Keeping up with the updates The boys slept through it all and were surprised with a baby sister when they came in to wake us the next morning. This was a beautiful moment, and I can’t imagine how I would have felt if I’d been alone in hospital and they weren’t able to meet her so soon. Having a baby in the pandemic certainly wasn’t the easiest experience but in the weeks afterwards it had its advantages. My 9lb baby breastfed so much and so well that she was 10lb by two weeks old![1] There was no pressure to pass her around to visitors. The boys got to spend so much time with their little sister and now, one year later, the three of them are so close. We’ve had an unusual first year with more homeschooling and a lack of the normal support systems, such as baby groups, for much of the year. However, I have been fortunate to spend lots of time with my family and close friends and towards the end of my maternity leave I managed some normality. Daisy is a happy, confident little girl who has been on fast-forward to learn everything, walking at 10 months to try and catch up with her brothers. She is now at nursery and settled in so easily I think she was a bit bored of all the time at home with me! Whilst the later months of my pregnancy weren’t what I planned, I am still fortunate to have an amazing daughter and to overall have had a positive experience. Author Bio: Caroline lives in Reading with her husband and three children. She enjoys her day job as a Financial Adviser and in her spare time is a volunteer for her local NCT branch, Maternity Voices Partnership and the school PTA.
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Keeping up with the updates by Nadia Higson
In March 2020 as the country went into lockdown, calls to the AIMS Helpline shot up. We were hearing from women who’d been told with almost no notice that midwifery support for a long-planned homebirth would not be provided; that they would have to attend scans alone, that they could not have their partner with them in hospital until a midwife deemed them to be in ‘active labour’ – or sometimes, even at all. It quickly became clear that, whilst some NHS Trusts were making imaginative efforts to maintain choice and ensure that pregnant women and people could have the support they needed, others seemed to have just thrown up their hands and decided that it was all too difficult. On 9 April, NHS England published a 'Clinical guide for the temporary reorganisation of intrapartum maternity care during the coronavirus pandemic' [1].AIMS welcomed this with the comment that “it provides a good reflection of what women are telling us they need at this difficult time, and should provide a useful guide for Trust Boards across the country.” There was much to applaud in this guidance. It included recommendations that Trusts should: publish information about their current maternity care provision in
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