In the first episode of the Female Changemakers Podcast, Laura and Sanna talk through the effects of birth trauma, miscarriage and gaining control that led Laura to create Lola&Lykke, a support platform for mums.
When Laura´s first baby was born, she experienced severe complications that were nearly fatal due to her not getting the care she urgently needed. Laura considers herself lucky for having fully recovered from the experience with a healthy baby – although as the women agree, living or dying at birth should not be about luck. During her second pregnancy, Laura was not as lucky, and she ended up losing her baby at nearly four months pregnant.
The women discuss the importance of being prepared and being in control of your birth experience. There is a lot of influence from the social media expectations of wanting a drug-free, water birth with no emergency caesarean, but it doesn't go to plan for so many of us. When things do not go to plan, this can easily lead to the loss of power and control. Women are in a very vulnerable position physically and emotionally at birth, and a sense of being in control can make a huge difference to the experience of birth, as Laura explains about her third pregnancy.
Women are often made to feel that their experience does not matter, all that matters is a healthy baby. Both Laura and Sanna agree that we need to work towards improving women´s experiences at birth and during postpartum: simply surviving birth is not a good enough outcome for mums. There is a need to start supporting mums as much as we support babies, and to create change we need to get our collective voices heard.
