This book is about helping you to find your passion, and to give you some tools to make changes. Every change, big or small, is a change that makes the world better. The book is about giving you some ideas and showing what is possible; the rest is up to you!
The link below is for the book at a discount to the first 200 buyers.
Changing the world of birth means giving those with the passion for activism the tools to take the plunge. Who better to share these tools than the woman who has been at the leading edge of change in birth activism for over two decades. Ruth Weston shares her life experience as an activist who makes things happen, who makes things get done. Anyone, lay or professional, who is interested in making birth better, needs this book!
Emma Ashworth, Birth Rights Consultant and Activist.
My name is Ruth Weston; I am the mother of five children born in Bradford. Eight weeks before the birth of my fourth child I bought Aquabirths Birthing Pools – because I liked it so much I bought the company. We built a micro business into a national and international company supplying pools and equipment to the NHS and around the world.
But this is not what this book is about because my business funded my true passion which was to change maternity services in the UK to make it truly woman-centred quality care. I set up local groups that became national networks, local campaigns that became national campaigns, I started as an outsider from the NHS and became the Chair of the stakeholder policy committee for Bradford and Airedale. I spoke at and chaired conferences, locally and nationally, and appeared on local and national TV and Radio. I saw improvements, often frustratingly incremental at the time but cumulatively considerable over twenty years, to the care provision for people giving birth locally and across the country. What this book is about is passing it on – passing on the experience and skills I have so another group of Mums and Midwives can campaign and act effectively. It is very short because women and midwives don’t have a lot of time to read and don’t need bullshit.
The book is divided into three parts. Part One of the book is the story of how I became a birth activist. It details how my experience plus community activist training convinced me that things had to change, and heart and soul I must devote my life to it. Part Two of the book is all action! I recount what I and my co-campaigners did and how we did it: a sort of manual for how to make change happen and dodge the slings and arrows that can come your way as you doggedly pursue something better. Finally, failure is an integral part of activism and so Part Three of the book is how to deal with that. It is about how to weather these storms when they come your way, how to pick yourself up and move on, remembering that you are no less of an activist or any less dedicated when you stop for a breath, or take a step back
Why me, why this book and why now? Because I have been there and done it, for over two decades, and I want to pass on a few essential lessons I feel are crucial to the continued pursuit of positive change in the UK’s maternity sector. This is, in my eyes, of particular relevance now, as we have watched many pivotal changes to maternity services brought about by the hard work of activists being dismantled in just a few years. For example, during the pandemic every one of the national strategies to improve maternity care for women were dropped, and are yet to return. In short, twenty one years on from when I started out as an activist, midwives and families will once again have to fight to reclaim birth and kindness for their maternity. My hope is that this book can act as a toolkit and source of encouragement and comfort for them throughout, and that it will go some way to helping support parents, birthworkers and midwives alike effectively push for the birthing experiences they deserve and can cherish.
Scan the QR code to buy the book.
