As a midwife and as a mother I know that pregnancy, giving birth and becoming a mother are transformative life events. It affects who you are as a woman, partner, daughter, friend, employee and affects your view on life and on the world. 

 

Antenatal care evolves around optimal birth outcomes for mother and baby, albeit that these outcomes focus on physical health. Being pregnant, giving birth and early motherhood are very much a tapestry of emotions.. Sometimes women can suffer because of feeling low, worried, stressed, miserable or unhappy, because wellbeing is not just the absence of mental illness or the presence of constant happiness. 

 

As midwives we are very aware of the existence of reduced or affected emotional wellbeing of women. When I started to dig deeper, midwives told me that they did not ask the woman how she felt because if she would say that she felt miserable, the midwife had nothing to offer her – and therefore did not ask anything at all. It became clear that an adequate supportive tool was needed for these women not to remain under the radar and for midwives to be adequately equipped to support women.