Mother and Baby Magazine Joins With midwivesonline.com

6th September 2005

	Catharine Parker-Littler with mother-to-be Michelle Turnbull

Britain’s biggest-selling parenting magazine, Mother and Baby has teamed up with www.midwivesonline.com to provide visitors to the magazine’s website with the ability to email a qualified midwife and receive a personal reply.

The service, called Ask a Midwife, supports parents between clinic visits with answers to non urgent information. With only 36,500 midwives in the UK to support the births of around 700,000 babies every year, there is a significant shortfall in ante and post natal care.

Georgina Hersey, website managing editor, Mother and Baby Magazine, said: “For many expectant parents a pregnancy is a time filled with a roller-coaster of emotions, from exhilaration, to anxiousness to down right terror. Invariably, there will be a nagging question that will keep parents-to-be awake at night. By providing a service that can be accessed 24/7 we will provide our readers with peace of mind as their question will be answered by a trained midwife.

“Every response will be checked for quality and content by two midwives to ensure the best possible advice and we guarantee a reply within seven days.”

Developed by Catharine Parker-Littler, herself a midwife of 20 years, www.midwivesonline.com was originally set up to provide midwives, neo-natal nurses and health visitors with a portal of the latest information and research. From there it has developed into a site that provides reliable and unbiased advice from a trusted team of 15 midwives, as well as general advice articles, news, monthly newsletters and product advice.

Catharine said: “We’re delighted to be working with Motherandbabymagazine.com. Every pregnancy is different and often a worry or concern that has been bothering an expectant parent for days will finally come to a head when there is no-one available to help. Emailing a practicing midwife no matter what time of the day or night should help alleviate some of the stress.”

No longer the domain of the female, men now play a much larger role in pregnancy, with nine out of 10 women’s partners present at the birth.

Catharine said: “Our site is about providing advice for women and men. We also have an entire section dedicated to providing advice for expectant fathers which can be accessed via www.newfathers.co.uk.”

In addition to general advice, midwivesonline.com provide specialist advice for mothers-to-be who suffer from diabetes, teenage mothers and breast feeding advice.

Georgina concluded: “The Royal College of midwives has highlighted a severe shortfall in the number of midwives in the UK and has called for 10,000 more midwives to be recruited. As a result, the Ask a Midwife service we provide thanks to www.midwivesonline.com, fills a huge gap and will be an invaluable source of supplementary information for the many expectant parents throughout the country.”