Helping mums cope with the stress of child birth
Supporting parents during arguably the most emotional and stressful time in their life has earned My Birth Support CIC multiple nominations for this year’s Kent Mental Wellbeing Awards.
The organisation has received three separate nominations for providing outstanding birth and parenting support to families in Canterbury. My Birth Support CIC is led by Aileen White, who has received lavish praise for her work supporting people at all stages on their journey towards parenthood, offering bespoke planning and preparation for birth as well as support with traumatic birth experiences and access to a community of parents with similar experiences and stories.
One of the nominators of My Birth Support CIC is a small grassroots charity called Route 23, who are partnered with My Birth Support CIC and run a ‘Stay and Play’ group together for young and old pregnant new mums and carers.
Aileen White provides the group with activities that promote self care and mindfulness and helps to educate new parents by teaching them coping mechanisms for common issues like Tokophobia and trauma recovery. Tokophobia is defined as the fear of childbirth which affects roughly 14 per cent of women.
Staff who were employed by Route 23, some of whom were young mums or single parents themselves, felt huge benefits from the sessions and soon found themselves co-leading the group with Aileen. They noted that their confidence and sense of wellbeing had improved greatly.
A representative of Route 23 said, “My Birth Support CIC is a hidden valuable resource that society needs. Exposure is needed.”.
The other two nominators were direct clients of My Birth Support CIC. One of them was very impressed with the quality and level of activities provided by Aileen.
They said, “We found narrative sharing, storytelling, visualizations and hands on arts and crafts exercises very helpful to relax, focus and process. The combination of verbal-visual-tangible exercises engaged all our senses, allowing us to be fully present to engage with the conversation.”.
Adding that: “Aileen is a powerful force for good; her ability to to hold space with kindness, empathy and broach complex and emotional conversations with hope and humility, settling her clients into peace with their decision is unrivalled”.
The other nominator said: “I have loved joining the Maternal Journal Sessions online, which make it easy to attend without having to find childcare. I have also had some EFT (tapping) sessions online that I found incredibly healing and a non-intrusive, gentle but powerful therapy – I felt like Aileen has been one of the only professionals that has really understood me.”
The Kent Mental Wellbeing Awards is an annual event designed to showcase the people, organisations and initiatives that help us cope with life. The event’s three themes are: kindness and compassion; wellbeing; mental health.
Whether it is in school, business, community or family, so many of us have been lucky to have people and organisations with ideas, tips and tactics to help us cope. It is time to celebrate those mental health and well-being champions in our community and share this best practice.
The awards will be staged in October by the mental health charity Mind in Bexley and East Kent in collaboration with a range of wellbeing and mental health organisations.
Nominations can be linked to a simple act of kindness that lifted the spirits, a business that has improved staff wellbeing, through to a targeted initiative delivered by a charity or statutory organisation to support a mental health issue.
The event is sponsored by Kent County Council, Kent Community Foundation, ADM Computing, GrainLNG – National Grid, Medway Council, Optyma Security, Ble Global, Wave Community Bank, Cactus Graphics and CommunityAid.
Submit nominations at www.kentmentalwellbeingawards.org.uk For awards news follow @KentMWAwards on Facebook and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
