The Make Birth Better network aims to raise awareness of birth trauma, campaign for changes to maternity services, create a platform for all of the varied experiences of birth, provide information for families and professionals and offer training and consultation to individuals and services. We are a collaboration of passionate individuals from diverse backgrounds - parents with lived experience of trauma, medical professionals, mental health professionals, birth professionals, researchers and peer supporters - united in a common goal to Make Birth Better. 

As a starting point, we hope you will find this website useful. It aims to provide information to women and their partners throughout their maternity journey, share your stories and offer support. We also hope to provide support to professionals, providing a platform for your voices to be heard, celebrating examples of good practice and offering training and support. Throughout the website, you will read quotes from women involved in the first Make Birth Better campaign, who shared their stories with Emma during Birth Trauma Awareness Week 2017.

We had our first meeting in February 2018, and now have over 40 members of our network, all working together to think about how we can Make Birth Better for everyone.

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Birth trauma is being spoken about more than ever, at last. There have been a number of articles in the press, recognition that many women have a fear of birth, increasing emphasis on women-centred practices and, of course, the Better Births initiative being rolled out across the UK. With increasing funding for specialist perinatal mental health services too, women and their partners should soon have access both to the support they need to improve their chances of a positive birth, and to the support they may need following a difficult birth. 

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Simultaneously, we hear many stories from women and their partners about feeling let down during their labours, let down by services and unable to access support. You can read some of these stories here, collected as part of the first Make Birth Better campaign in 2017. If you'd like to add your story, then do send it to us. We are facing a huge shortage of midwives, maternity funding is being cut, and doctors are struggling too. We know that birth trauma has long lasting and wide ranging impact, and we all passionately believe that services have a responsibility to tackle this quickly and effectively.

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While talking is useful in raising awareness and ensuring others don't feel alone - it is now time to try and create some change. 

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Click here to see who is in the network - and let Emma or Rebecca know if you'd like to be involved. 

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We always welcome feedback on the website 

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You're encouraged to believe that as long as you have a healthy baby that nothing else matters. Of course, that's what matters most to me. And he is healthy and he is happy and he's loved and he's everything I could ever hope for. But there's absolutely no reason why that should be at the expense of my wellbeing.