Yorkshire Doula

04/03/2025

Access Denied – The Reality of Home Birth Restrictions in the UK 📢

Home birth services are being restricted across the UK—disproportionately impacting minoritised and marginalised communities. What’s behind these restrictions? Why does it matter? What can be done?

❗Join Birthrights on March 26 (12–1:30 PM) for the launch of our report, to learn more about these restrictions and their consequences and hear from expert panellists.
Sign up to attend for FREE now via🎫: bit.ly/web_BR

16/02/2025

Are these the worst birth statistics in the UK? Fewer than 20% of women and birthing people gave birth without surgery or instruments?? Since I suspect 80% of their bodies didn’t fail them I figure the systems there did. There is a national scandal in maternity care in this country.

01/10/2024

"The rhombus of Michaelis (sometimes called the quadrilateral of Michaelis) is a kite-shaped area that includes the three lower lumber vertebrae, the sacrum and that long ligament which reaches down from the base of the scull to the sacrum.

This wedge-shaped area of bone moves backwards during the second stage of labour and as it moves back it pushes the wings of the ilea out, increasing the diameters of the pelvis.

We know it’s happening when the woman’s hands reach upwards (to find something to hold onto, her head goes back and her back arches.” (Wickham and Sutton 2002).

Jean Sutton and I first wrote about the rhombus of Michaelis in 2002.

We weren’t the first to notice it.

Midwives from around the world had been aware of it and discussing it for many years.

Some talked about “the opening of the back,” while others described the shape, and discussed it in the same sentence as they talked about purple lines and cold feet.

That is, the embodied wisdom of birth.

Since we wrote about it, many thousands of midwives and birth workers have learned about this physiological feature of birth from our article and the conversations that it has sparked.

The original article is available on my website.

Yes, it’s one of those named by and for a man, and that’s not OK. But if we change the article title then people won’t be able to find it.

I’m re-sharing the link to the article today in the hope of sharing the information more widely.

You can read it at https://www.sarawickham.com/articles-2/the-rhombus-of-michaelis/

I hope you’ll find it useful.

Yes, please feel free to share and repost this social media post, with the pic, words and credit intact.

Thanks to my friends at for letting me reshare their image

06/02/2024

Apparently twitter is alive with people rubbishing the idea of sterile water injections. I’m not sure why. Sterile water injections to help labouring women and people experiencing back-labour have been around for years, are much more commonly used elsewhere in the world and they work. It’s can be a great alternative to pharmacological options for when the back-labour is intense. They can be administered at home or in hospital, work alongside other forms of pain relief, are cheap, simple and have practically no downsides other the initial sting. They’re not for everyone, they don’t do much for the surges, just back labour. But if you’re not offered an option because your caregiver prefers pharmacological treatments, hasn’t heard of them or just has their own prejudices you’re being denied choice. I don’t see anything wrong with people making their own decisions. They need information to be able to do so.

In today's video, we'll learn what sterile water injections are and how they might help to provide pain relief during labor. We'll discuss the evidence on their effectiveness and the latest clinical recommendations from a 2017 systematic review.

23/01/2024

The Optibreech research has not received funding to continue. This work was looking to widen the provision of vaginal breech birth options to more women and birthing people. The RCM is asking what people want funded in terms of research. There’s a link to the RCM in the page below.

The OptiBreech research study closes this month, but we hope to be back again in the future.

20/01/2024

You rights in childbirth in the UK in various languages xx

It’s really important that women and birthing people and those that care for them, understand basic birth rights in maternity care. It is vital that conversations that lead to decisions, start from a shared understanding of what an individual can or can’t choose to do and the obligations on mate...