Nappy rash: current evidence for the prevention and management

Nappy rash, also known as diaper rash, nappy dermatitis, diaper dermatitis or irritant diaper dermatitis, is one of the most common skin conditions found in infants and is an acute inflammatory...

Reducing the incidence of stillbirth in black women

A stillbirth is a baby delivered at or after 24 weeks of pregnancy showing no signs of life, irrespective of when the death occurred The UK is noted to have one of the highest stillbirth rates in...

Measuring women's experiences of childbirth using the Birth Satisfaction Scale-Revised (BSS-R)

The 10-item Birth Satisfaction Scale-Revised (BSS-R) is a multi-factorial psychometrically robust tool developed for the purpose of measuring women's experiences of labour and childbirth (Hollins...

Vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy, lactation and infancy: why is it fundamental?

Vitamin D, known as the ‘sunshine vitamin’, is made in the skin in response to ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation, and once activated in the body to the hormone calcitriol (1,25 dihydroxy-vitamin D), it...

Guidance for the provision of antenatal services during the COVID-19 pandemic

On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus, a new strain of coronavirus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-COV-2) causing COVID-19, had...

‘Birth Days’: a documentary film

A woman appears on screen; she cries deeply A friendly hand appears on screen, caresses the naked back of the woman, then her face A midwife tries to comfort a woman in labour The pregnant woman and...

Acupressure And Acupuncture During Birth: An Integrative Guide For Acupuncturists And Birth Professionals

Utilisation of antenatal care services as determinants of satisfaction and its challenges in Lagos, Nigeria

Complications of pregnancy and childbirth cause more deaths and disabilities than any other reproductive health problems in African countries, including Nigeria (World Health Organization [WHO], 2016)...

Investigation of informed consent procedures initiated in the intrapartum period

There is common agreement that the three key elements of informed consent, voluntarism, information disclosure (Office for Human Research Protections, 1979) and the decision-making capacity of an...

A report on a quality improvement initiative to increase midwives' confidence in attending home birth

Aquality improvement project was initiated with the aim of increasing home birth within a London NHS trust In 2016, the ‘Better Births’ report (NHS, 2016) was published As an early adopter for the...

Why Oxytocin Matters

Why Oxytocin Matters As a whole, this...

First week on the job

‘No one can prepare you for the transition from student to qualified practitioner’ These are the wise words of my mum, former intensive treatment unit nurse and current matron She's absolutely right...

Does COVID-19 affect pregnant women?

Why breech birth matters

I was recently teaching a physiological breech birth training day for Breech Birth Network, CIC where I met a wonderful doula with a vast amount of knowledge on physiological birth and supporting...

Enabling perinatal volunteering

There is overwhelming evidence that volunteering and peer support has a unique and valuable contribution to make to ‘Better Births’ outcomes (Spiby et al, 2015; Parents 1st and Institute for Voluntary...