Building Birth Confidence
Building Birth Confidence is the podcast for anyone who is pregnant after a difficult birth, pregnancy loss, or traumatic experience, and who is scared, exhausted, and trying to find a way through.#
I’m Katie, an NHS Mental Health Midwife and Perinatal Trauma Specialist. Every week I bring you honest, clinically informed conversations about the things that rarely get said out loud: the fear, the guilt, the disconnect, the grief that comes with pregnancy after trauma. And the tools, the understanding, and the realistic hope that can make a real difference.
This is not a positive thinking podcast. This is a podcast for people who need more than reassurance. You deserve support that actually meets where you are.
New episodes every week. Start wherever feels right.
Building Birth Confidence
Your Trauma Informed Birth Plan
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For a lot of people who have been through a traumatic birth, the idea of writing a birth plan feels pointless or painful or both. In this episode, Katie reframes what a birth plan is actually for when you have a difficult history, and walks through exactly what to put in one so that your care team understand what you have been through, what you need, and how to support you before you are in the room and in the thick of it. This is a genuinely practical episode with a clear structure you can use straight away.
In This Episode
- Why a standard birth plan does not really work for someone with a traumatic history, and what a trauma-informed one does differently
- Why writing this plan is not being difficult or demanding, and what your care team actually think when they read one
- The five sections that belong in a trauma-informed birth plan, from a brief summary of your previous experience through to your communication preferences and what you need to feel safe
- How to make sure the plan gets into your maternity notes and travels with you, including what to do if you feel it is not being taken seriously
- Why feeling prepared going into this birth matters, even if things do not go exactly as you hope
Practical Tool This Week
Start drafting your trauma-informed birth plan. You do not need to finish it in one sitting. Begin with just the first section: a few sentences about what happened last time and how it felt. That is the foundation, and the rest tends to follow more naturally once you have written that part down. A free birth plan guide and template following the structure from this episode is linked in the resources below.
Resources Mentioned:
Free Trauma-Informed Birth Plan Workbook | Birthcare with Katie
30-Day Calm & Confident Birth Challenge (free)
https://birthcare.co.uk/30-day-mindset-challenge
Better Birth Anxiety Workbook — The Birthcare Collection
https://birthcare.co.uk/products-list
Birth Without Fear: Essentials for a Better Birth
https://birthcare.co.uk/birth-without-fear
CONNECT WITH KATIE:
Instagram: @birthcarewithkatie
Website: https://birthcare.co.uk/