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Leah Hazard

@leahhazard

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Midwife and bestselling author ✍️
📚Hard Pushed (2019)
📚Womb (2023)
📚Birth Wars (Jan 27)
♥️1:1 birth prep and debrief

POSTS STORIES REELS

BIRTH WARS is live and available to pre-order!!

This book is the culmination of over 20 years of birth work, including 13 as an NHS midwife. BIRTH WARS says everything I want to say about the major factors affecting the experience and delivery of maternity care around the world in the 21st century, from immigration to incarceration, from AI to mental health, from politics to preventable harm.

No holds barred, no topics off limit. An argument for a radically different model of care.

This is my mic drop. 🎤

Please, if you’ve enjoyed following my account, if I’ve ever cared for you or advocated for you, or even if you’re just curious about what REALLY goes down in the birth machine, I’d be so grateful if you’d pre-order BIRTH WARS as a present to your future self. Pre-orders are vital to generating buzz and success for books, and they’ll really help me get this message out there.

Linktree in bio or just search BIRTH WARS at your favourite online bookseller. 2027 let’s gooooo! by @leahhazard

Literally everyone is born, so surely birth is an event that should be valued and resourced? 🤔 Unfortunately, that’s not often the case. Here I am spitting some facts on STV’s Scotland Tonight, following a week of damning revelations about maternity safety. What do you think? Do politicians and budget managers forget that birth affects each and every one of us?

Birth baby midwife midwifery student midwife pregnant pregnancy nhs new baby new mum motherhood by @leahhazard

Reintroducing myself…

Hi! This account has grown a lot recently, so I thought I’d do a little reintroduction post for new and old followers.

I’m Leah, an author/midwife and the mother of two phenomenal young women and one French bulldog.

I was born and raised in the United States, and I studied English at Harvard (what, like it’s hard?) before moving to Scotland in 1999.

I earned a Master’s Degree in Directing and worked in television for a while before my daughters’ births rocked my world.

I became a doula (birth companion) for six years before finally retraining in midwifery, graduating in 2013.

I’ve worked as an NHS Scotland midwife for about 12 years now, across many clinical areas: community clinics, ante/postnatal wards, an obstetric-led labour ward and a midwife-led birth unit. I’ve spent the majority of time, though, working in maternity triage.

I write books when I get fired up, which is often: Hard Pushed (2019), Womb (2023) and Birth Wars (coming in January 2027) plus some fun fiction, The Anatomy of Us (out now from Audible).

I’m passionate about mental health support for students, staff and parents. I have qualifications in counselling skills and Birth Trauma Resolution Therapy, and I’m available for 1-1 support in person and online.

I’d love to get to know you, too. Say hi below 👇 and ask a question if you like!

#midwife #midwifery #maternity #birth #nhs #healthcare #doula #studentmidwife #nurse #nursing #laboranddeliverynurse #laboranddelivery #healthcarecareers #author #authorsofinsta #authorsofinstagram by @leahhazard

As a midwife, it’s my job to gather all the evidence and to keep an open mind, and that’s how I’ve gone into One Born Every Minute. Episode 2 just confirmed my impression that the production team have made a clear choice to focus on entertainment over education. I believe that the best television can be both, so I think that this was a massive missed opportunity. It’s possible to tell compelling human stories while also providing context, nuance and a broader social lens, but that hasn’t happened here.

Did you watch OBEM? What did you think? by @leahhazard

Everyone takes away something different from a birth debrief, but most of my clients tell me they:

Feel kinder towards themselves
Feel more relaxed and at ease
Understand the details of their birth better
Know what they’d do differently next time
Ruminate less about birth memories

With 13 years of clinical experience, training in counselling skills and Birth Trauma Resolution therapy, I’m here to walk alongside you as you unpack big feelings about your birth experience.

DM me if you’d like to know more ♥️ by @leahhazard

Well, I never thought I’d see the day! Bill Kirkup ripped a strip off ‘normal birth ideology’ on @bbcradio4 @bbctodayprogramme this morning. What do you make of this? 🧐

Thanks to @biomechanics_for_birth for flagging! by @leahhazard

Not dignifying that attempt at journalism with an explanation. So I’ll share my own ‘ideology’ again in case anyone is wondering what midwives REALLY believe. What’s yours? by @leahhazard

What do you think? How much control should we ‘give’ our pregnant ‘patients’? 🤔 @philipsuk DM me if you have any money left in your apparently minimal marketing budget to spend on consulting a midwife who actually knows what birth should look and feel like.

water birth home birth midwife midwifery obgyn nhs by @leahhazard

Access this powerful FREE resource on delivering individualised and human-centered care midwifery care ✨

Learn from Leah Hazard BA, MDra, PgDip live on February 22 during her practice-changing webinar “Bodies Are Not Machines: Practical Tools for Individualised Maternity Care”!

She’ll be sharing evidence and insights on:
🔹How underlying systems have led to increasingly mechanistic, industrialised terms in maternity care
🔹The historical roots of the language we use & time frames we impose on birth
🔹A practical toolkit to deepen & strengthen person-centered care
🔹How midwives can be supported to develop a more reflective, nuanced & individualized practice
🔹Ways to understand & shift how bias & embedded norms shape our decisions & interactions

This education will also be available to watch as a recording, to help ensure your access even if you’re not able to join us live! Reserve your free seat today and invite your colleagues to learn along with you!

Click the link in our bio or send us a message to learn more and reserve your free seat!

#GOLDMidwifery2027 #GOLDLearning #IAMGOLD #MaternityCare #MaternalHealth #MidwiferyCare #midwife #midwifery #midwives #pregnancy #birth #childbirth #EmpoweredBirth #PhysiologicalBirth #perinatal #postpartum #MaternalMentalHealth #PMAD #PPD #birthworker #PrenatalWellness #BirthPereparation #FourthTrimester #doula #nurse by @leahhazard

Kind of a sucky time to be a woman, but midwifery is forever ✨

birth | midwives | nurse | cpm | cnm | home birth | freebirth | vbac | caesarean | postpartum | new mum | motherhood | hope | fyp | inspiration | slow living by @leahhazard

POV: You had an idea, pushed past the fear of putting yourself out there, and now you’re interviewing people you admire for YOUR OWN PODCAST🥹🎙️✨

MY FIRST VIDEO EPISODE IS HERE!! 😭🖤

For this milestone episode of Ctrl Click Career, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Leah Hazard - midwife, author and advocate for improved maternity services🗣️

We chatted about her journey into midwifery, improving maternity care and the realities behind the job title!

As someone passionate about health equity and the people behind the profession, this conversation was extra special. And this is only the beginning… 👀✨

🎥 THE FULL EPISODE IS LIVE NOW! Linktree in bio 🔗

#CtrlClickCareer #LeahHazard #PodcastLaunch #Midwifery #CareerSuccess by @leahhazard

Hey Chat, is the government lying to us? Asking for a friend. (And this is the one and only time you’ll see me asking Chat anything, although it looks like Westminster has the AI guys on speed-dial.) What do you think of today’s budget? by @leahhazard