You’ll probably agree, we live in an age of information overload, bombarded by opinions, left, right and centre.

And never is that more obvious than when you’re pregnant, everyone from this week’s influencer to your Auntie Janet might have an opinion on how you care for your body, how you want to birth, and parent your baby.

But one thing we can come back to are evidence and context. Not hearsay, not what happened to your best friend, but good quality evidence. And most of the women I work with are very well aware of the fact that we need to get more curious about the facts that are presented to us…

But taking in facts and figures is just the start. Take a conversation I had recently with members of my Birth Prep Collective…

We talked about the fact that all of them like the idea of a water birth. Well considering we have a brand new maternity unit in Bournemouth, packed full of birth pools that shouldn’t be a problem should it?

Well, let’s dig a little deeper…

Where you can birth your baby at the BEACH building at Royal Bournemouth Hospital is made up of two areas (well three if you include theatre but for anyone planning a caesarean birth, water is unsurprisingly out of the question!)

We’ve got The Haven, a low risk, midwife led unit, and Woodland Labour Ward – for those with more complicated pregnancies or wanting more options with regards to monitoring and pain relief. Five out of the six rooms in The Haven have a birth pool (fantastic!) while 2 rooms in Labour Ward do.

So if you’ve had a straightforward, healthy pregnancy, you can assume that a water birth will be available to you, right?

I’m afraid not. Let’s dig a little deeper. If the majority of women were birthing in The Haven, then yes we could assume that there’s a high chance you will have access to a birth pool. But if we look at the latest birth statistics for Bournemouth Hospital (March 2026) you will see that only 12 of 316 babies were born in The Haven, just 3.80%.

So are we saying that just 3.80% of women are experiencing uncomplicated pregnancies or is there something else at play here? Add to the equation the fact that only 3.5% of babies were born in the water in the hospital as a whole and the facts don’t lie – the chance of water birth is looking pretty slim.

Or is it? Don’t lose faith!

This is your cue to get really clear – yes, it means you might have to up your birth prep game and for you and your partner to learn how to advocate for one another, but it’s not impossible. It’s also advisable to work on how you might handle a situation where what you want isn’t available, whether that’s your choice when weighing up the facts, or just pure lack of an available pool (and pros and cons of water birth is a whole other topic which I should actually cover soon too!)

Or how could you increase your chances of a water birth?  Because home birth can be a way of doing that, would that be an option for you?  There’s lots of ways to look at this, but the important this is that you do go below surface level and work out what the information means for YOUR birth.

Here I’ve used water birth as an example, but you could apply this theory to a number of other scenarios including choices around monitoring, active birth and aromatherapy when staffing, policy or clinical recommendations come into play.

Assuming these things will be available to you because the hypnobirthing podcast you listened to said they would be, is dangerous territory.

Despite the prep the women I work with are doing, most are genuinely shocked when I share these kind of statistics with them. But I do so not to scare, but to give you a reality check, if you are serious about getting as close as possible to your dream birth scenario, you’ve got to put in the work.

Doing the surface level browsing through the UHD website is not going to cut the mustard.

So my advice to you is assume nothing. Get curious. Ask questions. Dig deeper until you get right to the bottom of what the evidence and statistics mean for you. Making informed decisions is the only way forward to a positive birth experience, no matter how your birth pans out.

And this is exactly what we do in The Birth Prep Collective – a 3 month journey to prepare your body and mind for birth through pregnancy yoga, birth preparation and consistent, ongoing support for you and your partner. We dig deeper on the issues that matter to you, whether you’re wanting a hospital or home birth, a physiological birth or all the pain relief you can get your hands on. Through my experience supporting over 500 women through pregnancy, birth and motherhood, we’ll work together to help you toward the kind of birth where you look back, and you wouldn’t change a thing.

Next round starts in September, head to www.jennafoster.co.uk/birth-prep-collective to join the waitlist.