Are you currently affected in your daily life by your pregnancy, birth or early parenthood experience? Are you ready and able to talk about your experiences with the aim of exploring your feelings and moving forward?

Your experiences do not need to have happened recently, and nothing specific needs to have happened during this time to make it a negative experience. This service is a safe and non-judgmental space in which you can share your story and begin to heal.

Your birth listener is not a healthcare professional and will not have access to your notes, but is trained in hearing birth stories safely, exploring how it affects your daily life and how a future free of negative feelings might look. If you wish, we can then support you with feeding back your experience and signpost you to further support.

1:1 Virtual Birth Listening

What is a birth/feeding debrief?

When you book in, you will be asked a series of questions, to help us meet your needs during the session. We may suggest that this service wouldn’t be the most useful for you, for example if you gave birth in the last few weeks, or you are being very severely affected by your experience. We will then reply, to set some goals for the session.

You may wish to arrange childcare, but it is not a requirement. As you will be safely in your home during the virtual session, it may be a good idea to pick a time where you will be free to speak and have a comfortable space.

Your birth listener will listen to your perinatal experience without judgement. We will then talk about how this is affecting your day to day life, and explore how a future free of those thoughts and feelings might look.

If needed, we will give you details of other services that may be able to support you further in the future.  After the session, you’ll be asked for your feedback and reflections on how the listening session impacted you. If you’d like to,we can support you to pass on any comments via the most suitable means (e.g. Healthwatch, PALS, Maternity Voices Partnership). 

Any discussion of a previous birth can be potentially upsetting or re-traumatizing if you feel you didn’t have a positive experience. If at any point you feel that you are unable to continue with the listening session, we will stop and you do not need to carry on unless you feel able.

All notes, identifying details and contact information will be stored safely in accordance with our data protection policies. We have a clear safeguarding responsibility to everyone we support to keep you safe, and will take action as needed always seeking your consent where possible. 

How much is it?

A session with a trained listener costs £35

This helps us continue the work of the organisation which includes in person an virtual groups, training and supervision for volunteers, free mental health walks and other community support. If you are unable to pay for this service, but feel like it would really benefit you, do tick the box that asks for a payment plan, reduced rate of free of charge 1:1 session. We do not want finances to be a barrier to getting the support you deserve.

Please contact us at newbabynetwork@gmail.com for more information or to book your birth listening session.