We turned mothers into risk factors, And a national report just confirmed the damage.
If you are pregnant in Sussex and you have been scrolling through the headlines today, you already know. The Independent National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation has published its interim report. Over 8,000 women gave evidence. As an independent midwife in Sussex, working both inside the NHS and outside it, I have read every page. None of it surprised me. But all of it mattered. This is my response.
WHAT THE NHS MATERNITY REPORT 2026 ACTUALLY SAYS
I’ve read the report. All 35 pages of it.
And what strikes me most isn’t what it says. It’s that we needed 8,000 women to say it before anyone wrote it down. Midwives already knew. Women already knew. We have been living this, for years.
The evidence is devastating. Appointments too short to matter. Women not listened to, not seen, not safe. Racism woven through every level of care. Midwives burning. In too many cases, women gave birth without dignity, without privacy, without anyone who knew their name. Partners sent home at 3am. Bereaved families fighting years for answers that never came.
Beyond that, the inequalities are stark. Black women are almost three times more likely to die than white women. Women in the most deprived areas are twice as likely to die as those in the least. Maternal mortality is rising, not falling. Caesarean sections have climbed to 45%, up from 25% a decade ago.
This is the NHS maternity system in 2026. You can read the full report here
THE THING NOBODY IS NAMING
What the system calls complexity, I call consequence. The consequence of stripping birth of its humanity. Of replacing relationship with protocol. Of measuring everything that can be measured and ignoring everything that can’t.
Because underneath every single one of those findings is the same broken thing, we stopped seeing women as human beings and started seeing them as a collection of risks. Gestational age. BMI. Parity. Blood pressure. Ethnicity. Age. A constellation of data points walking through the door. Not a woman. Not a mother becoming. Not a human being.
THE SOLUTION HAS EXISTED FOR TEN YEARS
Better Births named it back in 2016, and every review since has reached exactly the same conclusion:
The evidence is overwhelming. Continuity of care reduces interventions, reduces trauma, and saves lives. Crucially, it specifically improves outcomes for Black and brown women. And yet, for reasons nobody can quite explain, the one thing proven to change outcomes is the one thing the system keeps not doing.
WHAT I HAVE WITNESSED
Throughout my 17 years of practice, I have sat with many women and families. And I can tell you, the moment care becomes human again, something in the body changes.
Fear softens. Breath deepens. Labour moves. Not because I intervened, but because she finally felt seen. Not her notes. Not her risk score. Her.
That is not soft. That is not extra. That is, in fact, the most clinical thing I know. Oxytocin needs safety. Given that oxytocin drives labour, fear quite literally closes the body. So when a system built on risk management creates fear, it then calls the consequences clinical complexity. The logic is circular. And women pay the price.
WHY I BUILT RISE MIDWIVES, AND WHAT IT MEANS TO WORK WITH AN INDEPENDENT MIDWIFE IN SUSSEX
I stopped waiting. Instead, I built it myself.
Rise Midwives exists because you don’t have time for another decade of promises. You can only birth your baby once, and that one time is everything. As an independent midwife in Sussex, Brighton, Hove, what I offer is exactly what the report keeps recommending and the system keeps not providing. One midwife. Who knows your name before you walk through the door. Who holds your history, your fears, your hopes, and shows up with all of it, from the first conversation to the fourth trimester and beyond.
You can read more about how we work here, and explore our services here
You are not a risk to be managed. You are a woman on a journey that deserves to be witnessed, who deserves to be respected, heard, and held.
DID YOU FEEL THAT TODAY? I HEAR YOU.
If something stirred in you reading the headlines, trust that feeling. You are allowed to want more. You are allowed to ask for it. Most importantly, you are allowed to be held through this.
If you are looking for an independent midwife in Sussex, I’m here.
Stay human.
If you feel called to work together, reach out. We can start with a conversation and see what unfolds from there.
