Milli Hill - Give Birth Like a Feminist: Your Body. Your Baby. Your Choices.

HQ

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First published in Great Britain by HQ,

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Copyright Milli Hill 2019

Milli Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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Source ISBN: 9780008313104

Ebook Edition 2019 ISBN: 9780008313111

Version: 2019-07-26

Contents

Birth is a feminist issue. And its the feminist issue nobodys talking about. This book aims to start that conversation.

A s Ive gone through the process of writing this book, Ive had a few moments where Ive wondered, why me? My inner critic (dont try to tell me you havent got one of those) has said to me, Milli? Do you really want to open this particular can of worms? As if talking about childbirth wasnt treacherous enough, now you want to drop the F-bomb?! Are you nuts? That is literally the worst combination of topics. You are going to get burned at the stake well, metaphorically speaking, at least. My inner critic is such a gas.

Its true, its not always easy to talk about childbirth, and its not always easy to raise feminist issues. People can even argue about what feminism actually is, but to me its simple: feminism just means noticing when women are getting a raw deal, and taking action. And this is where the problem lies with childbirth. Not enough people are noticing that women are getting a raw deal, and not enough people are taking action. Weve become blinkered to the massive imbalance of power in the birth room, and somehow come to accept that birth is inherently unpleasant and undignified, or even traumatic, degrading and violating. Thats just how it is! Well I want this book to tell you it doesnt have to be that way, and as feminists we must no longer tolerate this state of affairs.

Feminism doesnt have to be complicated, and it doesnt have to be exclusive. Giving birth like a feminist doesnt mean giving birth a certain way, just as doing anything else career, relationships, parenting like a feminist doesnt require a one-size-fits-all approach. You can give birth like a feminist in any setting and in any way, from elective caesarean in a private hospital to freebirth in the ocean. All thats required is that you have somehow moved from a passive place where you view birth as something that happens to you and over which you have no control, to a place of understanding that you may get a raw deal in this experience if you dont wake up and get yourself into the driving seat. Essentially: take charge, take control, and make conscious choices.

When I speak at mainstream maternity events, I am often shocked by the fact that telling women and their partners that they have rights and choices in the birth room so often seems to come as a revelation. Many people have no sense of themselves as autonomous or powerful in their labour and birth, nor do they feel that there is anything they can do or not do to influence the way their birth unfolds. They are often misinformed and, to compound this, their belief that they have little or no agency then prevents them from seeking out much information. What is the point in learning about your options against a backdrop in which the phrase not allowed is used with such alarming frequency? Most pregnant couples believe that the majority of choices are out of their hands. In practical terms this means that, on a daily basis, fingers enter the vaginas of women who do not know they can decline. How can this be acceptable? Even the most progressive of maternity conversations emphasises informed consent, with the unspoken assumption that consent, not decision making, or possibly even informed refusal, is the goal. Maternity professionals will speak of how they consent women using it as a verb, I am just going to go and consent her, as if the professional is the active one in the exchange and the women herself is passive. Its time to challenge a system that perpetuates this myth of unquestioning co-operation and female powerlessness.

When you raise a complaint about a female experience, you quite often get quickly reminded of how unusual, niche or rare the problem is, and just how good so many women have it. This focus-shifting is epitomised so well by the hashtag #notallmen used to remind women just how many good, well-rounded men there are in the world when they try to highlight any issue from mansplaining to rape. #notallmen are rapists. #notallmen have sexist attitudes. #notallmen beat their wives, remember! Hang on, the women say, we dont want to talk about the large percentage of wonderful men who respect women we want to talk about the other bunch, who dont. But in the diversion, the point has already been diluted, making the aggressor seem like the victim in the process. This diversionary tactic happens in conversations about birth, too. Attempts to complain about anything from lack of consent, to women not being properly listened to in labour, to institutionalised misogyny and racism in maternity care, are so often met with protests from health workers of Its not like that where I work! or Not all midwives/obstetricians are like that, its important not to make sweeping statements, etc. So, before we get started on our journey through this book, I want to stress that my focus throughout is not on individuals, but on the systems in which they operate. Maternity care is a system that needs to be challenged, built by and within another system that needs to be challenged patriarchy. Please dont divert attention from this vital issue if you feel that you personally are working in a way that fully respects women as autonomous, or if you received gold-standard care in your own pregnancy. This is indeed wonderful, but its not really what we are all here to talk about.

Likewise, there can sometimes be protests that we should be doing more to celebrate the wonderful men and in the same way the wonderful maternity care providers who are getting it right. Its true, there are some brilliant midwives, doctors, obstetric units and organisations out there who are providing the most fantastic, refreshing, woman-centred, personalised maternity care and yes, praise is a good thing, and yes, some of them are in this book. But do we really need to repeatedly celebrate those who are simply providing what women need and deserve? Do men who treat women with respect need a great big pat on the back? No they are simply behaving normally, with the required, standard levels of kindness and compassion. There should not have to be medals for this, and for the same reasons I have not devoted endless pages of this book to good, decent, rights-based maternity care. Listening to women, caring for them as individuals, and respecting them as the key decision maker in the birth room should cease to be seen as a shining beacon in the darkness and start to be viewed as the baseline norm.