Today, mums-to-be could be forgiven for thinking that motherhood is more complicated than it has ever been.

From experiencing pressure to breastfeed or to even forego pain relief during birth, to conflicting advice about whether or not drinking alcohol is safe, mums-to-be often receive a wide range of different messages from a variety of sources – from the media, other social media users to loved ones and even in the street.
What’s more, modern life means a world of unqualified medical advice about pregnancy and birth is available at the touch of a button 24 hours per day, seven days per week – which, where worried mums-to-be who have questions about their symptoms are concerned, is not necessarily a good thing, especially if they cannot get hold of a midwife to answer their non-emergency questions and provide context on what they have read.

To lift the lid on how much of an issue mums-to-be report these things are and reveal what being pregnant women face today, here at Private Midwives we carried out two surveys, including one of 531 mothers and one of 300 women who have given birth in the UK in the past five years*

Have a look at the results of our surveys here The UK maternity report