07/05/2022
Dr Sara Wickham is a legend of a lady. For the evidence based book worms among us this sort of enlightenment is what we need in the Global South.
Six months ago today, my newest book was published.
It's called "In Your Own Time: How western medicine controls the start of labour and why this needs to stop."
I had already written one book about induction of labour, but I realised that there was more that people needed to know.
Currently, more than a third of women in the UK have their labour induced, but the evidence for this is questionable.
Like the fact that there are numerous benefits to going into labour spontaneously.
That the evidence doesn’t show what some obstetric organisations claim it does.
That there’s also an important history here.
And I do mean “his” story, for the roots of the current situation lie in the patriarchal approach that our culture and western medicine has taken towards birth for the past two or three hundred years.
And whatever the guidelines say, we know that induction is being offered for reasons that aren’t evidence-based.
Women and families need to know what the evidence really says about induction for suspected big babies, and for women who are older or larger than average.
And we needed more understanding of why induction isn’t the answer to the higher perinatal mortality rates experienced by Black, Brown, Asian and mixed-race women, babies and families.
This information needed sharing, and that’s what I did in this book.
I was overwhelmed by the way it was received, and it soon became the most successful book I had ever written.
Thank you for caring about these issues as much as I do 💜
You can find out more at www.sarawickham.com/time
