This is a wonderful podcast on how babies and children see the world and interpret it in the first few monts and years of life! Here’s the authors, Charles Fernyhough, latest book and his website is here.

‘“Whether it is the role of the support person as comforter or protector that leads to better obstetric outcomes is still unanswered.” The most recent Cochrane review theorizes that the stresses of hospital birth are dis-empowering, raising stress levels that impede both the dynamic and subtle mechanisms of normal labor.  Research aside, we understand intuitively that continuous support in labor both protects and comforts; it acknowledges the vulnerability of a woman in labor and can provide, both through advocacy and unconditional acceptance of everything she does, an antidote to fear, and the path to a safe birth that will be remembered with joy.’