No abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals have specific aims to reduce maternal mortality and achieve gender equality. While a significant amount of literature focuses on lower-income countries, which have higher mortality and morbidity rates than the UK, the UK must not be complacent. Maternal mortality and morbidity can still be improved nationally by critically evaluating whether the almost ubiquitous use of interventions in obstetric units is a contributory factor. Labour augmentation with oxytocin is not without risk and this raises the question of why maternity care is not incorporated into the gender equality goals in the UK. At its most basic level, it could lead to a lack of informed consent but is influenced by the risk discourse, changing epidemiology of women and sociocultural norms.

No abstract

This article is the final in a two-part series that aims to help the reader deliberate the research surrounding transgender men and chestfeeding, and reflect on their own feelings about gender and infant feeding. This short discussion considers the possible ramifications on chestfeeding if a healthcare professional misgenders a transgender man, contemplates the limited understanding of the psychological complexities of chestfeeding and suggests how care can be improved.

Medical care saves lives, but the biomedic al model of care should not be the dominant model in maternity. By offering some insight into global definitions of the latent phase and associated outcomes of a prolonged latent phase, this article highlights how the unnecessary medic alisation of the latent phase occurs within the UK. Discussion surrounds how midwives as a group can claim empowerment and prevent unnecessary medicalisation through leadership, thinking beyond guidelines, constructing midwifery knowledge and listening to women. It acts as an introduction for midwives to suggest how they can change their practice as a professional group.