Why I posed for shocking, risqué photos to get people talking about postnatal care
I’ve been exposed to many unexpected things in my career as a midwife, but posing for photos in the middle of an empty office clad only in a bra and breast pads was new, even for me, writes Olivia Swift
Our society puts the burden of raising the next generation on the shoulders of a single woman and renders it our role, as midwives, to care. Yet with more than 500 midwives and nursing staff leaving our profession each week because of the strain they are under – and women continuing to have babies – the numbers do not (and cannot) work.
I used to open my postnatal support classes with anecdotes about positive birth stories, overwhelmed with joy recalling how amazing it was to empower women to have incredible experiences of birth. I stopped asking this question two years ago, as my clients couldn’t relate to “natural” childbirth.
I’d pan the room, seeing a series of shellshocked faces instead. Their joy, replaced with tears of trauma, on the verge of breaking down.
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