Royal College of Midwives changes safe sleep guidance which had NO mention of women 

The Royal College Of Midwives has apologised and removed guidelines for safe-sleeping with babies that referred to ‘post-natal people’ with no mention of women or mothers. 

The move came after the body was criticised by a childbirth campaigner who was ‘cancelled’ online for questioning the use of the term ‘birthing people’. 

Milli Hill, from Somerset, faced a furious backlash last year after challenging the use of the term while speaking about obstetric violence – medical interventions performed during childbirth without a woman’s consent.

Now, the bestselling author has convinced midwifery body the RCM to change its latest safe sleeping guidance, which made no reference to women and instead used the term ‘post-natal people’, presumably to account for the fact that transgender men can give birth.  

The pregnancy campaigner pointed to research showing that women who are breastfeeding have a heightened responsiveness due to their hormonal feedback cycle. 

This means there could be safety differences if a baby was co-sleeping with a breastfeeding mother compared to a non-breastfeeding mother or father.   

Speaking to FEMAIL, Milli said she was ‘surprised but extremely heartened’ to see that the RCM had quickly acknowledged its mistake and is ‘pledging to do better’.  

‘These language changes happen in the name of “inclusivity”, but of course, they exclude and insult the vast majority of the RCM’s target market – women,’ said Milli. 

‘Women don’t want to be called ‘postnatal people’ or ‘bodies with vaginas’ or ‘vulva owners’ – they are in almost every case proud and happy to be called women and mothers.’ 

She added that being called a ‘woman’ rather than ‘post-natal person’ is an important factor to consider when it comes to co-sleeping with children, because cisgender men are not able to breastfeed. 

Milli said: ‘When it comes to safe sleep advice, sex really does matter. We know that there is a difference in safety, for example, between a breastfeeding mother bedsharing with her baby, and a father doing the same, because the evidence shows non-breastfeeding parents do not have the same hormonal feedback cycle which promotes heightened responsiveness. 

‘I’m so glad that the RCM have seen sense on this issue and hope it represents part of the turning tide as organisations question the influence of Stonewall on their language and start listening to what women really want’.

After the campaigner raised the issue on social media, the RCM swiftly offered an apology for their mishap and insisted they are dedicated to ensuring ‘women are never erased from the narrative around pregnancy and birth’.

A spokesperson said on Twitter: ‘We would like to apologise that women are not mentioned in our recent safer sleeping guidance. This was a huge oversight on our part, especially as we are committed as an organisation to ensure that women are never erased from the narrative around pregnancy & birth.’

The RCM added that the guidance has been removed from its website while the text is being revised.  

Mother-of-three Milli took to social media to emphasise how ‘impressed’ she was with the swift action of the RCM and for ‘thoughtfully’ addressing the thoughts of women. 

She added: ‘Really important to support the @MidwivesRCM today. In this highly sensitive area it is very difficult to publicly admit you have made a mistake. There may be questions to ask about how / why etc but in my view today should simply be about 100% support for them. ‘ 

Royal College of Midwives has been contacted for comment.  

Milli is a journalist and advocate of women’s rights in childbirth who penned bestselling pregnancy guide The Positive Birth Book and Give Birth Like a Feminist.

She hit the headlines earlier this year when she revealed she was targeted on social media, faced calls for her books to be boycotted and was dropped by a charity she’d worked alongside for years due to her comments about the term ‘birthing people’. 

She was called out by a stranger on Instagram last November, who wrote: ‘Birthing people are seen as “the fragile sex’ who need to be kept under patriarchal authority by doctors.’

Hill replied: ‘I would challenge the term “birthing person” in this context though. It is women who are seen as the “fragile sex” etc, and obstetric violence [medical interventions performed during childbirth without a woman’s consent] is violence against women.’ 

One comment read: ‘Let’s just air it. Milli Hill. We shouldn’t be buying her books. We shouldn’t be gifting them. We shouldn’t be following her. We shouldn’t be quoting her. She had dangerous opinions, beliefs and views.’ 

In 2012, Milli founded the Positive Birth Movement, a network of support groups for pregnant women, while her work for the last decade as a journalist and author has featured heavily around women’s reproductive lives.  

On her blog, she explains that around three years ago, she noted a changed in language around childbirth, particularly the two phrases ‘birthing people’ – which was used alongside or instead of “women”, and ‘assigned male/female at birth’. 

She says she found the latter ‘confusing’ because the sex of babies is more often than not determined in prenatal tests and scans, rather than birth, while the word ‘assigned’ implies something is given to you, not innate – like biological sex is. 

Milli, who used to be a creative psychotherapist and worked with young people post abuse and trauma, continued: ‘My work and thinking around obstetric violence had led me to the view that it is “sex based violence.” Please note my use of the word sex here, not gender…. 

‘What I saw happening in this slide was a genuine mix up between the absolutely correct idea that the problem here is patriarchy, a system that oppresses and damages women on the basis of their sex, and obfuscating terminology that is unable to name the oppressed people.’ 

After being tagged in the comment online, Milli went on to say she felt the need to speak out and so responded to the account which had few followers – adding she just felt ‘moved to say what she thought.’   

However, a doula posted screenshots of her comments on her stories and ‘all hell broke loose.’ 

Shortly after, Milli was contacted by Amy Gibbs, the chief executive of Birthrights, a charity that campaigns for human rights during childbirth.

Milli, who closed The Positive Birth Movement in 2021 in part due to the bullying she’s experienced, had worked with the organisation for a number of years.  

Amy wrote that she was ‘really concerned’ to see the comments made by Milli about obstetric violence, adding these were ‘challenging/disputing that it could happen to non-binary or trans people who give birth’.