The Honest Guide to Pregnancy and Birth
Description
Antenatal courses - the NHS, the NCT, Bump and Baby Club, Happy Parents Happy Baby - they all serve a purpose. But at the end of their pregnancy, after birth and throughout the postnatal period, every woman says the same thing:
Why didn't they teach me THAT?
'That' - is what happens when your pregnancy becomes unexpectedly high-risk, and all the goalposts change.
'That' - is when the birth-plan and the playlist go out of the window; and
'That' - is when the postnatal period poses challenges you'd never imagined were a thing.
Theo Clarke was the MP for Stafford in the UK when she gave birth to her daughter Arabella in 2022. She experienced a third-degree tear, and underwent surgery to save her life. Now a campaigner for improvements in maternity care, one thing both Theo and her co-author Dr Kim Thomas hear from women again and again is 'they didn't teach me that in my antenatal class'.
The Honest Guide to Pregnancy and Birth is written to lift the veil on the sanitised version of pregnancy and birth that women encounter, in a book designed to empower and inform women at every stage. Informed by medical expertise, real-life case studies and the growing momentum to break the silence around difficult births, it is an essential guide to what you can do when pregnancy, labour or birth don't go to plan.
Covering pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period, each chapter in this powerful, essential book combines clear medical explanation with legal context, personal stories and expert insight. It gives practical advice on how to cope with, or mitigate, the challenges of every situation you might encounter pre-, during and post-birth.
Yes, pregnancy and birth can be scary. It's time we faced the truth that knowledge is power, and you deserve the best tools available to face birth with clarity and confidence.
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Theo Clarke was the Member of Parliament for Stafford from 2019 to 2024. She co-chaired the Birth Trauma Inquiry in Parliament, which was the first in British history, and previously set up the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Birth Trauma in the House of Commons. Theo has served as parliamentary private secretary at the Departments for Education and Business and Trade and at HM Treasury, in addition to being a trade envoy for the Prime Minister. She won Political Speech of the Year at The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards in 2023 and was included in the prestigious 'Women in Westminster: The 100' list in 2024 and 2025. Theo hosts the popular podcast 'Breaking the Taboo', which ranks in the top 5 per cent of most listened-to shows around the world.
Dr Kim Thomas is CEO of the Birth Trauma Association, a charity that supports parents experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder after birth. She was also the secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Birth Trauma, and wrote the inquiry report, which was published in May 2024 to wide acclaim from both government and opposition politicians. Kim has spoken at numerous high-profile conferences, including the HSJ Patient Safety conference in 2024 and has also published two books about birth trauma. She has 25 years' experience of working as a freelance journalist, writing extensively for publications such as the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent and the Daily Telegraph, as well as professional journals such as the BMJ.
