Category: Water birth

1. Setting Up Two New Birth Pools at Starfish HQ | Video

   Posted on 3:50pm Saturday 9th Oct 2021

   It has been around a year since the birth pool hire service suddenly picked up speed. In that time I have bought 4 new birth pools out of my own pocket and hired pools out to over thirty families in Bradford and the surrounding cities.

   I knew I needed some help to be able to buy further pools as setting each one up ready for its first hire costs close to £300, so in June I decided to set up a GoFundMe in order to raise money for the next two birth pools that would be purchased.

2. Do Midwives Really Cut Open Birth Pools at Home Births?

   Posted on 11:05pm Tuesday 16th Mar 2021

   I have lost count of the number of times I have opened my Facebook app, scrolled my news feed and discovered a post in a homebirth support group along the lines of:

   "I've been told that if I pass out in the pool then the midwife will cut the pool open with a knife in order to get to me. Is this true because it's really worrying me?"

   Sometimes it even has an extra spicy side dish of fat-discrimination by specifically referencing the BMI of the mother-to-be or parent-to-be.

   That's not to say it's a daily occurrence. But it happens often enough that I stopped bothering to count how many times quite a while ago.

   I will preface this post, which is destined to be rather ranty, with the statement that I have never heard a story of a midwife actually doing this. That being said, if it has never happened and, as I am about to illustrate, shouldn't ever happen, then why on earth is it still being brought up during homebirth preparation appointments as though it is a real thing?!