Which? have a flow chart where you can fill in your preferences and it will help guide you towards the options that might suit you best. There are also reviews of maternity units: hospitals, birth centers, specialist labour wards etc.

Birthrights is the UK’s only organisation dedicated to improving women’s experience of pregnancy and childbirth by promoting respect for human rights. They believe that all women are entitled to respectful maternity care that protects their fundamental rights to dignity, autonomy, privacy and equality.

Find out your rights.

Listening to a good birth story is powerful. It’s a simple message - ‘I did it, so can you’ – and it inspires courage. They connect pregnant women with mothers who have good birth stories to share – and link by link, are building a big beautiful chain of birth confidence.

information about birth based on evidence and studies with the aim to educate as many people as possible about their options. They also aim to keep health professionals and doulas informed.

An excellent source of evidence based information to see if home birth might be right for you. Covering risk, support from midwives, water births, what you might need to plan a home birth, the benefits, birth stories and lots of evidenced based research. If you like that sort of thing, it is brilliant.

Support and information for planning a C-section birth, the organisation aims to:
– Challenge research and information provided to women about different birth plan risks
– Establish physical and psychological birth outcomes as formal indicators of quality care, instead of birth processes…
– Hold organisations to account (e.g. WHO’s 1985 recommended 15% cesarean rate threshold and 2015 CDMR position, and the RCOG’s 2012 recommended 20% caesarean rate)

• Campaigning for better births for all

• Protecting human rights in childbirth

• Independent information about pregnancy and birth

• Raising awareness of research

Dr Emma Svanberg, a Clinical Psychologist

...since 2009 and Hypnobirthing practitioner since 2010. I’ve worked in a number of different mental health settings but specialise in the perinatal period – the time around pregnancy, birth and the first years of parenthood.

a video for a birth chair, but has really good examples of what birth looks like inside the body

A Zero Bullsh*t Guide To Supporting The One You Love

Not for everyone, but fun for some

in depth description of the progress and stages of labour.

“She is 4 months.

Her aunt is holding her
Her eyes dart around looking for me.
She finds me and I feel her eyes burning into me.
I look over at her and she beams.
I smile back and carry on cutting the veges.
I can tell she’s staring at me.
I look up again but instead of a smile, her face crumbles and she begins to cry.
I take her back and her aunt finishes the veg.
She immediately stops crying.

She is 4 months…. “