There is a fair chance that you have travelled through your life thus far without being aware of the judgement of others. Or maybe not.

I am going to give you two really great tools to use for when you need to make really strong & well thought out decisions.

I like to think of your birth options as a huge supermarket of choice. It is all there if you are just willing to put the legwork in and look for it. Or ask for directions. Provider bias is the shiny stuff placed all around the tills.

You need to be your own best champion in life. The love of your life, your guide, your cheering team, your observer and your forgiver.

Is it possible for someone to just be too tired to give birth? When a labour has gone on… and on… and on…?

To have your craziest problems affirmed as normal and your darkest worries brought into the light, shared and diminished.

What do you know about affirmations? I like to think of them as totems, held by the speaker to ward off all fear and darkness. The comforting sounds of a mantra repeated again and again…

You don’t need help to sneeze. You don’t need help to cry. You don’t need someone to watch you, or coach you to have a poo.

It is your responsibility to decide where you wish to birth.

It is your responsibility to decide who will support you in this birth.

As we all know our facial expressions reflect our emotional states. I’m happy so I smile, I’m angry so I grimace, I’m miserable so I frown.

We look around us. The sky, the sea, the stairs and the handrail.

We notice that the stairs are wooden, worn deeper in the centre and covered with a sprinkling of fine, white sand. And then we look to the hand rail.

‘For too long, women have been told that their bodies are the wrong shape and size, that they’re too hairy, too dirty, too smelly, too old, too fat and that they don’t work properly.’

While happily residing inside mum there have been dim lights, smooth surfaces and constant sound.

Your body is complex. Perfectly designed but complex. Labour is a delicate dance between both your baby’s needs and your own.

The most important thing I wish you to know though is that the placenta is owned by you.

Many women feel pride in this scar, but if it was not in the mental and emotional birth plan it can seem shocking, unsettling and can distance a woman from her body and birth experience.

But when in labour what does that actually mean? So many women I work with want something more tangible to go on. A checklist or timing. An app. Or just someone to tell them.

I am not a medical form, or a process. A risk or an inconvenience. A window in your schedule.

The idea that labour is a pass or fail situation and that the woman herself is the fault for this unnecessary mishap bakes my brain.