baseline of our expectations not the pinnacle of our expectations.”
Milli also says that her movement, which aims to connect women around the world who want to share their wisdom about birth, is not at all about home births and whale sounds (although in her books, hey, that's fine too). She's a big advocate for women having the birth they want whether that's a scheduled C-section or a candle-lit water-bath in the birth centre.
"The main thing is to let pregnant women know they have choices, and they have rights. They are in the driving seat, they have the right to speak up and ask for what they want."
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Listen to the full episode of This Glorious Mess here:
Top Comments
Taking self-centredness to a whole new level ...
This woman is going to be making money off telling people to do what's best for them and basically saying ignore medical advice if it goes against what YOU want out of your birth experience. What is wrong with listening to medical experts? What is wrong with being flexible, as things can change very quickly. We are blessed to live in a country where we have a high survival rate for mothers and babies, and that is because we have (generally) excellent medical care. There will be exceptions, but overall, medical staff are just doing their best to get the safest outcome for mother and child.