I’m a doula in the UK.

The grossest thing I’ve experienced was the behaviour of the midwife “caring” (for want of a better word) for my first client.

The client was a single mum who had no support from the child’s dad - he was a work colleague and wanted her to “get rid” of the baby. The mum had made a personal, brave decision to have her baby.

The client had an epidural around midnight. But all throughout the small hours, when the mum should have been resting and recharging her energy, this midwife, newly qualified, chatted and chatted away for hours - mainly about herself.

We heard about her ski-ing holiday, about her bland taste in music, and especially we heard how she wouldn’t want a baby herself “because childcare is astronomical” and “yuck, all those dirty nappies”.

This midwife had no idea how to encouage or support labour and unsurprisingly by the time the mum was fully dilated she was too exhausted to push, and had had the epidural in for so long she couldn’t feel a thing.

In the end it was decided she needed a caesarean. The mum was terrified. She had never had any operation before and the enormity of what was happening suddenly hit her like a truck.

And I knew she did NOT have the kind of full time support at home which a caesarean mum needs for weeks.

In tears she said, “but what would have happened if I’d been giving birth a 100 years ago?”

The midwife put her face close and said, “a hundred years ago, many women DIED!”

And with those words in her ears my perfectly healthy client was carted off to have a perfectly healthy baby removed from her body by completely unnecessary and invasive abdominal surgery.

How I hated that vain, stupid, ignorant midwife! Fortunately I’ve met many since who were wonderful, supportive and resourceful and above all who BELIEVED in the woman’s ability to birth her baby.