Hannah Ketcher

I can't promise you the birth you want. You might be surprised to hear me say that I can't promise you that you will give birth at home, that you won't need to transfer into hospital, that you won't want pain relief, that you won't need an intervention or that everything will unfold exactly as you pictured it when we first sat down together and talked about your hopes for birth. I'm a midwife. I'm not God. And actually, I think it's really important that I'm honest about that. Because however...

I have breastfed two babies, and one of the places where I have sometimes felt most conscious of doing it has been in church. And I know I am not alone in that. There are women who feel unsure about whether breastfeeding in church is actually acceptable. Women who feel that they ought to leave the service and find a separate room. Women who feel that they need to cover themselves and their baby with a large feeding cover, regardless of whether that actually makes feeding more difficult. Women...

“God will provide”… but only up to a point? “God will provide.” It’s something we say a lot as Christians. And rightly so. We believe in a God who knows what we need, who cares about the details of our lives and who can be trusted with them. But I wonder whether sometimes we say “God will provide” while subtly putting parameters around what we think that provision is allowed to look like. I’ve heard variations of this particularly when it comes to maternity care. “Be grateful for what you’ve...