Births don’t always go to plan. Yet, very often, after an uncomfortable, confusing or traumatic experience, parents’ voices remain unheard, their feelings suppressed. Illiyin Morrison is here to listen.
She has journeyed from midwife to mentor; as a birth debrief facilitator, her patient ear and calm guidance have helped many mothers and birth-givers find peace and confidence. Her book, The Birth Debrief is out now.
“There’s no romantic story about how I got into midwifery; there were no childhood dreams of birthing babies. It was more of a continuous stumble until I landed where I wanted to be. I qualified about six years ago and went into clinical work at a big London hospital.
Then I got pregnant with my daughter. I’d planned a home birth, but it just went tits-up and I ended up having an emergency caesarean section. And that was the catalyst for everything. I was unable to compute my clinical knowledge into my personal experience; the two didn’t mesh.
Nothing can prepare you for parenthood except being a parent. I had all the knowledge, but was not actually able to put it into practice. There was lots of on-the-job learning. Motherhood is 24/7, and I struggled with that. If I’d seen my birth on paper, I’d think it had been fine, but I struggled with how it had played out. I’d felt so wildly out of control, the whole experience was so far from what I wanted. It left me with feelings of shame and inadequacy that filtered into my mothering.