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MEOWS: Recommended

… who have, or are developing, a critical illness. It is important these charts are also used for pregnant women being cared for outside the obstetric setting for example in gynaecology, Emergency Departments and in Critical Care.

Rationale

In many cases in this Report, the early warning signs of impending maternal collapse went unrecognised. The early detection of severe illness in …

The reality of maternal mortality: a father's perspective

This is the text of the speech I gave to The Sixth National Conference on Current Issues in Midwifery organised by the British Journal of Midwifery yesterday. I have reproduced it here by popular request. I am not going to include the photographs of my family that I refer to, nor the medical …

Double dose

Yesterday's extract of Friday's Child in the Daily Mail caused a huge response, which still stuns me this morning.

To everyone who has contacted me: Thank you. I am replying as fast as I can!

The extract was from my book Friday's Child which is the story of what happened back then. Today …

Extracted

This morning I read the extract of Friday's Child, in the Daily Mail . It's strange, reading my words in such a condensed form. They are my words, and it is my story, but only such a small part of it.

It is humbling to read the comments people have left under the story, and so many. Really …

Time for T

A little over seven years ago, Jessica met a group of fellow first time pregnant girls at her first ante-natal class.

Two girls emigrated, but five of them went on going to the classes, every week for six weeks or so. The classes came to an end and one by one they gave birth within the space of a few weeks: four boys and a girl.

The five of them continued to meet …

A chilling hot lunch

… and Genital Tract Sepsis. (=childbed fever/ puerperal fever /puerperal sepsis)

Why is it that pregnant mothers are told about, warned about and aware of pre-eclampsia (some antenatal classes are especially good at letting you know it's a danger, even if you're not totally sure what it is) but nobody tells you about childbed fever, even though it is just as much of a danger?

After an …

An Inspector Calls

I had a visit from the VAT Inspector this morning. I got a bit behind with my VAT Returns and they wanted to make sure I wasn't up to no good.

Business has been slow to non existant for the past few years, so it didn't take long and we soon started to talk about what I was doing now. I showed …

Virtual Jessica

Jessica Tate has been pregnant since 2004 and has been examined by countless student midwives.

She is a computer based training package, created by two midwifery lecturers from Swansea University, Susanne Darra and Marian Mclvor.

The project has just won an award at the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) sixth Annual …

Campaign update

This year I want to really widen the campaign efforts, and I've been really fortunate to have been introduced to a professional campaigner by my brother.

Gill Kirk of Lyric Communications is helping, pro bono, to plan and setup the next stages of the campaign, and we have many exciting ideas - …

Masses of bodies

… that she would be classed as obese, so I referred to her medical notes:

In August 2002, when not pregnant, her GP recorded a height of 1.64m and a weight of 55kg. This gives a BMI of 20.45 which is an "ideal weight".

In April 2004, when seven months pregnant, she was 61.9kg (and presumably still the same height) which gives a BMI of 23.01 which is still an ideal weight even for someone who …