Understanding Anxiety, Worry and Fear in Childbearing

This book informs and enlighten health professionals on how the recognition of fearing women can change their episode of care during childbearing.  It gives practical advice on the way women present to services and the challenges that this invokes.  This work is the first of its kind aimed at clinicians to deconstruct ideology around childbearing myths and its challenges.  The authors review the evidence that exists and how modern maternity systems are responding to fear and shaping healthcare.

Whilst some worry and anxiety is expected and indeed considered normal during childbearing, it has been suggested that this has now proliferated to a degree of abnormal for many women.  Why is that and how is this panic spread?  Media portrayal of birth is suggested as unrealistic material and to show only that which is dramatic and horrific.  This has been considered as one factor influencing modern women. 
Medicalisation, technology and demand upon services is another consequence of providing almost all maternity care in hospitals.  Given that the majority of childbearing women are fit and healthy is this another causative factor?

By removing women from their homes and families at such a vulnerable time has a serious consequence for how she will experience her greatest leap of faith into motherhood. All of these issues are explored and examined in the book with ideas and practical suggestions of what may be done to change this increasingly common problem.  This book is intended at midwives and clinicians working in maternity settings.

Kathryn Gutteridge is a long established consultant midwife who has been interested in women’s psychological experiences of childbearing since working closely with women and their families.  She trained as a psychotherapist and researched women’s lived experiences of childbirth and mothering.  She has provided a clinic for women who specifically find adaptation to pregnancy challenging and many of those women have professed to be fearful and some phobic about their childbearing.

Multi-award winner Kathryn, who trained as a midwife in the 1980s, has been at the forefront of maternity care at City and Sandwell Hospitals since she joined the Trust in 2006. Her early objectives were to inspire staff to work together to bring warmth to the delivery suite, shift the focus to natural births and provide enhanced facilities, effectively creating a ‘home from home’ environment.

 An expert in the effects of sexual abuse on pregnant women, Kathryn set up the Hope Clinic – a contemporary midwifery approach to maternal mental wellbeing – to take referrals for women who have been traumatised and need special help during their pregnancy. She also founded Sanctum Midwives; an organisation that educates, represents and challenges stigma around sexual abuse and its impact during motherhood. Not only is Kathryn a highly-decorated clinician, she is also a well-respected one, and was given the honour of hosting Her Royal Highness Princess Anne at a RCM event in 2013. She has given keynote speeches at conferences around the world where she has held master classes for people looking to get into, or already in, midwifery. She was named Midwife of the Year by the British Journal of Midwifery.