What’s changing about childbirth?

Analysis

BBC

Government, Politics, News

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 June 2023

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The past decade has seen important shifts in when women become mothers, with 31 years now being the average age for this to occur. This has implications for fertility, pregnancy and birth experiences. Maternal age is related to ‘medical risk’ and almost one in three births now involve a Caesarean section. But how well are maternity services in the UK keeping up with these changes? Professor of Sociology, Tina Miller examines each stage of becoming a mother – from conception to antenatal preparation, labour and birth, and the postnatal period – to find out how maternity care and other services should respond to these changes.

Presenter: Tina Miller Producer: Dan Hardoon Editor: Clare Fordham Production Coordinator: Maria Ogundele

Zeynep Gurtin, Lecturer in Women's Health at the Institute for Women's Health, UCL Marcia Inhorn, Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University Noreen Hart, antenatal educator Pat O'Brien, consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology, UCL Katherine Hales, midwife Eliane Glaser, author of "Motherhood: Feminism's Unfinished Business"

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.6	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:36.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:41.0	Thanks for listening to this edition of Analysis, the
0:43.6	podcast that looks at ideas behind the news.
0:46.2	I'm Professor Tina Miller and in this episode I explore how childbirth is changing
0:51.2	and how maternity care can adapt to these changes.
0:54.0	For a woman giving birth today, there appear to be more options open to her than at any time previously.
1:04.1	A free birth is a birth where you don't have an official midwife.
1:11.8	We know that Sarah's body has been built to birth a baby without
1:17.6	interventions. I actually wanted to have an epidural. I knew that I wanted to have pain relief in childbirth.
1:26.0	But the reality is that today births are more likely to involve medical intervention.
1:34.2	And far from the choices that women might anticipate
1:36.8	and plan for their birth, likely modes of delivery
1:40.0	have narrowed.
1:42.2	In the UK, nearly one in three babies is now born by Cesarean.
1:46.8	They did discuss doing an epiziotomy and using four sets, but when they got into theater,
	...

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