Joy Horner – Birth Confidence Summit
Mary Cronk's famous assertivenss phrases in a post on Joy's blog and in a video
Joy Horner Bio
Joy is an independent Midwife and childbirth Educator based in Somerset. She initially trained as a nurse in 1984, and has been a midwife for 19 years. Her 2 children gifted her with totally different births, deepening her compassion for birthing families. For the last 14 years she has been an independent Midwife serving a high risk caseload. Her specialisms include providing loving care after previous trauma, facilitating breech birth, and providing holistic care at home or in hospital.
Time Stamps with link to the book Joy referenced.
Joy shares her winding route to being a midwife twice, in the 80's and now and how things have changed.
5.06 Joy had two different birth experiences despite preparing in a similar way and wants women to know this can happen. In her first he was brow presentation which can lead to a necessary C section which it did for Joy.
Her second was 'popped out in time for tea ' in a straight forwards hospital birth.
9.30 How both births were transformative in their own way and made her a better midwife. A good lesson is you can't intellectualise your way through birth. Joy learnt the difference between obstructed labour and normal labour and can spot this quickly now to support women better.
14.33 All about breech birth. Joy has been on a journey with the famous and now deceased midwife Mary Cronk. Yes there are additional risks to breech birth but there are also additional risk factors with a caesarean so putting risk into perspective is useful. Stop frightening the life out of women with risks.
Make sure your care provider is skilled and up to date. If they say breech is more dangerous than c-section of mention the Hannah Trial,they are not up to date with current research. .
19.29 Being on all fours and using gravity negates the need for half the manoeuvres that a skilled midwife knows and can use if necessary. Breech or head down Joy has rarely, never? seen any woman choose to lie on her back with her feet in the air.
23.15 Some useful things to know about breech babies so they don't feel like an emergency if they happen to you.
28.55 Why Joy is becoming more hands off the more she practices and why her role as witness is so important.
33.19 Using art with pregnant women uses the artistic side of brain The right side. Joy recommends the book, Birthing from within by Pamela England.
Exercise - Give five minutes to draw 'The Gates of birth' or sometimes 'The baby within' A powerful way to see what comes out, in once case it revealed trauma that needed to be released that the woman had thought was complete.
39.00 Thinking of yourself in pregnancy and postnatal as reflecting the four season in nature.
40.00 Joy recommends a mother blessing over a baby shower and to pass a list around to get friends to commit to postnatal support tasks.
Don’t ask for better demand better and expect it.
48.00 Joy reminds you that human rights issue don’t stop in labour and birth. You can do what the hell you like and your body is designed for this. We don’t need all this intervention and interference. We haven’t evolved out of being able to birth and most people can give birth successfully with happy and healthy outcomes without even seeing a midwife or doctor.
Joy's take home: You’ve got it.
She believes that birth is a natural event for which we've been beautifully designed, and that peace on earth really does begin with birth.
