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TikTok Is Not Your Midwife: Why Viral Birth Stories Can Mislead Pregnant Women · Life After Birth by Her Health Room

• 0:00
  Hope: A friend sent me a podcast episode where a woman was talking about where she was eight centimeters dilated, and then the doctors tried to offer her a cesarean section, and she said no.
• 0:07
  Hope: The words that she specifically used in this clip were, my baby's not been stressed for nine months.
• 0:11
  Hope: Why are they gonna be stressed now?" From what I saw of the clip, she went on to have a normal vaginal delivery, which is great.
• 0:15
  Hope: But as someone watching who wears three different hats, I'm an obstetrician, I'm a mum, and I'm a woman, and as the obstetrician, I was like,"Well, they're not gonna offer you a cesarean section unless you need it." And even I know that that's bollocks.
• 0:25
  Hope: And then secondly, I thought, good on her.
• 0:27
  Hope: She was able to speak up for herself, push back, and she got the delivery that she wanted." And then as a mum, someone who's had two labors herself, I then remembered what it was like to be in labor and have to advocate for myself.
• 0:37
  So all in all,"Yeah, you go, girl." And I wasn't the only one saying that.
• 0:40
  The comments were, Great, you need to advocate for yourself.
• 0:43
  These people are just trying to push cesarean sections," the danger I see as an obstetrician is someone who's watching that video, who's about to go into labor, who doesn't understand their own personal risk factors, taking away from that video and saying,"Yeah, I'm gonna go and say no if they offer me a cesarean section." And that's the danger of a single birth story.
• 0:59
  In this podcast episode, I wanna talk specifically as to why TikTok is not your midwife, And talks through the really complicated nuance of what it's like to be pregnant in 2026, on social media, seeing all the birth stories, whether they're positive, whether they're negative, not having the full story, because even with that clip, The assumption is that everything goes well.
• 1:17
  So you miss out most of the context, and the lack of context when in application to yourself can actually be really dangerous.
• 1:28
  My name's Remi, I'm an obstetrics and gynecology doctor.
• 1:31
  I've got Her Health room a platform, which is to help women navigate pregnancy and the postpartum period beyond the guidelines.
• 1:36
  I focus on the physical aspects, social aspects, and the mental health aspects in this Making Room podcast, it gives me space to dive down deeper because there is always so much nuance.
• 1:45
  You cannot apply guidelines without context.
• 1:47
  You cannot apply social media birth stories without context.
• 1:50
  Everything needs to be assessed within the context in which we receive it And ultimately, the woman sharing her story is not the problem.
• 1:55
  The problem is when it's just mass distributed without any context and left for people to wonder, to ponder, and to consume in a way that it might affect their own health and that of their babies And I'm hoping by the end of this episode that you can go away with some tools that will help you make the right decision around your birth and help you ask the right questions when you are in labor When you're watching birth stories online, they're clips, they're short snippets, and What you get is sometimes a dramatic posture and the incomplete story.
• 2:18
  You never really know if that baby was well, if that baby was well-grown, if they had meconium, if they struggled in labor, and nor do you know if the mother's had a cesarean section before, had anemia.
• 2:28
  There are so many unknowns when you consume someone else's birth story.
• 2:31
  And rightly so, no one online should be expected to give you their full medical history when they're telling you how they went through their labor.
• 2:38
  They don't need to tell you what the doctor suggested or didn't.
• 2:40
  It's completely up to them how they share that information.
• 2:42
  What is most important for you, though, is how do you ingest that information?
• 2:46
  How do you decide h- what you take from that story and what you leave behind?
• 2:49
  So one of the phrases in the video is that they told her that the baby was distressed.
• 2:53
  And so a distressed baby is such a weird sentence to use because where would you ever use that outside of labor?
• 2:59
  A s- distressed baby could be a baby in real life that's crying, that's a bit upset, that's a bit itchy.
• 3:05
  It's such a vague term.
• 3:06
  But oftentimes when they use,"Oh, the baby is distressed," what they often mean is that either the baby's not getting enough oxygen to the brain, or that's the evidence that we have in front of us, or there is a concern that the baby has an infection.
• 3:16
  And both of those things, if they are left for a really long time, the baby can come out sick and might require antibiotics, might require admission to the neonatal unit, or they might have permanent brain damage.
• 3:25
  That's the definition of distressed.
• 3:27
  And as a clinician, I completely understand that we're not using the right language really to explain what's going on, either because we don't wanna scare people or we don't wanna come across as too harsh, we don't wanna come across as too coercive.
• 3:38
  But that grayness around the language being used is often what confuses people.
• 3:43
  So I remember hearing a birth story recently, this was in my social network, not online, and the person was like,"I was pushing for two hours because they told me the head was just there." And I'm like, Yeah, the head might have been just there, but realistically, it probably wasn't." You know, you're pushing the baby from sort of high up in the vagina.
• 3:58
  It's got seven to eight centimeters to go.
• 4:00
  But yeah, if I have a look at any woman who, who has a baby in her vagina, I can see the head.
• 4:05
  But just'cause I can see it, doesn't mean it's, like, at the exit about to come out.
• 4:09
  And so the language we use as clinicians is really confusing, I think, to women, and that's where a lot of the misunderstanding occurs.
• 4:16
  So if you say to someone,"Your baby is distressed And nothing else.
• 4:19
  Again, we're missing a lot of context here.
• 4:21
  I can completely understand how you're like,"How did my baby get stressed all of a sudden?" But what happens throughout the course of pregnancies, a lot of babies are fine.
• 4:28
  There are a small number of babies that I would see over-represented in my field is that babies can be small, their placentas might not work, either maybe because there was a history of smoking or preeclampsia or diabetes or any of those conditions.
• 4:40
  The baby could be small.
• 4:41
  During the pregnancy itself, the baby might be stressed, i.e., not coping well, not growing the way that they need to be.
• 4:48
  So then when they go into labor, labor itself is a stressful process.
• 4:51
  What's happening to them every time you have a contraction is that they are getting squeezed.
• 4:55
  When they're getting squeezed, their blood supply reduces because the blood that would freely flow through the uterus, now the uterus is contracting So if you have a baby that's got healthy reserve, you expect them to be able to cope with the stresses of labor and be fine.
• 5:07
  There are some babies with poor reserve because they're small, their placenta doesn't work, there's an underlying condition for either them or the mother, and then when they have that blood squeezed off, they don't cope as well.
• 5:16
  And therefore, what we do, as an obstetrician is when you're looking at that monitor, the heart rate of the baby, it's telling you, is this baby stressed?
• 5:23
  Yes.
• 5:24
  Are they able to cope with the lack of oxygen?
• 5:26
  Is this labor gonna go on for too long?
• 5:28
  That means that they really can't cope.
• 5:30
  Or are they stressed but coping well, and actually if this went on for another 10 hours, they should still be healthy?
• 5:36
  Now, granted, we struggle to get this right all the time.
• 5:39
  But where there is such an emphasis on making sure that babies are born healthy with a healthy oxygen supply to their brain to reduce the number of kids having brain damage, there is an overemphasis on making sure that you're delivering them just at the right time.
• 5:51
  And so going back to our story from before, if someone is eight centimeters and it's their first baby, you would presume that they might take another four to six hours before the baby's born.
• 6:00
  Now, if you have a really well-grown baby and now they're stressed because the 10 hours or so of being squeezed, of not having enough oxygen is, like, stressing them out, hence the term distressed, then you can decide, actually, if this baby were to be stressed or squeezed on for another six hours, will they have enough oxygen to their brain, or will they be sick at the time of delivery?
• 6:19
  And sick for me means that they've had a low oxygen exposure, and then when the oxygen levels go low, unfortunately brain cells begin to respond to that and begin to die off'cause they don't have oxygen.
• 6:28
  So then you're trying to decide which one is it?
• 6:31
  Is it this person's gonna deliver well or this person's not gonna deliver well?
• 6:34
  And given how many words I've used, I'm sure now that you can understand why discussing that on a clip on social media is really hard to convey where you fell into.
• 6:44
  So for the story above, clearly her baby fell into the bracket where they could cope for six hours, and even though they had that low oxygen state, they were fine.
• 6:52
  You have to think that, what if your baby is that other one, you know?
• 6:56
  And what is best for you?
• 6:57
  So then when you're in a scenario like that, what you don't want to do, what I wouldn't want to do, is do a blanket,"I'm not for intervention." But it's like, no, no, no, if you're gonna tell me words like distressed, or you're gonna tell me words like I need a cesarean, explain to me why?
• 7:10
  Why don't you look through my notes and tell me my baby had a low reserve coming into labor?
• 7:15
  Or maybe I'm unwell, or maybe there's a risk that there's an active infection.
• 7:20
  Because also what I should say is if there's an infection and the baby's oxygen levels are low, it just means their recovery after birth is gonna be even harder because they've got a low oxygen state and a bug traveling around their body that's making them infected And it's actually this lack of an explanation, I think really, that contributes to the misunderstanding, but contributes to women feeling that they weren't heard or feeling that they weren't able to make the decision that was best for them.
• 7:42
  Because even if someone gave you all the facts, as is your right, if you really don't want a cesarean section, but you completely understand that your baby might spend a few more nights in the new baby unit, or the baby themselves might have, like, permanent brain damage, that's your right.
• 7:54
  Like, you're human.
• 7:56
  Like, you have rights over your body, and the baby legally doesn't have rights until they're born.
• 8:00
  So there isn't a right or wrong.
• 8:02
  It's more just are you making an informed decision?
• 8:05
  And so what I think true advocacy is, is not a blanket no, it's a, Explain that again.
• 8:10
  Can you please use words that I understand?
• 8:11
  If I don't deliver at this point, what's going to happen to my baby?" How urgent do you think the baby needs to come out?
• 8:16
  Do you think the baby needs to come out in the next 15 minutes or do you think the baby needs to come out in the next hour?
• 8:20
  And I say this because sometimes you'll see women who've been counseled to have an induction of labor, so they say,"Look, really worried about your baby.
• 8:26
  Your baby's sick.
• 8:27
  You need to come into hospital and be induced." And then what happens when you get induced, I'm sure if you're listening or watching this and you've been induced before, you know that it will take a few days.
• 8:35
  Like, I was induced for my second baby, and even though I'd had a baby three and a half years before that, it took the first 24 hours and then another six hours, and then they broke my waters, and then the baby came an hour after that.
• 8:46
  But the whole process of the induction bit was, like, 36 hours.
• 8:49
  And so if you're saying,"Oh, this is urgent," but then urgent to you means, like, you just sit and wait for a bed to be available, I can see how you would go away being like, These people lied to me.
• 8:58
  No one's worried.
• 8:59
  Like, they've just left me here." Other questions you might wanna ask yourself is,"What if I say no?
• 9:03
  What would happen?" Like, spell out to me what you think's gonna happen if I say no to this.
• 9:07
  What will happen if I say yes?
• 9:08
  Is there anything else we can try before we go towards a cesarean section?
• 9:13
  And again, the answer to these things might be no.
• 9:15
  It might be that, yes, you probably could do, like, another couple of hours.
• 9:19
  It could be a, as long as you understand the risks, I'm happy to let you try for a bit longer.
• 9:23
  It could be all of that, but you have final say, but unless you ask the questions, you don't really understand why the clinician is recommending what it is they are recommending.
• 9:31
  And I'll caveat this to say that clinicians are human beings, right?
• 9:34
  So if a doctor walks into the room and gives you advice, on the face of it, they are most likely acting with the best intention to have a happy, healthy, well-oxygenated baby, and a healthy mom.
• 9:44
  Like, that's the premise of most interactions.
• 9:47
  However, because the doctor might have seen 100 births or 1,000 births, and however many percentages of those have gone poorly or badly, as a human being, you develop bias, right?
• 9:58
  So if you see a similar pattern again, you are more likely to be like,"You know what?
• 10:02
  Let's go in and deliver," obviously with the intention to make sure that you and the baby are happy and healthy, but also with the bias that comes through years of practice, and sometimes at the cost of individualized care.
• 10:13
  And I can say this proudly because I'm a doctor.
• 10:15
  No one that I've worked with do I feel has turned up at work for a specific outcome.
• 10:20
  They want a happy and healthy baby and a happy and healthy mom.
• 10:23
  And sometimes the way they get to that or the way that the system gets to that is not necessarily with the experience of the mother in mind.
• 10:30
  And I think that's where misunderstanding comes from, and I think that's where a lot of birth trauma comes from, that the expectations of the individual coming into the system and the actions delivering the care don't always marry up.
• 10:40
  And although the overarching priority is the same, the way in which you get to that priority is slightly different A few more advocacy points are I need a minute to speak to my partner.
• 10:49
  So when I did NCT years ago for my first baby, wanted to make friends, I was an obstetrician, but I was in my first year of training, so I knew enough.
• 10:55
  But I was quite shocked, as to how anti-obstetric input they were, how anti-epidural they were, how pro low risk they were.
• 11:02
  I was quite shocked because there are so many things that influence whether someone can have a low risk hands-off labor or needs an epidural, things like that.
• 11:11
  But one of the things that they did say that I think was really useful was whatever decision they're trying to make, you can always ask for five minutes.
• 11:17
  And as a doctor hearing that, if I need to do a crash cesarean section because I'm worried the baby's not getting enough oxygen to their brain and they can come out and have brain damage, that's my motivation, right?
• 11:27
  But as the person on the other end of it, you should still always feel like you have the right to say,"No, I need five minutes." And as a clinician, I've not always gotten this right, because when you hear emergency buzzers, a heart rate going down, a lot of commotion in the room, it's unfortunately really sad, but you can lose sight of the person who's often shocked as well, like more shocked than anyone else in the room, and what it is they want.
• 11:49
  Because the presumption is, oh, but they want their baby to be healthy.
• 11:52
  But not, that's not true, and healthy at what cost, right?
• 11:54
  Not at the cost of their sanity, not at the cost of them being traumatized at the end of it So that point from NCT has always stayed with me.
• 12:00
  Can I have five minutes?
• 12:01
  Can I have a couple of minutes to discuss with my partner?
• 12:03
  Can I have a second opinion?
• 12:04
  You know, like as a human being, as a clinician, I don't want anyone to say to me like, Oh, I just need a second opinion." Because for me, it feels insulting like, What do you mean?" But actually once I remove myself from the situation, it's like this is not my story, this is their story, then it's really easy to be like,"Actually, it's got nothing to do with me.
• 12:19
  Yeah, you can have a second opinion." So don't be afraid to use those words, and if you get pushback, use them again because it is absolutely your right to ask for a second opinion And I think that's in a sum what advocacy is.
• 12:30
  And not just an outright refusal of anything that comes your way, but a real understanding of what the motivations of the doctor, of the midwife offering it to you are, what your priorities are, what you understand from it, and going from there.
• 12:41
  And sometimes I think even having these conversations in labor is long.
• 12:43
  Like, I remember my first labor, I had an epidural at three centimeters, which is probably quite early, and because I was like,"No, I really want pain relief," they gave in.
• 12:53
  And then my waters broke, and I think maybe, you know, as an epidural can do, it slows down the labor.
• 12:58
  Then my heart rate went up, and the midwife came in and said,"Remi, I think we need to push on and give you the, the oxytocin drip." And bearing in mind, I was in my first year, but for me at that point, I just felt it was too early.
• 13:08
  I felt like I hadn't really had a chance to let my body do it, and they were like,"Oh, but if we let this go on for much longer, you're gonna get an infection." Again, really true.
• 13:16
  They're not lying.
• 13:16
  "It puts you at risk of this.
• 13:18
  You know, how are you gonna push?
• 13:19
  Blah, blah, blah.
• 13:20
  We don't think you're contracting enough." Again, all valid things, all things I would say to myself, but I was just like,"No, I don't, I don't think I need that at this point." And I pushed back.
• 13:28
  But it was uncomfortable because they were my senior midwives, they were my senior clinicians, and my husband, who's also a doctor but not in that field, very much was like,"This is your forte.
• 13:36
  I'm gonna let you do and say what you want." And I struggled even to keep saying no.
• 13:40
  Eventually I progressed really quickly by the next examination, and the baby was born, I don't know, I can't, I can't remember exactly, but I imagine from memory the baby came within, like, 10 hours of being in hospital or even less than that.
• 13:52
  So ultimately, it happened on time, and it happened in a way that it needed to And the reason why I'm saying that point is I get it.
• 13:57
  I get how difficult and how uncomfortable it is to say no, to ask more questions.
• 14:01
  And if you cannot do it, then you preparing your partner beforehand to do it, or having another female representative there to help you do it, or getting a doula.
• 14:10
  Working on labor ward, I've come across a few women over my time who would make use of a doula, and what the doulas have done really is just ask that second and third question.
• 14:17
  Where the woman is more likely to be like,"Yeah, sure," they'll be like,"No, no, no," based on their prior relationship, based on their prior knowledge.
• 14:23
  They ask that second and third question, sometimes to the annoyance of the midwives and the doctors, and I think that often will depend on the quality of the doula.
• 14:30
  But if you cannot do it for yourself, or you anticipate that you can't, and actually you're going through labor, you're potentially pushing out a baby or going through a surgery to have a baby, you shouldn't have to do it.
• 14:39
  So therefore, making sure that you're surrounded by people who can support you in that, so a partner, a family member, a friend, or even a doula.
• 14:45
  And I would say if you are gonna employ the services of a doula, make sure that they're credited, make sure that they know what they're doing, make sure that they've seen all types of complications, I think, because, you know, there's a lot about, the unregulation around doulas and how they can sometimes get involved on the labor ward, and where there's a bad outcome, there's no repercussion to them.
• 15:03
  So if you, like strongly rely on your doula to help you make decisions, and the decisions don't go your way, or the baby's sick or you're sick at the end of, say, the doula's decision-making, unfortunately, they don't necessarily have to take any responsibility for that.
• 15:15
  That will still lie on the clinical team, and on yourself really to deal with the consequences of it.
• 15:20
  And across my time on the shop floor, I see doulas of varying quality, so I do think it's really important that if you are employing the services of one, speak to the people they've had before, make sure that you feel that you can trust them and that you feel empowered by them, but make sure that they also have the knowledge required If I can think about one in my career where there was a lady who Had a huge amount of bleeding after the delivery, and we were all rushing trying to get her to theater, and the woman, rightly so, was looking to the doula to give her some support as to what happens next.
• 15:48
  And I was there trying to explain to her,"Look, we'll take you to theater.
• 15:50
  We need to examine you.
• 15:51
  We need to get the placenta out.
• 15:52
  We're worried that you're losing a lot of blood." And the doula, quite rightly so, was shocked because the amount of blood was a lot.
• 15:58
  And so she came to me afterwards and she said,"Oh, is that, is that normal?
• 16:01
  I've never seen anything like that before." And I said,"Yeah, unfortunately, having a big bleed after delivery can happen." And it is an obstetric emergency, and that's where we come in.
• 16:12
  We all have different roles, and making sure that we respect that and understand that.
• 16:15
  But for me, I was like,"Oh, wow," like had being a doula, giving advice around delivery, never having seen a huge blood loss like that, how can you then appropriately counsel a woman to say that delivering in whatever setting is safe?
• 16:28
  That's just my two cents.
• 16:29
  So coming back to the main point, I want to be clear that maternity care doesn't always get it right.
• 16:34
  I mean, if you just look around the news, the ongoing reports, the new maternity advisors, the number of women who've had really horrible experiences through birth, it's clear to see that the maternity system doesn't always get it right.
• 16:45
  But on the flip side, social media shouldn't be your automatic default because, you know, there'll be people who say,"Oh, I'm gonna have a breech delivery at home," and never really come back to you to tell you how that breech delivery went.
• 16:55
  Or women who insist on a home birth outside of guidance, and a lot of them will go well, but then some of them will go horribly wrong.
• 17:02
  And then again, those are not the stories that you see or you're told online.
• 17:06
  And the issue, I think, with the algorithm is that it knows you're pregnant, it knows you're looking for pregnancy products, it knows that you've watched one birth story, whether it was good or bad, and then it floods your timeline with the rest of it.
• 17:16
  And then what you've got, because you're in that vulnerable state of anxiety over how's the last few weeks gonna go, how's this baby gonna be born, because none of these are predictable, you listen, you lap it up, you consume it, it produces anxiety within you.
• 17:28
  Your stress levels are up, and it interacts and interferes with what your normal decision-making would've been.
• 17:33
  So I think one of...
• 17:34
  Another important point is about trusting your gut and really knowing, knowing your body, knowing your baby, if at all possible, knowing your midwife or having someone that's trusted that you can ask questions and trust that they will know the answers to.
• 17:45
  Because the two things are true.
• 17:46
  Maternity care needs to do better, but social media shouldn't be the replacement of a bad maternity system And there are so many things the algorithm cannot take into account.
• 17:55
  Maybe your doctor can take into account.
• 17:56
  But the fact that how is your baby growing?
• 17:58
  Is your placenta well?
• 17:59
  Is the fluid around the baby well?
• 18:01
  Have you had normal monitoring of the baby's heart rate during the pregnancy period and also during the labor period?
• 18:07
  Is your blood pressure normal?
• 18:08
  Do you have diabetes?
• 18:09
  Is your baby too big for you?
• 18:10
  All of these things will ultimately impact on how you deliver, and that's not even a complete list.
• 18:16
  And sometimes I see women who come in, and they would have had, you know, multiple scans because we were worried about the baby's size, and then they go on and have multiple monitoring of the baby's heart rate.
• 18:24
  And then at the last minute say,"Oh, actually, no, I want to deliver with the midwife without you monitoring the baby," because they've seen online that actually if you have what we call a CTG, which monitors the baby's heart, monitors your contractions, you have an increased, risk of needing a cesarean section.
• 18:38
  Not lying, not disproving that.
• 18:40
  That is actually fact.
• 18:41
  If you deliver on the labor ward and a doctor is around, you're more at risk of having a cesarean section.
• 18:45
  Completely true.
• 18:46
  Having said that, when you look at the women who are selected to deliver in those settings, it's probably because they've had some risk factors before.
• 18:53
  So even though you're looking at those stats, it's not black and white because if a lot of those women were safe to deliver away from the consultants, were safe to deliver away from needing that heart monitor, then they probably wouldn't need a cesarean section.
• 19:04
  So I don't think what those stats take into account is the risk status before you get to that stage where you need continuous monitoring, where you need to deliver around doctors.
• 19:12
  And again, I've said it before in this video, in this podcast, It's a spectrum, right?
• 19:16
  There are some people who are gonna lean more heavily towards doing cesarean sections, and some people who are gonna lean more heavily to achieving a vaginal birth.
• 19:22
  So the idea is that it's not vaginal delivery at all costs, not a cesarean delivery at all costs, but it's what allows us to achieve a happy, healthy baby, a happy, healthy mother, and takes into account the mother's experience.
• 19:33
  Because I think the way women experience pregnancy, postpartum, early motherhood, return to work is crucial and has an overarching influence on how they cope, survive, thrive after having a baby.
• 19:44
  And everything that happens in the pregnancy period, everything that happens in the delivery very much has an effect on the rest of their lives, on their economic, capabilities, on their mental health, on their physical health, on their family life, on the health of the child.
• 19:56
  There are so many things that are linked to how a woman experiences pregnancy and birth and the bit afterwards that I don't think we should take for granted, and that's why I've created Her Health Room.
• 20:05
  That's why I've created this podcast, because I really wanna help you navigate this season of life and thrive.
• 20:09
  Like, I want you to not have to go through the years of overcoming trauma, overcoming healing, trying to figure out where you fit in, overcoming this loss of identity that typically happens through this season.
• 20:19
  And oftentimes getting the birth right is important.
• 20:22
  And not to say that the birth, getting the birth right is completely down to you.
• 20:26
  It's not.
• 20:26
  It's down to so many things.
• 20:27
  But one of the things it is down to is what we consume from social media, what social media is telling us about what type of birth is important or achievable for us And, and the point of this isn't that everything you consume online is unsafe, but it's more just ask a few more questions.
• 20:41
  And again, not everything your doctor tells you is safe.
• 20:43
  Again, it's ask a few more questions.
• 20:45
  All those questions that I've gone through throughout this episode, ask a few more.
• 20:48
  Take that second, third, or fourth question whilst you're still pregnant to understand what the context is of someone's birth story, of what the clinician is trying to get you to do, and what they think is best for you.
• 20:59
  And if, if you're a clinician, and you're watching this or listening to this podcast, let's think about our language.
• 21:04
  I completely understand what you mean when you tell me that a baby's distressed.
• 21:07
  I can imagine the CTG with a high baseline and lots of decelerations.
• 21:11
  I get it.
• 21:12
  But what someone who's, doesn't have the exposure to all the CTG training we've had over the years, doesn't know our lingo, when they hear the baby's distressed, thinking about it, does it adequately relay our concerns about whether or not that baby is healthy or not at that time?
• 21:25
  Or whether we're worried that that baby won't be healthy in 10 minutes, 20 minutes, one hour?
• 21:29
  So, like, let's really think about the language that we use And involve your partners, involve your community, involve a doula if you need to.
• 21:36
  Involve someone that allows you feel safe and helps you ask the right questions even in the labor process.
• 21:41
  And when you're saying no, making sure that you're saying no with information that's relevant to you, not because someone said it on a TikTok, not because you watched someone's long YouTube birth story, but because it needs to be relevant to you.
• 21:52
  So online is great because it spreads relevant awareness.
• 21:56
  It does spread the fact that women are traumatized and harmed through the process of giving birth.
• 22:01
  Like, that message needs to be out there for sure.
• 22:04
  But what is wrong with it is when you apply someone else's birth story, pregnancy story trauma to you.
• 22:10
  Like, that's the bit that we need, to decipher easily what's for us, what isn't, how we can use the positives of a birth story.
• 22:17
  So going back to the birth story I mentioned at the top of this podcast, what was great about it is that she asked a question, right?
• 22:22
  She was able to speak up even in labor.
• 22:25
  So what I hope that does is it empowers you to speak up, but speak up in a way that gives you more information to make a decision and not a blanket no So if anything in this podcast resonated with you, drop a comment down below.
• 22:36
  If you completely disagree with things that I've said, drop a comment down below, whether you're about to have a baby or whether you're a clinician I wanna hear your thoughts.
• 22:42
  This channel, like I've said, is just to help women navigate this season of life and thrive through it.
• 22:46
  If this is your bag, subscribe to my YouTube channel.
• 22:49
  You can find me on Her Health Room.
• 22:50
  You can also find me on Instagram under Her Health Room as well, Let me know down below things that you would like to hear on this podcast going forward, what topics you'd like to cover, and if you're someone who would love to join me on this podcast and have conversations that can really help women in this season of life, I'd love to hear from you, and my contact details are down below.
• 23:05
  Until next time, thank you very much.
• 23:07
  Bye.