About
Birth Story Listening is a process which involves a deep listening to the heart of someone's story. It can help a person gain new meaning around the way they gave or attended birth, especially if any parts were difficult.
The sessions are also helpful for any prenatal, birth, postpartum or pregnancy loss experience that feels difficult still including your fertility journey. The process can be useful for birth attendants, midwives and partners too.
Birth Story Listening sessions can give empathetic and constructive feedback about what is beyond the medical and emotional birth stories that we usually tell.
The Listening sessions have a "compassionate and sophisticated approach which focuses on transformation rather than trauma."(1) They can include narrative psychology, mythology, art and an understanding of birth in our culture. And what's more, people usually only need one session to feel a shift.
Our stories are alive and so always have a chance to be rewritten to uncover a new tale.
Pam England is the founding director of Birth Story Medicine and she created the Birth Story Listening process.
Find out more at https://birthstorymedicine.com/
The journey here
In 1982, then home birth midwife Pam England was so shocked when she had a cesarean during her first birthing experience - something she never envisioned, that she then spent years finding out why this bothered her so much. She gained a degree in psychological counselling and went on to create a whole movement to explore the impact the expectations we have around pregnancy and birth have on us.
Pam has written 'Birthing from Within', 'Labyrinth of Birth' and 'Ancient Maps for Modern Birth'.
Pam saw that "in a well-intentioned but decidedly misguided effort to help woman make informed-decisions, modern birth preparation has become lopsidedly intellectual."(2) And goes on to say that "the profound mystery of birth, including how your birth unfolded as it did, can never be completely understood with the mind." (3)
Rosie Humberstone has worked as an Art Psychotherapist for 15 years. She completed her 4 month Birth Story Listening training in 2025. Having followed Pam's work for years and experienced her own unique rite of passage in her births, Rosie has a strong passion to share the life-changing gifts these sessions have to offer.
Rite of Passage
Listening sessions
Listening sessions
"Each pregnancy and birth is a rite passage that initiates the woman into motherhood, even if she has no baby in her arms. What occurs during childbirth teaches the woman about herself and about how her culture values motherhood."(5)
Even an abortion or pregnancy loss is a form of transformation in the motherhood realm.
During pregnancy a
"Each pregnancy and birth is a rite passage that initiates the woman into motherhood, even if she has no baby in her arms. What occurs during childbirth teaches the woman about herself and about how her culture values motherhood."(5)
Even an abortion or pregnancy loss is a form of transformation in the motherhood realm.
During pregnancy and birth self transformation occurs regardless of how the experience unfolds.
Listening sessions
Listening sessions
Listening sessions
What you think and feel about your pregnancy, the loss of a pregnancy, the way we give birth, how we feed our baby, how we are treated during and though these experiences?.. all the 'what ifs' that come later, the judgements of our decisions, ALL have an impact on how we live, how we parent and how look after ourselves - months and even y
What you think and feel about your pregnancy, the loss of a pregnancy, the way we give birth, how we feed our baby, how we are treated during and though these experiences?.. all the 'what ifs' that come later, the judgements of our decisions, ALL have an impact on how we live, how we parent and how look after ourselves - months and even years afterwards
There can be a real shift in how you think and feel about your story in just one session.
Storytelling
Listening sessions
Storytelling
"Humans are storytelling animals, and our stories illustrate and affirm who we are, providing identity, purpose and meaning to our lives." (6) We tell stories to make sense of complicated and difficult times.
A woman can have what they'd feel was a positive birth and then have a difficult experience postpartum. Or maybe pregnancy was won
"Humans are storytelling animals, and our stories illustrate and affirm who we are, providing identity, purpose and meaning to our lives." (6) We tell stories to make sense of complicated and difficult times.
A woman can have what they'd feel was a positive birth and then have a difficult experience postpartum. Or maybe pregnancy was wonderful and the moment after birth felt like a let down. A much hoped for baby did not survive. The inner loss felt when we have a baby with a genetic condition or we can't breastfeed or we didn't have our VBAC.
We create a story about these times, or someone else does it for us and we can settle on being grateful for a healthy baby or a healthy mother.