Endings and new beginnings

Welcome to my new blog, it has taken a wee while to get pen to paper so to speak. Where to start? How to frame what I want to say? What might be useful for others? Big questions but I landed on starting at the end of my PhD - ‘Practising outside of the box, whilst within the system’: A feminist narrative inquiry of NHS midwives supporting and facilitating women’s alternative physiological birthing choices. Most of you know my work through my PhD and it felt right to share the bigger things I learnt along the way. For me, doing it wasn’t just an intellectual challenge (which it was) but it was a hugely emotional journey. Like many researchers, my topic was borne out of personal experience; namely, the awe-inspiring, life-changing, empowering birth of my son with thanks to the two brilliant midwives who expertly and lovingly guided me through. And like many others, my birth didn’t pan out exactly as planned, but I felt safe and cared for throughout and came through not just intact but transformed. For me, such a positive experience, both the act of birth itself and because of such loving, skilled care I received, where I had developed a trusting relationship, was instrumental in a bigger story of transformation. One that started a deep healing process of working through and overcoming childhood trauma. These experiences perhaps make my attachment to quality midwifery care self-explanatory! One I am committed to everyone receiving, no matter their choices, decisions, or mode of birth. It is within the relationships that potential for transformative experiences may occur, however birth itself pans out. The following is pulled from my PhD, my final thoughts and reflections on the process, revealing the magnitude of learning I experienced (and yes that is me in the picture, early hours of the morning 17th July 2006, having a quick snack in between contractions - and look at the size of the TV in the background, how things have changed!)

Until next time, Claire.

‘10.6 Final (personal) thoughts

Reflecting throughout this study has been a big part of the process, with over 300 pages typed in a word document and 10 notebooks generated. One of the biggest challenges during this research was the immersion in the feminist literature that reignited old hurts. Having grown up in a strict patriarchal household, and having experienced stigmatisation for my own midwifery practice, such immersion in feminist theory pushed many buttons. To work through such strong emotions is still an ongoing process, not yet completed. However, through the process of this research, I have learnt to channel it, make it productive, and even see (some) things in a more balanced way. Where I was angry at (some) midwives for perpetuating patriarchal norms, a key paper by Beckett (2005) stood out and radically altered my perspective. Amongst many arguments within her paper, Beckett suggested that the nature of midwifery work is exploitative of women i.e., the physical, emotional, and mental demands for usually poor pay and insecure working conditions. Whilst this was not a new insight, how she framed it startled me and made me question whether we can ask midwives to practice ‘full-scope’ midwifery when so many systemic issues stack against it. Whilst I still feel conflicted about this, my feelings have softened to much greater compassion and empathy. This coupled with other feminist literature (such as Kate Manne’s book in 2018 Logic of Misogyny) where patriarchal structures can cause women to act against each other, made me recognise that whilst we do hold personal responsibility for our actions, such negative behaviour is often a symptom of pervasive structural inequalities.

The data collection was at times challenging. To hold the space for midwives who had suffered terribly within their work was heart-breaking. Having a natural tendency to try and ‘fix’ things for people, hearing such accounts was another opportunity for me to learn and relearn holding the space and bearing witness to another’s pain. This I hope, was conveyed to the participants and was of benefit to them. In other accounts, the participant stories were triggers for my own workplace experiences. Where there were stories of social isolation it brought up buried pain and shame that I still carried from those experiences. Where there were stories of great team-working and joy, it reminded me of my loss of leaving a wonderful team to work elsewhere. Yet simultaneously, those stories brought back wonderful memories and gave me hope for midwifery. Listening to beautiful stories of the births the midwives were involved with was a joy. Some of the participants were wonderful storytellers that to listen to them retell their stories, I felt like I was there with them. They reminded me of the beauty and awe of positive birth experiences and reconnected me to my love of midwifery. Listening to all of the participant stories was a privilege, whether it was sadness or despair, anger or rage, or beauty and love, or a straightforward matter of fact ‘this is how we do things’. Additionally, I learned so much for my own midwifery practice, so many ‘tricks’ and ‘tools of the trade’, that had I not carried this research I would not have known. I was also deeply inspired to find out that the normalisation of women’s choices exists in many organisations.

Engaging with the narrative inquiry literature brought immense amounts of simultaneous frustration and joy. Just as I grasped an argument, it would slip away by a different researcher’s perspective. Having come to narrative inquiry from what appeared to be a fluke, I felt a strong resonance with it. I have a personal affinity with people’s stories, so narrative inquiry was personally fitting as well as meeting the aims of the research. However, my initial and naïve understandings of narrative gave way to a messy, complicated world of narrative research. I was bemused and frustrated to find that what a story is, was in dispute. Part of my frustrations stemmed from lack of experience and fear of doing the research incorrectly. Attending the postgraduate course in narrative research at the University of East London was meant to bring clarity and develop my skills. However, it appeared that the messiness of narrative research was even messier than I had thought. The process of the course meant that I had to live with ambiguity, complexity, and conflicting perspectives. Fundamentally, I had to make my own decisions about how I viewed narrative to guide my subsequent approaches. Such freedom was daunting and caused paralysis at times. I found myself avoiding such decisions through more reading, which in turn created more arguments to choose from. Eventually, I managed to move forward, to develop enough confidence to begin the deep work of analysis. This was also facilitated by my engagement with feminist pragmatism, which rather than being an approach that I ‘adopted’ for this research, it appeared to articulate many of my views.

The ending of this research actually marks the ending of a bigger cycle in my life. The labour and birth of my son was the beginning, where I experienced the immense power of a trusting and meaningful relationship with my midwives. No words can convey my gratitude to them, but as I reflected upon the hidden meanings of choosing such a PhD topic, I realised that is where this started. They practised ‘full-scope’ midwifery, loving, compassionate, skilled in the art and science of midwifery practice. It is because of them ‘practising outside of the box, whilst within the system’ that I achieved the physiological birth that I so wanted. Having an embodied experience of the transformative power of birth changed how I viewed the world and was the catalyst for massive life changes. I left a toxic relationship, started an OU course, applied for midwifery undergrad, got accepted, and so forth. Getting this far, having been immersed in a topic that is so deeply personal has been a blessing and privilege. With privilege comes great responsibility; self-doubt and fear of not doing justice to my midwives and the midwife participants has been problematic at times. However, I have learned to accept that uncertainty and doubt is not only an important part of being a researcher but to be human. So, the beginning began with the birth of my son with two wonderful midwives, I fought my way through single parenthood to gain meaningful work and my ending has culminated in the longest thank you letter I have written. For doing this work is my way of ‘giving back’ to my midwives and all those who continue to enact ‘full-scope’ midwifery against such great odds. As such, this ending has greater significance for me, beyond just completing this research, it signifies a greater sense of completion, paving the way for a new beginning.’