The Midwives' Cauldron

Wendy Jones BSc, MSc, PhD, MRPharmS is known for her work on providing a service on the compatibility of drugs in breastmilk and has been a registered breastfeeding supporter for 36 years. She is passionate that breastfeeding should be valued by all and that medication should not be a barrier. In her employed life she was a primary care pharmacist. Wendy left paid work 12 years ago to concentrate on writing her books and developing her website to provide information for mothers and professionals. Wendy was awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours List of 2018 for services to mothers and babies. 

In this episode I chat to Wendy about all those common questions which start with “is it safe to breastfeed with that medication?!”

·      Breastfeeding whilst needing medications for a chronic condition 

·      Common misconceptions with anxiety and depression medications and breastfeeding

·      Is it safe to keep breastfeeding when you catch the common cold or flu?

·      Emergency contraception – do you need to stop breastfeeding and will it affect milk supply?

·      Wendy tells us about the new medications for migraines

·      Colic medicines – is there evidence for this and do they work? 

·      Why planning in pregnancy is essential to support ongoing breastfeeding for those needing to use any medications long term, and yet unfortunately is still mostly not happening. 

·      And Wendy tells me how she ended up giving out her personal phone number to the whole of the UK several years ago for any breastfeeding questions on medications and feeding! And was dealing with 10.000 calls a year!

LINKS:
Wendy Jones website, fact sheets, books and more
BFN Drugs in breast milk fact sheets
Lactmed
E Lactencia
Hale meds

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

 Bonnie Hughes is a midwife, with a background in musical theater and journalism. She is the creator of the podcast series Making a Midwife, and an animation film-maker hobbyist. Bonnie is passionate about the power of story, and how the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we live, the stories we are part of, and the characters we play in those stories shape the future. Bonnie explores, both through her midwifery work and her art how she can create a positive and uplifting impact for both midwives and the women and families in her care. 

This episode will fuel your day tenfold when you hear us talking  about the importance of taking up space and the power of anger.

We discuss: 

·      Working as a newly qualified midwife.  

·      Her incredible stop animation film titled ‘Big Trouble’ 

·      How society puts girls and women into a place where they have to earn their worth.

·      How women are conditioned to be small in size and mind, and the constant worry about how much space we take up in the world. 

·      We touch on how almost every woman in a maternity unit talks about their size, whether pregnant or not. 

·      We discuss how anger destroys us when we silence ourselves and let it fester. 

·      And we ask “How can we use anger for its best purpose?” 

LINKS
Bonnie Hughes films

Big Trouble

The shared anatomy of Students and Midwives

Rage becomes her: the power of women’s anger by Soraya Chemaly 

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

Two beautiful births tales are told here on this special episode  -
Mavis Kirkham kindly gave me permission to record these excerpts from the new book Freebirth Stories.

LINKS
You can grab it on Amazon here, buy it at The Great British Book Shop, or ask your local indie book shop to order it in for you.
And if you’d like to connect with Mavis and Nadine, the book has a Facebook page here.

Get 10% off Katie's Breastfeeding & Lactation: the fundamentals online course today with code POD10 at checkout. 

• Please support the show via Patreon or BuyMeACoffee
• MERCH here!
• Music Joseph McDade

Like this podcast? Leave us a review here
Want more from Katie and Rachel?
Katie's website
Rachel's website

Disclaimer
The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute medical or legal advice; instead, all information available on this site are for general informational purposes only. The Midwives' Cauldron podcast reserves the right to supplement, change or delete any information at any time.

The information and materials on the podcast is provided "as is"; no representations are made that the content is error-free. Whilst we have tried to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information we do not warrant or guarantee the accurateness.

The podcast accepts no liability for any loss or damage howsoever arising out of the use or reliance on the content.

Mavis Kirkham is Midwifery Professor Emerita at Sheffield Hallam University and has held honorary professorial positions at the University of Technology Sydney and Auckland University of Technology. After over forty years as a clinical midwife and researcher, she is interested in reflecting and writing on birth and midwifery in its wider context. A major theme of her research has been the way in which the context of their care impacts upon childbearing women and how their working experiences impact upon midwives. She has long been concerned with how birth stories are negotiated and the impact of these stories on tellers and hearers. With Nadine Edwards she has edited a new book titled Freebirth Stories.

 In this episode we discuss with Mavis:

• About Mavis’ interest in freebirth and why it seems more women are choosing this way to give birth 
• Mavis tells us about the Freebirth stories from women and Doulas she and Nadine collected for their new book
• We discuss the importance of language in pregnancy, birth and postpartum spaces 
• The important role that doulas play 
• And we ask what Mavis sees as the future of midwifery 

 Mavis is one of those midwives who has witnessed so many parts of midwifery and her bounty of knowledge and kindness shines through in this episode.

LINKS:
Freebirth Stories 

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

Dr Marina Weckend is a midwife and post-doctoral researcher based at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. Building on 13 years’ experience in midwifery practice, education and research in Germany, UK and Australia, Marina is committed to improving maternity care services through better understandings of birth physiology. Her current program of research focuses on natural fluctuations and pauses during labour and birth, and seeks to normalise physiological plateaus as a strategy to reduce childbirth medicalisation. 
In this episode we discuss: 

• What are physiological plateaus in labour? 
• Are labour pauses normal? 
• When do they occur during labour and birth? 
• How long do they last? 
• What’s the defining feature of a physiological plateau? 
• How do midwives think and work with them based on their experiences? 

LINKS:

www.marinaweckend.com
Twitter @marinaweckend
LinkedIn Marina Awakening
Physiological Plateaus Newsletter
Oct 2023 Failure to progress or just normal?
Physiological plateaus during normal labor and birth: A scoping review of contemporary concepts and definitions
Failure to progress or physiological plateaus? A constructivist grounded theory explaining midwives’ views of healthy pauses during childbirth.  

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

In this episode Katie talks with Rachel about late preterm and early term infants. These are the babies who have flown under the radar for far too long and often are the babies who struggle the most to get going with breastfeeding. 

Come with us as we take a look at the current research, plans for feeding and what mothers are saying who have had babies born just that bit too early. 

·      How many babies are born late preterm and why the numbers are growing.

·      How late preterm infants are different neurologically and physically to full term babies  

·      What complications are more likely to be seen in the late preterm population

 ·      Current challenges within the maternity system when supporting mothers with late preterm infants

·      Is there a basic plan which can be generalised for most or all late preterm infants?

·      What about those babies born 37-38+6 weeks (early term), do they have higher needs too?

·      And we look at the barriers to continuation of breastfeeding.

https://abm.memberclicks.net/assets/DOCUMENTS/PROTOCOLS/10-breastfeeding-the-late-pre-term-infant-protocol-english.pdf
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/2/312
https://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13006-017-0114-0 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1740-8709.2012.00463.x
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/bfm.2020.0379
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0884217515305190
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089%2Fbfm.2015.0122
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24182956/

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

Welcome to season 5!! This episode we have the marvelous Dr Sara Wickham back in the cauldron with us talking all about what’s in her new book Plus Size Pregnancy. 

Sara talks to us about:

·      How women and families want, need and deserve better answers to their many questions about higher BMI and birth, and that midwives and birth workers need to know what the evidence says. 

·      Clarification of what is the BMI and as Sara says “it’s a racist, sexist, classist” index created for complete different reason than for health! 

·      We look at why a higher BMI comes with so many tests and limitations for birth and Sara talks us through the existing evidence.

·      Are women with a high BMI more at risk of caesarean section, and if so what are the real reasons behind this?

·      Why the phrase morbid obesity is utter nonsense and rooted in a much darker context.

·      Sara delves into diet culture, it’s myths and the marketing behind it. 

·      Weight bias and fat shaming in healthcare.

·      And why using BMI is problematic in maternity care.

You’ll hear all this and much more in this fabulous episode.

LINKS:
Plus Size Pregnancy book
Dr Sara Wickham website
Sara on Instagram  @drsarawickham
Sara on Facebook sarawickham.com

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

In this episode Rachel takes us into the world of ‘early labour’. She’s been promising it for a long while, and here it is. Get your lug’ols around this one! 

In this episode we discuss:

·      What’s going on physiologically during this phase of childbirth

·      Beta endorphins and how they work for us during labour

·      The neocortex and what is so important about this part of our brain as we birth

·      Why women in early labour who attend the maternity unit are often sent back home

·      Early labour and the maternity system 

·      How early labour interventions can be prevented

·      We discuss birthing babies into your tights!

·      And whether we can ever fully prepare women with prenatal education 

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

Welcome to the biggest episode yet! Well not really, but we have met a milestone I couldn’t have fathomed 3 years ago on 20th July 2020.  It has hit home what has happened over this time and how this 'little' podcast has grown into something really fantastic. And this is due to my dear friend Dr Rachel Reed, our amazing guests who have so kindly donated their time to come on, and to all of you who listen in each episode and make the effort to share it, talk about it, grab a bit of merch to promote it, those of you who have financially supported the show and also those of you who have written in with your stories which have often bought me to tears. I am humbled and really bloomin grateful. 

This is a bonus episode just for you. You will not hear anything about birth, midwifery, or breastfeeding! Be warned! This is a listener special where we asked you guys for your questions about us!

So what will your lug’ols be filled with today? 

·      Katie’s story of a bag of crisps called Keith

·      Rachel dancing to Oliver Twist 

·      How surprisingly we both chose very similar people to invite to our dinner party!

·      But don’t talk to Rachel about bananas or pineapples

·      We reminisce on going clubbing together from 11am on public holidays in Newcastle upon Tyne, in the UK. 

·      We let you in on what we got up to at our midwifery university graduation

·      And finally … how Katie got chased by a lion. 

Should make for good listening… not educational listening at all, but if you are up for being told a story or two then grab a cuppa and sit down with us in this special episode!

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

In this episode Katie talks to Zainab Yate. Zainab is a Biomedical Ethicist, with a specialist interest in infant feeding. Zainab is Vice Chair and named qualitative lead on a paediatric flagged Research Ethics Committee Panel for the Health Research Authority (HRA) in the UK.  She's also been a volunteer breastfeeding peer supporter with the NHS for a number of years, is the owner-author of the resource site for mothers and healthcare practitioners on Breastfeeding / Nursing Aversion and Agitation and author of "When Breastfeeding Sucks".

We discuss what is breastfeeding aversion & agitation, and what is D-MER (dysphoric milk ejection reflex)? 
We look at the differences between the two. 
And ask what do clinicians need to look for specifically?
Why does D-MER and breastfeeding aversion occur, how long it normally lasts and what can be done to support women who experience this? 
We talked about what "being touched out" means and how to deal with it. 
And we take a dive into when the euphoria does not happen immediately after birth. 

This is such an incredible episode full of lots of really thoughtful insights, I know you will get a lot out of it. Enjoy. 

LINKS
Zainab Yate  Differential diagnosis article
Zainab Yate Breastfeeeding aversion article
Alia Heise – D-MER
D-MER resources
Recent research on D-MER https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36705232/ 

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.