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
Taking Back Control
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After a traumatic birth, the drive to control everything about the next one makes complete sense. In this episode, Katie talks honestly about why that drive, however understandable, tends to keep people exhausted and stuck rather than actually prepared. She separates out what is genuinely within your control from what is not, and explains why accepting that separation is one of the most useful things you can do as you approach this birth. There is also a practical technique for the what-if spiral that will feel very familiar to a lot of people listening.
In This Episode
- Why trying to prepare for every possible outcome is your threat system doing its job, and why it does not actually help
- The honest list of what is and is not within your control during birth, and why being clear about that separation matters
- What the what-if spiral looks and feels like from the inside, and what is actually happening in the brain when it takes hold
- Why anxious preparation that focuses on worst-case scenarios keeps the nervous system in a state of high alert rather than reducing fear
- A three-step redirect technique for stepping out of the what-if spiral when it starts, and why practising it now makes it easier to access when it counts
Practical Tool This Week
The what-if redirect. When a what-if thought arrives, work through three steps: name it without arguing with it, give it a brief acknowledgement rather than following it into detail, then consciously bring your attention back to the present or to something you are actively doing to prepare. You will need to do this more than once. Each time the thought comes back, you do the same thing again. Over time, the brain learns that the thought does not have to lead anywhere.
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/