February | 2019 | Motherworldly

27 Feb

Book Review: Why Homebirth Matters, by Natalie Meddings

Natalie Meddings is a doula and the founder of Tell Me A Good Birth Story, so sharing positive tales of birth is her way of life. She knows this subject extremely well, and has already covered it extensively in her previous book, How To Have A Baby. Her latest book fits nicely into the Why It Matters series, adding a good helping of How It Works so that this handy little text is both political and practical.

Meddings examines current attitudes to birth generally, and homebirth in particular, both from the medical perspective and that of the general public. However her own perspective, that “birth has never been safer” (p17) guides the reader as she explains the how and why of homebirth in a way that makes both logical and intuitive sense.

For expectant women and their partners, this book has a useful level of detail, making homebirth a realistic possibility, and without neglecting potential “forks in the road” (p109). This is a good resource for getting informed, and for navigating the various faces of the health service in a positive and productive way. This is the kind of little manual that you really could carry around with your pregnancy notes, dipping in as needed or wanted, to really immerse yourself in the way of birth.

[Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of How To Have A Baby. I’d recommend it, and you can get a copy from the publisher, with a 10% discount if you use the code SPROGCAST at the checkout]

26 Feb

Book review: Why Mothering Matters, by Maddie McMahon

Why Mothering Matters is a book full of myth and metaphor, exploring the metamorphosis of woman into mother in a world of judgement and inequality. Maddie McMahon is well qualified to write this book, with her years as a doula, doula trainer, and breastfeeding counsellor granting her a profound understanding of the many different forms this transformation can take, and the almost endless pressures and influences that bear down on the work of mothering.

A contemporary companion to Naomi Stadlen’s What Mothers Do, this book starts its journey here in the 21st Century, listening to the voices of mothers who share their feelings and experiences. What this uncovers is a world of contradiction, where we can feel isolated and yet never disconnected from the world, and where advice comes so thick and fast that it is impossible to grasp hold of the threads that might be useful. We see the many different relationships that can smooth out a difficult day, or blow your confidence out of the water, just in a choice of words.

But this book is not all crowdsourced anecdata; and particularly in the chapter on ‘The Chemical Soup of Motherhood’ Maddie gives us the science behind attachment and baby brain development, relating this to the mother’s wellbeing as the foundation stone of healthy growth in both those areas.

We then swim deeper into the global and historical context of mothering, and page by page the book gets more deeply and gloriously feminist, capturing the essence of motherhood: it is hard, we even make it hard for ourselves, and then the world makes it harder; but it is amazing and under-appreciated. What would the world be like, Maddie asks; what would politics be like, if the country was run by a circle of mothers?

It’s a manifesto and a celebration, but also a very personal piece of writing. Maddie writes about how vulnerable mothers can be, and makes herself vulnerable with this subject which is clearly so precious to her. It’s a really beautiful piece of writing, in so many ways.

[Disclosure: I was sent a free copy of Why Mothering Matters by the publishers. You can get your copy here, with a 10% discount if you use the code SPROGCAST at the checkout]

Maddie talks about the process of writing the book in Episode 46 of Sprogcast.

02 Feb

Book review: Hard Pushed, by Leah Hazard

Hard Pushed is a memoir of midwifery, drawn from Leah Hazard’s years of experience in the NHS. Leah’s words bring the reader right into the maternity ward, sketching her colleagues and the women she cares for with mostly loving detail. This is a very different book from Ellie Durant’s New Walk, but similarly gives a real feel for the pressures and joys of modern midwifery.

Hard Pushed is structured into pairs of chapters, briefly describing a theme, and then illustrating the theme with a story. We have Eleanor the lesbian mother, Star the hypnobirther, the 15 year old mum, the woman being pressured to breastfeed, the trafficked woman: composites and archetypes of the swirling complex mass of human need encountered in a midwife’s world. These women serve to illustrate what it’s like to be a midwife, and the real insight here is very much from a midwife’s perspective. So we see how incredibly hard midwives work, getting through the day on biscuits and coffee, with barely time to go to the loo; and this gives context to the irritation that comes across at the many tiny anxieties expressed by pregnant women, and the dialogue with women in labour that skates over informed consent (“‘We might have to make a wee cut,’ I call brightly.”) For any reader unaware of the overload on our maternity services, this is a very clear picture.

But Leah does write with love, and what comes across is the midwife every woman wants to meet in labour: intuitive, kind, skilled, and willing to bend the rules just enough to personalise care when it matters most. She writes with gentle humour, but doesn’t steer clear of the bleaker stories. And as in real life, leaves many of the vignettes with an unresolved ending, just as these women leave her maternity ward to get on with their own lives, unlikely to be seen again.

This is a book that can be read for easy entertainment, but the subtext is not hidden far below the surface: midwifery is a challenging vocation. It does me good to be reminded of the efforts going on behind the scenes, and to be thankful that there are women prepared to do this work in such trying circumstances.

[Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of Hard Pushed]