Sheffield is FAR

Today there was just one antenatal visit in Sheffield, which is SUPER far!

Google Maps for sympathy ✋

After a 150mile drive down, I met Claire at the house and we chatted for 5 when walking to the house. The appointment lasted just over an hour and we (well Claire 😂) covered lots of topics and went through all options from using a doppler, to dipping urine and the discussion of ultrasound scans and customised growth charts came up.

I've never personally came across personalised/customised growth charts in practice, but have skimmed over the research of them being more accurate at detecting accelerated or possibility restricted growth. Claire, when she was a student, had asked why her training trust didn't use them and was told (if I remember right?) something about them not accounting for paternal factors such as height etc. Definitely something i'm going to look further into, and bring up in my own training health boards, especially as it seems to be a growing movement towards using these from my brief googling on trusts in England anyway.

We spoke after this appointment about the local home birth support groups (i'm attending the Harrogate group on Sunday with Chris) which Claire thinks is good for my practice to constantly be aware of the most important persons experience in all this midwifery, the womans. Plus its good to keep up to date on the latest goings on in the world, so on my to do list now is to dig out the info! I was rather hesitant, i'm part of positive birth movement groups on facebook and local home birth support too, but was concerned by going to meetings my presence might be seen as intrusive by the women. I made an assumption that by there as a student midwife (how else would I introduce myself, im not pregnant?) that the people there might not speak freely about their whole experience for fear of offending/feeling pressured or anything else negative, but Claire hasn't found that at all with the local groups to them.

I plan on writing a post at some point about what makes the storks different, and my experience of their working and ethos etc compared to what I've observed, along with the answers to all the random questions i had, but that will be a long post!

Tomorrow includes the most local start the day to date with a postnatal appointment 30 miles away, which will be a welcome drive at this point. Looking forward to hearing her birth experience with the storks, will update tomorrow.

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