Tag: midwives

December Reflections 8: best decision of 2023

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Mauve-painted, mauve-lit wall on which is a drawing of a mother and baby in Quentin Blake's distinctive spiky style. You can just see a sign saying "Pool is clean"

I couldn’t immediately remember making any significant decisions, as opposed to just going with the flow, this year, but, thinking about it, there were a couple of major decisions whose results have integrated themselves so seamlessly into my life that it becomes clear that they were the right ones.

Choosing to give birth at the Rosie Birth Centre in Cambridge was one of those. Even then so much was down to things that were outside my control – what my body and the baby wanted to do, my fabulous always-had-my-back community midwife being on duty that night…

Maybe choosing to have a sweep on my due date helped nine days down the line, maybe it didn’t; activating airplane mode at eight days overdue was definitely a good idea. Anyway, I was in the right place with the right people, and it was lovely, and I still get a bit teary thinking about it now.

I’m sharing a picture of the Quentin Blake drawing in my room, although it isn’t entirely representative as in the event I didn’t have time to get into the pool, let alone look at the artwork. This motherhood lark is hard work, but my theory is that most people get something that goes irritatingly perfectly, and for me it was the birth itself.

Bicycles and Broomsticks – Kickstarter live now

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Bicycles in a museum display

Bikes in Space is back! This is a more-or-less annual publication by Microcosm Publishing, and aside from the bicycles and the speculative fiction implied by the series title there’s always a strong feminist theme. This issue’s theme is bicycles and broomsticks.

And I am back in it. My story is called Layings Out and Lyings In, and features a couple of no-nonsense witch-midwives, one of whom is an early adopter of that marvellous invention the safety bicycle. I had a good deal of fun writing this one.

This is all, well, kicked off by a Kickstarter campaign, and backing the Kickstarter is certainly the quickest and probably the easiest way of getting hold of the book. I should also say that, the more the Kickstarter campaign raises, the more I get paid for my story – so, if you were planning to get it anyway, getting it earlier is more profitable for me.

Unfortunately international shipping is getting ever more ruinous and prohibitive, but readers outside the US can at least get the book itself posted to them, and liaise directly with the publisher to work out other add-ons. Those inside can add on all sorts of goodies (personally I’m casting an envious eye at all the Bikes in Space back issues). Either way, here’s the campaign page. Take a look.

(The bicycles in the picture are in the transport museum at Dresden, which is well worth a look if you’re ever in that neck of the woods.)