How the battle over ‘normal’ births is still damaging NHS maternity care

i can reveal NHS hospitals are continuing to place job adverts for midwives who will “promote normality’s natural’ births.

i has identified eight such adverts that were placed in 2024 , some as recently as this month .

Safety investigator Dr Bill Kirkup said potentially dangerous attempts to discourage women from medical assistance during childbirth are widespread.

From the 1990s onwards, the natural’ birth agenda was gaining ground among university-based midwifery researchers and campaigners.

It became baked into policy documents for professional bodies for midwives and doctors.

NHS guidelines encouraging hospitals to boost their rate of so-called normal births were released in 2012 .

Caesarean rate has continued rising since 2012 and is now at 31 per cent .

But doctors say it is being pushed up by factors that make successful vaginal birth less possible.

Harriet Hawkins was delivered stillborn, nine hours after her birth at Nottingham University Hospital .

External review of the case found that staff had made 13 errors and concluded the death was “almost certainly preventable” A few weeks before this happened, one of the last things a doctor at the hospital told the couple was: “Don’t let anyone medicalise your birth,” said Dr Hawkins .