Amy Walsh on learning to trust her body in birth

In the first episode of Ready Birth Go, Carly Sandland talks to Emmerdale's Amy Walsh about two births, four years apart, and how the first one shaped everything about the second.

Bonnie arrived on Boxing Day 2021 after a Group B Strep positive result, an induction Amy was pushed towards on her due date, an epidural that fell out without anyone noticing, an episiotomy and a haemorrhage. She calls it torture, and says she came out of it feeling cheated.

So when she was pregnant with Nell, she read more, asked more, and declined nearly everything she was offered.

We talk about:

• Group B Strep, and how one test result can shape an entire labour
• Why a sweep is an induction, and why it's rarely described as one
• Declining a seven-day induction and negotiating for ten
• Epidurals that don't work
• Fetal scalp monitoring
• Birth trauma, and how a second birth can reopen the first
• What partners carry into a second birth
• Quickfire: three words, the TENS machine, and a six-hour playlist

Amy: https://www.instagram.com/amyvwalsh · https://www.tiktok.com/@amy.walsh27
Carly: https://www.instagram.com/thedoulaclub
Ready Birth Go, Carly's birth preparation course: https://readybirthgo.com/

Content note: traumatic birth, haemorrhage, and postnatal mental health.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/william-proulx/for-me