The origins of The Mother Podcast
While I was working as a community midwife in Scotland I was often amazed at how many of my clients had no idea of where to look for help for any health complaints outside of their GP. It was like they were at the mercy of the limitation of services offered by the NHS. If the only option was a medication that may or may not work but would definitely cause side effects, or if the medical practitioners couldn’t get a definitive answer to what was causing an ailment so couldn’t treat it, the woman would be left miserable and frustrated. I have always been interested in alternative health, and prior to moving to Scotland lived in a part of the world where acupuncture, massage therapy and osteopathy (amongst others) were offered on the provincial health insurance.
So it was confusing to me that - not only my midwifery clients but many doctors as well - would scoff at the idea of any form of health care that wasn’t under the hallowed umbrella of the NHS.
I think the NHS is not only wonderful, but essential. I strongly believe in public health care. But the NHS was founded shortly after World War Two ended, when the UK population was much smaller and medical equipment and treatments were far simpler and cheaper. To assume one institution can meet all the health needs of a nation is kind of naive. Yet, that seems to be what is happening.
And the NHS is made up almost entirely of medical practitioners. It’s the National HEALTH Service, not the National MEDICAL Service, yet very few alternative health practitioners get a chance. Medicine is designed to be used when a person becomes unwell. Medicine is strong and goes in to fix an ailment, usually by overriding the body’s usual systems to take control of the problem and fix it. And it can be lifesaving and it’s essential and we are very lucky that it is available to us.
But people deserve to have more knowledge about how to stay well, or how to help their bodies heal more gently so that they don’t need the medicine – or at least, don’t need it as much as it’s currently given.
If all health practitioners – medical and alternative – were able to work together then the “alternative” health practitioners would be able to educate, empower and treat people to stay well and in-balance and the medical practitioners would be available for emergencies.
That’s a simplistic statement, purposely made so for effect. But it makes sense to me.
The Mother Podcast was born out of the need to get information to child bearing women on different approaches they could take to get help with preparing their bodies for birth, healing in the postpartum period, helping with hormones, menstrual cycles, pelvic health and menopause. How to help take control of their health and wellbeing. But seeing as many women have never found an opportunity to explore alternative health practices, I decided to start by having a variety of talented, well educated and well trained, intelligent practitioners as guests so they could describe what they do and women could get some idea of where they could go for help, rather than being overwhelmed by a lot of choice and not much experience of these alternatives.
You can search on the website by category and each episode has resources in the podcast notes to help you to find more information if you need it. Please get in touch if you’re looking to find more information on a subject covered and I may be able to help.
And keep listening and sharing. Get those conversations started.