It is widely accepted in British culture that pregnancy past 42 weeks is 'dangerous' and that maternity services 'won't let you' stay pregnant that long. Induction of labour is supposed to be offered as an option, alongside the option of expectant management, but most of the time women and birthing people experience strong pressure to be induced and resisting it can be hard.

E's birth story is about her experiences reisisting induction past 42 weeks, making informed decisions and, ultimately, getting the birth she wanted.

We all know broadly what self-care is – it’s doing various things to look after yourself and your health, whether that be physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, blah blah. It seems easy, but it isn’t always. There’s a bunch of problems that regularly seem to come up when self-care is the topic of discussion.

I remember my first birth like it was yesterday. Well, I do and I don’t. I have clear memories of it, but they are flashes of clarity in a sea of murkiness, in the way that memories from your childhood tend to be. I was probably around the age of 7 or 8, so I’m sure this can be forgiven.

I have come to realise that that evening was a rather important experience for me as a person. It is said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step and that evening was, I think, my first step.

Last week, I saw a comment on a public facebook post. The post was asking for experiences of hypnobirthing, and the comment said, “my advice is to write your birth plan, and then have a ceremonial burning of it, because that’s the only part of your plan that will actually happen”.

I felt sad.

When you are a new doula, you know it is only a matter of time before you come across your first long pregnancy. As a business we have to operate in the way that is most efficient, and for most of us that means blocking out a 4 week block [38-42 weeks] per client and only being on-call for one client at once. We all know that clients can go into labour outside of that time, but that is when they are most likely to labour. Of all the births I’ve supported, only a handful have been before 38 weeks, and almost all of those births have been planned early inductions.