My Happy Weight | Jenny Wren

I'm the heaviest I've ever been.

At least I think I am - I don't weigh myself, never have. I generally use my clothes as a measure. 

Growing up I had a very unhealthy relationship with food and was so paranoid about my weight. I developed early and used to wear oversized clothes to hide my body, having earned crude nicknames already by age 13. I developed an eating disorder as a teenager, trying to shrink myself out of existence, a problem that came back briefly in my early twenties where I would try to get through an 8 hour shift fuelled by a couple of crackers. This was combined with stomach issues that meant often whatever I ate would go straight through me, due to anxiety and panic attacks.

I've written before about how pregnancy resolved so many of my body issues, that food no longer felt like the enemy, like my body working and growing made it feel purposeful and strong rather than decorative. Breastfeeding my baby made me appreciate food like never before. 

Finding veganism gave me a structure I wanted and a reason for the repugnance I felt with animal products. I am always reluctant to link my eating issues with veganism so as not to give the wrong impression - for me it was a very positive thing. I don't think about food negatively anymore. Adverts almost always aren't relevant to me. It's like the noisy buzz of food consumption has quieted and I can just eat delicious food that nourishes me. 

Two years ago I lost a lot of weight. It was a combination of stress, the copper IUD, sleep deprivation and the relationship that I was in. I remember hardly recognising myself in the mirror. I am on a group for fertility charters and found a post I had made at the time where I was asking about anti depressants. The first photo of me pregnant with Autumn-Violet is a tiny, fragile woman who looks as though she might blow away. It wasn't normal for me.

Post-birth, post-refuge, my body has changed and so have I. I don't need to weigh myself to know that I am the biggest I have ever been. While this does occasionally niggle at me due to societal conditioning and I may have a little moan, it's also the cause for huge celebration. My reaction to sadness in my life was always to restrict my food, I can directly correlate my weight with how I felt at the time. 

So for me being rounder means... 

I can buy all the delicious food that I like and eat whatever meals I like

I sit in the evening with tea and biscuits and revel in the peace and calm

I can treat myself to meals out and takeaways

I am not trying to shrink away to please a man or society

I take up space 

I am not unhappy

I am not stressed

I am soft

I am not rushing

I am nourished

I am feeling good enough

I am feeling loved

Rounder and rosier - what a difference a year makes.

Venus is in Scorpio and I am really feeling all this sensual, feminine, creative, kundalini energy. Generally floating around like a free flowing goddess right now and feeling balanced and happy.

Life is good.

Women Are In An Abusive Relationship With The NHS | Jenny Wren

No, #notallhcps, and yes, we are very lucky and grateful to have the NHS.

But I'm starting to feel that this platitude I put before making any comment on the abusive and coercive practices in maternity care is a lot like the excuses women make for their abusive partners. Because we all know we NEED the NHS.

Sexual and physical violence is perpetrated against women daily.

"But he does all these things for me, he looks after me, once he even saved my life!"So what does this relationship look like?

I have used the Power and Control Wheel as a basis.

EMOTIONAL ABUSE, COERCION AND THREATS

Women do not feel like they have the ability to make choices. They are guilted and coerced into consenting to things, or even consent because they don't want to "disappoint" the "lovely" HCP. They may even be told they won't be allowed in the pool or access to pain relief. This is not consent! If somebody doesn't feel like saying no is acceptable then their yes is meaningless. This sadly means that many women have been assaulted during their care.

INTIMIDATION

Playing “good cop bad cop” , bringing in senior staff to berate and bully, sending threatening letters. I have seen all of this as a doula.

ECONOMIC ABUSE

Free pregnancy and freebirth are an option but for the vast majority of women they won't be. Some try and are threatened with social services. We know that one to one care from a midwife is imperative for good birth outcomes. It's the one thing that doesn't happen. So women know that to feel even remotely safe they have to become part of the system. They may not be able to afford an independent midwife. They cannot leave the NHS because they know that they need it.

USING MALE PRIVILEGE

Although HCPs can be either sex, maternity care is hugely patriarchal and we enact the roles where women are told that the "system" knows what is best for them and they are merely the gestator of the baby.

USING ISOLATION

Women are told they must have a certain type of care, they aren't allowed to home birth, they aren't allowed a caesaerean, they aren't allowed to decline, they're not allowed to leave the hospital, they're not allowed to just walk out with their baby. They are given limited information or statistics tailored to the HCP's agenda. Women are left to languish on induction wards or labour alone, diminishing their morale. They may receive harassing phone calls and letters about their informed decisions. They aren't allowed their birth partner or doula to stay with them at any point.

MINIMIZING, DENYING AND BLAMING

Women are told that what happened to them was inevitable, or had to happen, or was necessary for their baby's safety. They are told (and I have witnessed this myself) that other women in different parts of the world have it worse and they are lucky! They are told to be grateful they have a healthy baby and not talk about the trauma they have experienced at the hands of the system. And of course the usual #notallhcps.

USING CHILDREN

Being told they are putting their unborn child at risk by requesting individualized care or declining interventions. They may have the threat of that child being removed from them if a social services referral is made. They may be told they will leave their existing children motherless if they choose a different pathway and die.

And of course not mentioned but very relevant...

THE HONEYMOON PHASE

This is where a women wants non-standard care and has broken some rule and somebody senior is assigned to promise her the world. Of course you can use the birth pool, of course you can decline VEs, of course you can decline continuous monitoring...

Only to get there in labour to find she can have none of those things that were promised.

I am fed up of women being minimised and gaslit over this. Yes we need the NHS. But that doesn't mean it can just do what it likes to us.

Update in 2020:

Truly independent midwives have had their insurance cancelled. Covid-19 means women are alone at appointments and bullied even more. Isolation and coercion are worse than ever. Women are told to be grateful for NHS workers risking their lives.

They Want Me To Lie | Jenny Wren

The most vulnerable I've ever been is a year ago this week. Just five shopping bags of clothes and toys and nothing else. I forgot one bag full of his birthday things and had to go back. With twenty minutes to spare. Not even a toothbrush or pajamas. Everything lost. His first curl, her pregnancy cast.  

Sharing a house with strangers in a strange part of town. Services, endless services. Some of them shouting down the phone asking you what were you thinking how could you have been so stupid, so blind? 

I've never been able to lie. 

Every person I've been with has commented on that aspect of me, when they're telling me I'm cute, I'm an airhead, I live with my head in the romance clouds. Longing to connect. Unfailingly honest. They like it until that raw openness is no longer theirs to exploit and manipulate but is now shining a light on them without elaboration or fabrication.

Then they want me to lie. 

Will beg, rage, rant. 

With birth. I tell women the truth. I wish I could pretend that every care provider could be trusted and would be respectful and it might make for a nicer conversation but it's just not what I see. It's why I don't fit in anywhere, into the landscape of birth that often wants everything to be fluffy to make a sale.

I'm not interested in just making a sale.  I want a revolution. 

Now there are many people who want to go even further, who want to fit a scold's bridle on me, who admire my passion and my conviction but most of all just want me to shut up when they disagree. Who want me to deny my reality and my beliefs. Not realising I have faced worse than them and won. Their pettiness only souring themselves. Other people whose lives would be infinitely easier if I did decide to stop telling the truth and pretended it didn't matter when there's so much at stake. 

This time last year keeps going round in my head because I lost everything and also nothing. I clung to my work and would not stop serving and speaking, would not let it die.  I built all this up from absolutely nothing at all, five bags, two children and the clothes on our back.  And now I'm fiercely protective and vulnerable all at once. With more to lose.

And I still won't lie.