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Tell us your experience

The Birth I Want is looking to build a picture of midwifery care in the UK. Your experiences and opinions will be used to create a vision of the ‘perfect’ midwifery and birth package based on what we as mums and mums to be want. And then we will take that vision to the Government.

We think midwives do a phenomenal job, often under significant pressure. We aren’t looking for unconstructive criticism. What we want are real life experiences of the care you received or are receiving in pregnancy and birth; what worked for you and what didn’t; what needs to change and what should be built on for the future.

Please answer as many of the questions as you can.

Thank you!

About you

1. Name *

2. Email address *

We will not give this to anyone else or use it to flood your inbox

3. Where do you live?

Telling us which county you are in will do just fine

4. When was your baby born / is your baby due?

Month and year will do

The run up to the birth

5. Is your midwife NHS or independent?

NHS

Independent

6. Did you see the same midwife/couple of midwives through your pregnancy and birth?

Yes

7. During your pregnancy how many times did you see your midwife/midwives and where did you have the appointment (GP surgery, at home, clinic)?

8. Did you develop a good relationship with your midwife? Do you feel that this helped during the actual birth?

9. Did you feel you had enough say in planning your maternity care? And did you have access to enough information to enable you to make informed decisions?

10. Were you able to discuss any fears or worries with your midwife and did they help you to resolve them?

11. Thinking about your experience under the care of midwives is there anything you would change?

12. What would be your ‘ideal’ midwifery experience?

Onto the birth itself

13. Are you planning/did you have a hospital birth, birth unit birth or homebirth?

Hospital birth

Birth unit birth

Homebirth

14. Did your midwife support you in your choice of birth location? Did they help you make that choice by discussing all the options available to you?

15. Did you end up having your baby where you wanted?

16. Did you know the midwife who attended the birth?

Yes

17. Did you feel that your midwife was there to provide emotional support or to simply physically deliver your baby?

18. Did you use any pain relief?

This can include water, hypno-birthing techniques, TENS as well as gas and air, epidural etc

19. Did you have a caesarean or any interventions such as forceps or ventouse?

20. Did you have an episiotomy?

Yes

21. If you had a birth plan, did it go according to plan?

Did you change your mind about what you wanted, or was it changed for you? If your plans altered, did your midwife help you deal with it and did you find out why it had been changed?

After the birth

22. If you wanted to breastfeed your baby, did your midwife offer you help?

If you experienced difficulties, could you get consistent advice?

23. If you had a hospital birth were midwives easily accessible on the ward?

24. How many days did midwifery care continue for after the birth - how many home visits did you receive from a midwife after your baby was born?

25. Was your midwife supportive after the birth?

For example, if you suffered from feeling low or from post natal depression did she/he help?

26. Were you given the opportunity to discuss what happened during your pregnancy, birth and postnatal/newborn times?

27. Please tell us about the way the maternity care you received impacted on you, including anything that you might not have expected.

THANK YOU – We will use what you’ve told us to let the government know how maternity services in the UK should look - according to mums.

This is The Birth I Want

We will be using this information to create an overall picture of maternity care in the UK, we will not name names but we might use specific anonymous examples to illustrate a point.

Please don’t give the names of any of your carers.

If you are able to supply an email address we would be really grateful. We will not bombard you with emails and we promise not to share your contact details with anyone.

We may, if we have a specific media request or need for a specific case study, contact you to ask your permission to use your story, or to ask you if you are willing to speak to a journalist.

Website design by Mary Reid.

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