Will you get the Birth Experience you want?

Birth with Dignity

Beverly Turner looks at birthing with dignity in the Telegraph:

"Yesterday’s inaugural Birthrights's Dignity in Childbirth Conference in London’s Royal College of Physicians sought to distinguish between the two and highlight the fact that British women are being treated with a shocking lack of dignity at the very moment when they should be revered. As President of the Royal College of Midwives, Lesley Page said on her opening address: “Birth is a time in a woman’s life when she is at her most vulnerable but has the potential to be at her most powerful. She needs to feel that her needs are uppermost. If you give her sensitive and understanding care, you set her on the path to motherhood with confidence.”

But according to a survey of 1,100 women, conducted by Mumsnet, the research around which the conference hinged, only 50 per cent of women in the UK are getting the birth they want. Twenty-six per cent had no choice about where to give birth and a shocking 24 per cent did not consent to some of the most intimate procedures available to a naked woman (including forceps deliveries, vaginal examinations or cervical sweeps). "

Why half of UK women not getting the birth they want