The NHS Whistleblowing Midwife Victoria Rixon

In this gripping episode, we delve into the harrowing journey of former NHS midwife Victoria Rixon, whose career was upended by allegations that shook her world and cast a long shadow over her reputation. Once celebrated for her compassion and dedication in the maternity ward, Victoria found herself at the center of a storm—accused, scrutinized, and ultimately forced out of the profession she loved.

Now, years later, she’s fighting back.

Through candid interviews, personal reflections, and expert commentary, we explore the emotional toll of institutional betrayal, the complexities of whistleblowing in healthcare, and the resilience it takes to reclaim one’s identity when the system turns its back. Victoria speaks openly about the events that led to her leaving the profession she loved and her ongoing battle to clear her name and expose the truth.

This is not just a story about one woman—it’s a story about power, accountability, and the human cost of silence.

If you've been affected by an of the issues brought up in this episode please do get in touch and we will try our best to support and help you find the best solution, contact Victoria direct on her socials:

X: https://x.com/victoria_rixon
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@retiredmidwife

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know, for effect, dear, our aliens.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Our difference is worldwide would vanish if we were facing
an alien threat. Perhaps we need some outside universal threat
to make us recognize this common bound.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Breaking news tonight, Sean Diddy Combs has been arrested in
an unhappy hotel. There's a relation to some comments that
you made on a Facebook page.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
This is a Fox News alert.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
The Epstein files have been released.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Across the pond.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
You're looking at now, sir.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Everything that happens now is happening for sure. Now, welcome back,
guys who across upon podcast. I'm Amanda McKenna, your host,
and today we are joined by Victoria. Hi. Victoria, it's
lovely to have you here.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Hello, Thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Of course. Now, Victoria is a midwife, or was a
midwife within the NHS system. She's been unfortunately accused of
some very heinous crimes after she has come out as
a whistleblower on the negligence that she has witnessed within
the NHS. So, Victoria, I suppose we should start with

(01:36):
really your background on how you did become a midwife.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yes, so before I was a midwife, I worked for
lots of different companies. I was a sales rep at
Sky and was a like a phone telecommunity communications advice.
I've always done a bit of sales that I've learned
a lot of people skills in those types of roles.
And when I moved to Plymouth, I gave birth to

(02:01):
my third son and had a beautiful home birth, and
the midwife that was there created such a beautiful environment
for me. I never thought birth could be that profoundly moving,
and I'd already had two children before in the hospital.
So when I had this amazing birth, I thought, right,
I want to be a midwife. I want to give

(02:22):
this to women. I want to feel that again. Because
it was like a drug. It was so addictive. I
can understand why people say I love giving birth because
it's so magical and can be Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
So did you Is it because of the experience that
you had during your own birth and process that it
really So you must have had some very good experiences
with the midwife that you had come across.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah, it was just that I was at home. So
when you're birthing and you're in labor, if you're at
home and you're comfortable, you labor better. Your body isn't stressed.
There's no stress response, so your your natural rhythm isn't intercepted.
You know, you've got the smells, you've got your own comforts,

(03:09):
and you know when you're not well, you go home
and you feel better just already being home that you
can rest and settle. But you know, pregnancy is not
an illness, but it is definitely an area of the
body that needs calm. Birth needs calm, It needs quiet,
it needs stillness because it is so moving. And I'd

(03:29):
never had that in my two previous births because I'd
had them in hospital and didn't know that this existed.
I just thought that's how birth was. So when I
gave birth to my son James, he's just turned fourteen,
it was, Oh, my goodness. I can't even explain it.
It was like out of body experience. It was so
intensely magical. I was like, what is happening to me?

(03:52):
It was like an outer body astral experience, That's all
I can describe it as. And I could see myself
birthing from the other side of the room, and I
was like, what is happening?

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (04:01):
And I saw myself giving birth. It was incredible, and
I think the reason why you're not fully aware after
you've given birth is because you're still out of your
body for quite some time. It is magical. It's literally
a ritual. It's you know, we're not talking dark ritual.
We're talking beautiful, feminine ritual. And I'm not a massive feminist.

(04:24):
I'm not one of those people that's like, oh, you know,
power to the whatever people say, that's not for me.
But I do believe that birth. Now, I've experienced four births.
The home birth was the most powerful, and that's why
I became a midwife. But I never saw that again, Amanda.
I saw home birth, but not not in the same way.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
What was that your last birth then that you had
that experience?

Speaker 3 (04:51):
No, five years ago. I had the most horrific birth,
and I was a midwife and I worked in the hospital.
It was very awful. I was strong quite some time after.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, I would, you know, I'm not sure what to say.
What is it that you've seen?

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Well, I think for me, what in my last pregnancy
or in general.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
In the traumatization was that in your own birth or
in the hospital.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
In my own birth? So if we think i'd gone
from being a midwiffree led care woman, just midwife having
a home birth. Then my next pregnancy wanting the same thing.
I got diagnosed with diabetes, and then I went straight
into consultant appointments and scans all on top of each other.

(05:37):
There was no softness around disclosing the things that they
needed disclosing to me. And I think because I had
trauma from my parents' divorce that I hadn't addressed, it
was just trauma and to trauma and trauma. Then if
you add in all the trauma that I'd seen in
my job, I then my own birth just became one big,

(05:59):
fearful trauma mess. So I didn't meet my birth and
pregnancy in the same place I did eight or nine
years before. So things like being in consultant appointments, just
the language, the constant you're at risk a still birth.
I mean, those words alone are scary when you hear

(06:20):
them for someone else, But when they go in your
own ears, into your own brain, and into your own heart,
in every cell in your body, that your baby might die,
and you hear that all the time, it's so overwhelming.
There's just no need for that. So much trauma base
onto these women. Yes, you're at high risk. But actually

(06:42):
the statistics are this on the other side, that this
is how many women had diabetes, and this is how
many women had live births, and they were beautiful. None
of that balance, Amanda. It was this fear, fear, fear, fear,
and I'll tell you what, if you knew me, I
was a mess. I didn't know myself. I didn't know

(07:02):
my own mind, I didn't know my own body. I
didn't I couldn't make a decision. It was so stressful
and my birth was absolutely horrific.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
I've experienced something similar to that because I was diagnosed
myself with placenta previa with two of them, and the
third one they actually forced me, so I've got four
but the third one they did force me to have
a C section, so now I've got no choice. But
it was all fear based and what they were giving

(07:35):
to me throughout my care before I was obviously given birth.
So I can definitely relate to it, although in a
different way. So during your midwifery actually well in the NHS,
what is it all the type of things that you
were seeing there that was going on that has come
to this point where you have now come out as

(07:56):
a very public whistleblower.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
I think at the time, when you're in it, you
don't realize that it is negligence. But you're doing it
every day. You're inadvertently breaching your code of conduct every
single day that you walk into these hospitals. And that's
because the systemic issues of staffing and no breaks. You know,

(08:21):
you haven't got the right equipment, you're not doing things
right by the patient, you haven't got the right staff
that are nurturing people. That's negligence in itself. Because I
wrote to the NMC when I left, which is the
governing body nursing in the Druffrey Council, and my email
to them pretty much said I'm telling you that I

(08:41):
inadvertently broke my code every single day. They weren't even interested.
Now imagine admitting you've breached your code of conduct. And
my friend was like, I don't understand that, and I
was like, no, I am. That's the truth. So I
think what you don't realize is is that do we
really need the antibotic that we're giving. Do we really

(09:01):
need to be using all these drugs that we're using.
Do we really need to induce three hundred thousand women
a year, which is four hundred and ninety five women
a day across the country. Do we really need to
be doing that? Do we really need to be scanning
everybody as much as we do, sticking our fingers and
everybody taking all their bloods? Do we really need to

(09:22):
do that? So this is the type of negligence I'm
talking about now, is that do we really need to
tell women you're at risk of steelbirth every time you
see them? Do we really need to tell women you're
fat and overweight? Do we really need to be doing
this day in and day out? Bang bang bang bang bang.
That is what I'm talking about, This whole oppression of

(09:43):
a job that you're supposed to nurture people and you're
not nurturing anybody. You might think you are, and you
might think you're tiny sprinkling of one percent on that
patient for two hours that you looked after them, you
gave your best care, but you can't because your policy pushed,
your evidence base pushed, and half of it doesn't even

(10:04):
bloody add up because it doesn't match the people in
a box. So what I'm saying is what midwives don't
realize is is that they're probably being inadvertently negligent without
realizing it, which is why we've now got the worst outcomes,
the biggest baby death rates, the worst maternal death rates,
the one in three birth trauma, and twenty seven billion

(10:26):
litigation since twenty nineteen, twenty seven billion. I asked a
whistle blow a cop yesterday. I think I just said
cop because my son was singing a song with someone
in an American it's a police officer.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
You did say cop?

Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, I just said god. He said to me, I said,
how much do you think the litigation is a maternity
and he went, oh, about five billion? I went twenty seven?
Not the hell? How can we be getting it so wrong?
But yet everybody's still just going to work with their
eyes shut.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
No.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
So when I started to break it down, Amanda to
actually my role, what I was seeing is I'm raising
grievances about how I'm not safe at work, which means
patients aren't safe at work. So I was raising grievance
that way, which is sensible and safe, and I raised
four in total. So if I'm not getting a break

(11:21):
to eat as a Type one diabetic, how can I
be safe for women that need me? In an acute
setting right, and I have the right to be a
labor wored midwife, but my manager said I didn't. I
shouldn't be a label wored midwife because I had diabetes.
So but I'm you know, I believe I was a
good midwife. But was I good? No? I wasn't because

(11:43):
I never really gave the women true mid with free
which is not shoving your fingers in everybody's vaginas, which
is not putting, you know, observations on them every fifteen minutes,
because the policy says it's about free thinking, about holding
space for women. I've learned this now after all this
time and all the talking I've been doing, and all
the research and talking to different groups and looking at

(12:06):
the doula statistics, and I'm like, the doulas and birthkeepers
have better outcomes than the NHS. What the hell, it's
absolutely horrendous. So my last shift on the fifth of
February last year, a poor lady of mine labored for
ten hours behind a curtain and triage on her own.

(12:27):
She was high risk, previous bleed, ivy, access, maconium, all
these things that we know are high risk factors, and
she was left there all day what is.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Their excuse for doing that or why was she left
there all day? What are they saying to the staff
that are working there and clearly have to be or
come from a good, you know, heart space to have
decided to be a midwife initially? What is it that
they're saying to use that that justifies leaving a for
ten hours on her own?

Speaker 3 (13:02):
Nothing we can do about it. Nothing we can do
about it is staffing. But what's interesting that woman went
and met my head of Madwiffrey after and she told
her she was in the safest place. But was she
and is she or did she have another option? My
argument here is if Rebecca had come to the front
door and I said, Rebecca, it's so busy in here.

(13:23):
We've got no staff, We've got no help. There's low
staffing to pull in, which means we're always going to
be low and short. The acuity is high. You have
a choice to make. You can either come here and
you might lay behind a curtain for ten hours on
your own, or you can try another hospital, or you
can go home until you really need to come back.
But do you know what, I'm manned up? We don't

(13:45):
give women the choice to have autonomy, We rob them
of it, and then we lied to them in gas
like them and tell them they were in the safest place.
That's what I have an issue with big time, because
you are lying, which is clinical negligence, it's criminal harm,
and it leads to manslow corporate manslaughter. And that's why
Nottingham Hospital is undergoing a huge criminal investigation because they've

(14:07):
killed babies over the last twenty odd years.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Okay, so how how long were you in were you
working as a midwife? Six and a half years, so
that's quite a long, you know, string of time they're alone.
How long were you witnessing this all going on for?
Was this from day one or did they just gradually
get worse over time? Did it worsen with COVID?

Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah? I think I think it's hard to see through
the lens of a student because you're you're only learning
what you think is normal. Does that make sense? Yes,
So when you're a student, you're just filling out your book,
You're like, I'm getting my numbers and I'm doing really,
really well. So you're to get your numbers and to
get your grades. And then when you qualify and you

(14:53):
start using your own critical thinking because you've got to
start thinking on your feet. You can start making your
own enoughalysis of what's going on, and you're thinking, well,
that's not right and that's not right. So I remember
being on one of our wards once agar ward, and
it had been the worst, one of the worst shifts
I had. Now, I've never left work after a shift

(15:17):
on that ward and cried ever, And I was close
to crying that day. It was so intense, and I
was running around with high risk patients. Now I had
some of the most high risk. I had a Type
one diabetic. I had a threatened preterm birth. A lady
was bleeding on an off all day pregnant. Then I

(15:37):
had another lady with a really bad virus, like really poorly.
There was just constant observations, drug rounds a lot, and
my manager just tops up to me with their little
glasses and says, if you check the fridge temperatures, and
you're like, I cannot cope with this environment. It's not logical.
Screw the temperatures. I've got really sick women. And that's

(16:00):
where my heart is. So what they do is they
make you fear fearful of you missing the strategic trust rules.
Then take you away from your job. So if you
do thenly cause harm to a patient. You could say, well,
I had to do the fridge temp. Well, how does
that look about you on paper? Well, as a midwife, Victoria,

(16:21):
you put the bleeding lady after your fridge temperature.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Whereas I was telling you to do that, and.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
I'm the midwife that would go screw your fridge temp.
I'd rather get a bloody disciplinary for it. That's the problem.
But lots of people go by trust policy, trust value, trust, trust, trust,
whereas I was like, no, the women need me more
so I think for me it was it really started
to open up my mind around about I would say

(16:48):
twenty eighteen when I was a fan six then I
got pregnant. Then I saw the terrible care of me
as a pregnant midwife, not having breaks, pregnant, as a
as a new diabetic on insulin. They weren't feeding me,
they weren't letting me go to It was terrible and
I was exhausted, and not only me, there were lots

(17:09):
of pregnant midwives and they were expected to work twelve
and a half hour shifts without eating.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Which is ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Are you treating your pregnant staff like that.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
I can't go without eating for two hours when I'm
not pregnant, let alone when I was pregnant, you know,
and you need your energy stores, especially during pregnancy. It's
so demanding on the body. And I think, whether you're
pregnant or not, the fact that they're not allowing the
staff to go and have a break, or go and

(17:40):
have something to eat, you know, have a cup of tea,
have a glass of water, have some food, have five
minutes with what used to having to deal with. I
just find that very disturbing because you need the right space.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, and if you if you're thinking about how we
look after pregnant women and yet you're not looking at
it doesn't matter whether they've got a label of patient
above the head and they've got a label of staff,
they're pregnant. So that was kind of like the first
real employment issue I started to think about. And then
you don't want to raise concerns, which you're thinking, Oh,
I don't want to, I don't want to cause any
trouble and I don't want to be difficult because I

(18:15):
really want to I really enjoy my career and blah
blah blah. You do all that crap in your own head.
And then I had to go off sick. And then
I came back after my son was born. And then
I went back at twenty weeks post natal, in the
middle of COVID. Right, my husband got redundant.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
I just got it.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
I was working sixty hours a week. I'd stop breastfeeding
sixty hours a week, and I never got a break.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Never.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
I wasn't eating, I was I was drugged up to
my eyeballs and diabetes medication. I couldn't think straight. I
had a five month old that never slept, he went
through every regression. Then I was in the middle of
COVID and then they made us work in a new
model of working in the middle of a pandemic, and
I'm like, hang on a minute, why would you do that?

(19:04):
But then I thought, right, well, it might make things
better because things couldn't get any worse.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, oh you thought so. But it got worse, Yes,
it got worse.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
And then some babies had died. I was told allegedly
some babies have died in community. And then none of
us were seeing our women, and I wasn't seeing any
postnatal women. And then they were getting more readmissions and
breastfeeding rates were really bad and infection rates were up,
and I'm like, oh, what is happening? And the job
became scary, like really really scary. And I recently got

(19:35):
my data subject access capture. It's in my box over there.
It's about quite a few thousand pages, I would say,
of information from the hospital. And I wrote an email
to my boss saying, I leave work, I haven't got
enough hours to do my job. I come home, I'm
doing my work at home and the off duty can
you pay me? And they said no, So they wouldn't
even pay me overtime for the extra work that I

(19:57):
couldn't fit in in my normal day. And this is
who you're working for. And you think things just just
started to not add up in the employment world. And
then I'm seeing midwives being treated really badly, and then
I'm seeing management sit on their ass all day and
not make any bit of blinding difference to people's lives.
And then you've got patients who aren't being treated safely.

(20:19):
So across the board. My brain couldn't physically orchestrate what
and illustrate what I'm saying today, but I knew it then.
It was just unraveling it.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
So you took your concerns obviously to your shift managers
or the people in charge that I'm assuming, And how
did that go down? And how long were you taking
concerns to them? Before you know, obviously what we're leading
up to happened.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
My first grievance went in on the twenty seventh of
twenty first or twenty seventh of October twenty twenty one, right,
the baby that died on the twenty seven No, it
was the twenty first of October. I put in my
grievance A baby died on the twenty seventh of October,
and that's the baby they're implicating that I killed. So

(21:08):
I raised concerns on a grievance to my boss and said,
and the grievance is terrible. I mean, if you look
at the way I write now and what I was
writing then, it was like a five year old wrote it.
Because I was so traumatized by everything. My health, my job,
my marriage wasn't great. I'm struggling as a mother. I
was ill, I was drugged on all these drugs. I

(21:30):
was in a really bad state. I'd put on loads
of weight. I mean, I've never been over at eighty
three kilas, but for me, that's quite big. And I
was like I was in a state, Amanda. And when
I wrote my grievance, it was because I was at
my wits end. Now, from twenty twenty to twenty twenty three,
I had three hundred and sixty days off work on sickness.

(21:55):
It's a year because of I would come back be
really positive, really get on with it, and then I
would slowly demise. And it was just like a revolving door.
My body was rejecting the environment. That's what's happening now.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
I'm assuming your mind also like my.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
Body, my soul was saying, you got to get out
of a girl. And what was interesting was I recently
got my star back from the hospital, and you know,
the day I sent my grievance to my heed ofward Refree.
I didn't know this at the time because she was,
you know, my friend, or well they're not your friends,
but you know, always very respectful to me, and I

(22:36):
felt like she always listened. You would not believe what
she wrote about me. Within three hours of me sending
that grievance in she wrote that I was a complex
character and that she had multiple counter allegations against me.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
And this is why you're still employed.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
And you're like, yeah, yeah, I was employed.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Okay, that's that's very interesting to hear. So if that's
the case, why is it that you were employed by
them at that time and being put around members of
the public and especially pregnant women to be dealing with them.
That's quite bizarre that that was the accusation.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
And she never told me that, and she never brought
that to my grievance. So she got into she got interviewed,
and she never gave that as a as a statement
in my grievance outcome. She never brought anything to back
that up. And she called me a complex character again.
So she called me at once. There's like six hour

(23:35):
emails apart in the thread and with the hospital sent
me this Amanda, and they've not redacted her name, they've
not redacted anything off it. So they want me to
see it. Yes, So here's a midwife raising concerns about
her employment safety, which impacts patient safety. And instead of
default things to say, oh my god, we need to

(23:56):
keep this midwife safe. We need to make sure she's
safe at work. What can I do immediately? To put
this in place to make things right. I'll get it
done now. She defaulted to slag me off, defee me,
and then write about me on two occasions six hours apart,
saying I was the problem. And I think to myself
at the time, I didn't know she'd said that. I

(24:16):
only found that out a few weeks ago. And now
I've referred her to the NMC for that because she
also referred me for a fitness to practice last year
after I'd left, for whistleblowing. And you can't do that.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
So sorry, you referred her to who THEMC? And who
are they? Just for our listeners listening obviously.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Nursing Emmidriffree Council. So I've referred her back because this
is where it gets really complex, is that how can
she be sat in her position now knowing that she's
had four or five grievances in our department and three
of them will go into employment tribunal, all for discrimination

(24:55):
against staff, disability, reasonable adjustments which impact a patients safety.
She's still sat in her role now when we all
tried to make change for the public and all of
us were ignored. It's not fair. So my argument here
is there's a culture in here where it's not defaulted

(25:18):
to patient safety, it's defaulted to trust reputation, and that's
got to go absolutely.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, from what I'm hearing, it just seems to be
in a little bit of a shambles and almost a
little bit too clicky.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Oh, Midwiffrey is rotten, rotten, And it's not just in
my hospital, it's rotten across the board.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, sorry, sorry to interject, just to bring it back
a little bit. Now. So when you initially put the
grievance in so before this triggered, obviously this lady making
all these accusations against you, which sounds somewhat a little
bit far fetched considering she was working with you for
all that time and had no p This the grievance
that you had put in was in regard to, obviously, unfortunately,

(26:05):
the death of a child that you were accused of
being responsible for.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
No. No, So what happened was I put in a
grievance in the twenty first of October. Then I put
in another grievance on the fifth of November because the
manager continued to be at me when I was already
feeling really threatened and I felt like she was harassing
me and I couldn't resolve anything with her. That was

(26:33):
my point. I was reaching a point where you're they
were coming at me with sickness, absence penalizations against my practice, yes,
which which was it was being impacted by my diabetes.
But if they looked after me and given me breaks
and give me the right environment, I probably wouldn't be
off sick in the first place. This is what the
battle was, right, Okay. So I put an agrievance in

(26:54):
October and November, and then another one I think it
was in the January, and then another one in the February,
I think, if I remember right, enough to get my
documentation out, But there's four in total. They all got
heard and that was the end of it. It wasn't upheld,
of course it wasn't, but basically on the outcome of
the appeal it picked up that there was a culture

(27:16):
in maternity. So they were going This manager that wrote
these things about me on those emails was bidding for
money to enable us to have NHS England come in
and give us a cultural sort of review, investigation, whatever
you want to call it. So I was really proud
of myself to get that, because that's what needed to happen. Now.

(27:36):
When I left on the seventh of February, never went back.
It wasn't until the thirtieth of March a statement went
out via a maternity page saying that I was responsible
for this baby's death at Derreford Hospital where I was
a midwife.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Approximately a month.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
Later, six weeks later.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, yeah, so well what was their base behind that for?
Not have they haven't mentioned it prior to obviously you
putting in your resignation.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
So what I looked after this family from eleven twenty
in the morning until nineteen thirty that night, and it
was very brief in the scale of things. It was brief,
and I don't want to talk about her care because
that's not right. But basically she was never in labor
and I did everything in line with the local and

(28:27):
national guidelines. So as a midwife, for instance, if you've
got placenta previa, I would print off the policy and
I would go buy all those rules and I would
care for you by those rules. Right, So this lady
in between those hours was on a certain policy and
I did everything within those rules and policies. When I left,

(28:51):
she had a baby overnight and the baby died, or
there was a terrible, terrible birth and the baby died.
It was it was so awful. I can't even imagine
losing like you just when you've got children. It even
tears your whole heart up to even think about it now.

(29:12):
When that came out, I already knew that there was
an inquest into that little baby's death in the February. Yes,
a week later, I started a safety campaign to change
maternity services called the with Woman Movement. Okay, so a
month after that, on the thirtieth of March, a group

(29:33):
who were also a maternity safety campaign but their bereaved parents,
wrote a statement and said I was responsible for the
death of this baby at Dereford Hospital. What was alarming,
Amanda was that they said that I didn't follow national
and local guidelines. They said that I do you know,
I find this topic so triggering that I have to

(29:56):
I've blanked out so much of it, but it's good
to talk about it. That I can't remember exactly all
the written things. It is in the court papers, but they.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Basically take your time, Victoria. Sorry, yeah, I mean have
to cover this.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
I actually think it's probably Yeah, I think it's actually
probably a time to actually read it out. I think
if you're happy for me to.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Do that, I am more than happy for you to know.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
We've been asked if we're supporting the campaign by the
with Women movement, set up by a group of midwives.
The answer is no. Baby died at sixteen hours old
in October of twenty one following failures in the care
he and his mum Such and such received during labor

(30:42):
at Derrefford Hospital. An inquest in February this year found
that a series of missed opportunities contributed to his death.
One of the midwives involved in his care has gone
on to co found the with Women movement. Now I
didn't co found it, I was the founder and to
our not has not been honest about her role in

(31:03):
such and such death. The midwives failed to follow local
and the midwife failed to follow local and national guidance,
and her actions meant critical monitoring of baby well being
did not happen, contributing to the delay in the delivery
and ultimately his death. This year, this midwife further compounded

(31:26):
the harm she caused by not attending baby's inquest, denying
his mum important answers about how and why their son died.
Just days after the inquest concluded, she launched her new
campaign as an alliance of people affected by failings in
maternity care. We are open to working with almost anyone

(31:48):
who shares our goals of safe maternity and the statutory
public inquiry. However, we draw the line at a group
of people led by a midwife who has behaved in
this way and who seemingly continues to avoid being honest
and accountable. Now when I read that, Amanda, I've had
to read that thousands of times to not be traumed

(32:10):
by those words anymore, because I'm not the one that's
had a loss. There's just been an error in the communication,
and that's the truth of it. This isn't about them
being vindictive against me or I do think two of
them it's a bit of vindictiveness, but one certainly is not.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
OK.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
I don't believe the information that they've received is what
they fully understand about the situation. To receive that was well,
they're actually not the parents that wrote it. It was
actually another woman, but she's a bereaved mother herself. But
to receive that, I've never felt anything like that I've
never ever got I was petrified that I was going

(32:54):
to go to prison. I honestly thought they were going
to set me up.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
And you think this is basically this is but sorry,
I'm even just I'm just a little bit and I've
just palanced. Now. Do you think that they've accused you
of this type of negligence to cause something like this
obviously happening because you had started to come out and

(33:18):
speak against the NHS and what you had witnessed during
your employment there as a midwife. Do you know what?

Speaker 3 (33:24):
I'm still unsure why. I don't believe I'll ever get
the answers, but I think we can pretty much surmise
a couple of options, can't we. One they actually believed
I did do it, and they've got that totally wrong.
And the sad part about it is is that when
it all comes out, they're going to realize, well, I
wasn't even on shift, So how can I be responsible

(33:46):
for the death of a baby if I wasn't on shift?
There were three midwives after me, you know, so that
but that's already been We've already told them this anyway.
The other side of it is, was it to disarm
me because they had a campaign. I had a campaign,
and they did. They wanted to be the first people
to get it. I'd like to think that's not the answer,
because if that is the case, you're running in your ego,

(34:10):
whereas we're talking about the loss of lives. So for me,
my safety campaign was to make sure no one, no
midwife ever took their own life again or lost their
job again, and no mums and babies died or were
in harm's way, and neither were their families. That's the
basis of my campaign. I don't care if there are

(34:31):
twenty thousand campaigns exactly the same. I don't. It doesn't
bother me. But my sinking for this group is if
that was the case, to disarm me. It worked because
the movement went away. But when I came back in
January this year and decided to do it all on
my own, it all started again. So then I thought, well,
hang on a minute, if it's going to start again,

(34:52):
this is actually to sabotage me, so now I have
to do something about it. And I did so. Now
it's going to court.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Okay, tell me more about that.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
So after this came out, I contacted my head and
Midwiffree Director of midwiff Free Clinical Governance too, midwives and
the comms team and the legal team, and I shared
all of these because not only did that statement go out,
I got called a baby killer. Pictures of me were
being shared online. There was pictures of my kids. It

(35:22):
was awful. I was like, do you know what I did?
I threw my phone down at shock and I never
went back on it for months, and my friends had
to go in and try and locate all the screenshots.
So I lost a lot of the evidence because it
was deleted, right, So the threads were deleted and some
of the images were deleted. But it was so awful,

(35:45):
I was petrified. So I rang the police, who said
it was the start of some sort of incited crime,
like gang sort of incitement a gang crime. It was awful.
And when I went to the hospital on the thirty
first of March to town them, they were like, just
ignore it. I'm still employed by you at your choice.

(36:08):
By the way, how can you not stand up here
and support me publicly that I didn't kill this baby
and you've got the evidence in front of you. How
could you do that? But they didn't, So that was devastating.
I felt so let down, like, how could you do
that to me? I've never ever had to go to
a solicitor for my male practice. I've never had a

(36:29):
patient complain that I'm aware of, or any staff complaints
that I'm aware of, apart from one midwife that said
I bullied her over and on call, which was an
absolute joke. And I will say that that was a joke.
So I just think to myself, how can I go
from that to this? That is a hell of an
extreme difference. And I was never asked to go to
the coroner's court. I was asked to write a statement

(36:50):
a year later, and I had to go back to
the notes because I couldn't remember any of it, so
I can only remember little snippets. But I had to
use the documentation to write my statement. But what you
can't do on coroner's statement, Amanda, is you cannot write
your fact or opinion. You can only write facts ory,
not opinions. So if I said it's of my opinion

(37:11):
that this happened, they're not. You're not allowed to write it.
So if I was able to do that, there probably
would have been a very different coroners Court because you're
giving your professional judgment. What then happened two weeks later
is the two midwives that I set up the movement with,
I founded it. They came on board with my idea.

(37:31):
They also called me a baby killer online two midwives,
so my own the two women that I set it
up with, went against me and then did that. All
three of these people. That is pure jealousy, jealousy, egotistical, awful,
awful bitchiness. They had absolutely no reason. They could have

(37:54):
called me, text me, emailed me and said, VIC, we're
gonna put a statement out, can you give us the
other half? They didn't. They actually wrote the person being
held responsible for this baby's death in a statement and
their midwives. Now that cuts a whole different cloth. I'm
afraid because whilst the first statement is from a bereaved
mother who has every right to be angry at maternity,

(38:18):
these midwives have no right to write about me when
they don't even know so. They all had access to
contact me, and not one of them did. So what
actually happened was I emailed the very first statement author
and said to her, you've got a mistaken identity, and
she wrote back saying no, I haven't your practice specifically
was called into account, and I thought, you're not talking

(38:39):
about me. I don't know who you're talking about. That's
I never had any feedback about this, the whole case,
what you're talking about. So moving on from that, when
I came back in January, I don't want to talk
about that too much because this is the evidence I'm
going to use in the case, and it will come out.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
No.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Absolutely, they don't say anything that will obviously hindo what's.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
Going Basically, it all flared up again. So I then
posted my coroner's statement online because the hospital said I could.
It had no name in it, it had nothing in it,
and I posted it online to prove I wasn't there
at the time the baby was born, because I'd left
the shift at nineteen forty if so. I then thought, right,

(39:21):
I have to deal with this because if I'm going
to write a book, which I've got a book deal for,
and I want to do the things that I want
to do, no one is going to believe me that
I'm not a baby killer unless I squashed these claims.
So I went and got a solicitor. I phoned a
few and it just so happens. I found one in
Plymouth and he said to me, send me all the
statements that they've made your coroner's statement. And the next

(39:42):
day he rang me and he said, I'll take it
on for you. It's let's take it on. So he
started the proceedings. We sent the preaction protocol. Now, because
we only had a few weeks. You normally give a month,
we didn't have that time. And they argued, what she
could have done this sooner? And I thought, what is it?
It's easy to take a bereave mother to court? Is
it that I've struggled with that, Like, I've had to

(40:06):
really dig deep. How the hell can I take a
bereave mother to court and sue her? That's ridiculous. I
don't want to do that. So it took me a lot.
It took me a long time, and because it reared
up again, I thought, this isn't going to go away.
I've got to do this. So when I put that in,

(40:27):
what we got back was basically no evidence to say
that I had done that, but they were willing to
fight it, and I thought, well, okay, fine, so do
you know my guts for the for the week leading
up to the deadline, my guts were in bits Samanda.
I was I'd had bad diarrhea, I wasn't sleeping. I
was like, you know, are they going to set me

(40:47):
up here? And I was panicking thinking this could go
really badly wrong. If someone's lied in the middle somewhere.
This is gonna this is going to cause a huge
issue because why would I lie on my car in
a statement that I'd finish my shift if someone else
has lied somewhere else, you know. So we decided, because

(41:08):
we couldn't settle, that we would then put the claim
form in. So I got a barrister and we've put
the Council they're called, They've put in the particular as
a claim to the court and it's in the court
system now and we now go to the High Court
of Justice for Defamation King's Bench in London. And it's
not going to be pleasant, you know, it's not nice

(41:29):
because what we've got to look at here the coroner's
given his verdict and I was never mentioned. What are
we arguing about here?

Speaker 1 (41:38):
And who is it you put the accusations out and
why is it? A lot other midwifes are now coming
out backing it, and it is yeah, it is. Of course.
You know, if I was in your position and I
was being accused of something I hadn't done me personally,
I would definitely be fighting it. So yeah, I do
hope obviously, you know, you get your day in court

(42:01):
and then everything goes act.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
I honestly feel I would. I would be willing to
sit down with each of them and talk about this individually,
but it's going to cost us hundreds of pounds each
to do that, which I'm not willing. I'm not spending
any money on these people. They don't deserve it. But
what I will say is, if you are in a
position where you are a public authority, I will be

(42:28):
asking you to step down. You don't deserve to be
up there when you have tried to obliterate my life.
I was that frightened. I said to my husband, if
the police come, I gave him all my passwords. If
the police come, I want you to do this, this, this,
and this. Who has to do that? That's awful? Like
I thought I was going to get arrested. I thought,

(42:50):
Lucy Leppy's just not long gone to prison for something
like this. And then I had to come off the
register because I thought they're going to get take my
pin off me. Someone's going to refer me and take
my pin off me. And I thought, no, I'm not
having that. I've worked too hard for this because I
had no intention of leaving the register. I would have
done it long before if I was going to do that.
But I did it literally the day after. No, I

(43:13):
did it the day that I my employment ended. I
did it, and I got it back on the seventh.
I put it in on the seventh of April, and
I got it back on the ninth in I was
removed off the register. Absolutely disgusting, disgusting. It makes me
so No, I can't even use the word midwife. Wow,

(43:34):
it's owned legally, the word.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
Oh, is it? I think our listeners have been thinking
that's something new because I'd never heard that. One over.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Is you're not allowed to say you're a midwife. No,
that is ridiculous. I just think if you've got to
own it, it goes to show what control you want
of the profession.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
Yeah, that that is quite I'm going to look into that.
One I realized they own.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
It or two thousand and one is that's craziness.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
So I know you've obviously got all this going on
right now, Victoria, And I know it's been obviously a
really stressful time for you, and like of course you
have come out and you've really went guns blazing. So
I've been seeing a lot of campaigning you've been doing
across your social media platforms. So if we could discuss
a bit of that and where it is you are

(44:26):
and what you have been doing and what you are
advocating for at this moment.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
Yeah, So I started on X because it was uncensored.
I could pretty much go to town on my opinions,
my views. So I started on there and when I
went live within I think the first night I went live,
which was the nineteenth jan I was on seventeen thousand
followers overnight. It went absolutely crazy, but I think it helped.

(44:53):
I was part of a really good group with Dr Cartland,
David Cartland, who's another whistleblower, and he really pushed for
everybody to start following so we could get the message out.
So he was hugely instrumental and has been a great
friend the last year. In fact, he makes me barely
laugh because of the types of conversations that we do
have with you were like brother and sister. It's so
funny and he's at a really tough time. And then

(45:16):
I moved over to Instagram and that was shut down.
So that got shut down. So I thought, you know what,
I'm not even gonna bother doing that again. I'm not
wasting my time chasing these platforms. So I didn't bother
and then I went back onto TikTok and then TikTok
I went from like one thousand followers, I'm now on
twenty five thousand followers in Wow.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
That's a lot of support.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
That's like maybe five weeks, I think. Really, yeah, yeah,
I think I'm up to seventy thousand followers across all
platforms since the end of jam Wow. But that's you're that's.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Not really getting your point out there because people are listening.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
Yeah, I think it's that, But I also think it's
the fact that birth effects us all. So it's to you,
it affected your mum, it would have not everybody, but
it affects all of us, and it's how we're all linked.
So we're all linked by birth. We all came from
the same place. That's the only thing that links all

(46:14):
of us in one way is that you grew in
a uterus after that where however you were birthed changed
the course of your life. Yeah, we all link into
that one space. So that emotive topic, when we talk
about it, is what keeps us all one and whole.
So this topic, I've had Dad's message, me, grandparents, auntie's, uncle's, mums, siblings,

(46:38):
with their stories. If I could give you my logins
and you could read my inboxes, they are rammed with
stories to the point I cannot answer them all. It's
not possible. I cannot do it because I would be
a whole week doing that and then it would happen again.
This topic is so impacting on people's lives and has

(46:58):
been so impacting. I think that's why it's naturally evolving,
because maternity services is now all over the news that
people don't know where to turn.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Now.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
Unfortunately, I don't have a remedy. The only remedy that
we have and that we have to go for is one,
get yourself in a good place before you get pregnant. Two,
get yourself savings to find a dula or birth keeper
or private midwife. Get yourself your own personalized woman of
healthcare because you ain't going to get it in that system.

(47:30):
And then the other side of it is make sure
whenever you make decisions around your birth, you go away
and you sit in it as long as you need
until you know it's the right decision. But the system
doesn't allow you to do that. So I think because
I'm talking about these things, I mean, I get trolled.
I couldn't give two hoots what people say about me.
I just block and delete them. Some guy yesterday said

(47:51):
she should be deep platforms, and I was like, so
should you, mate, you're pushing vaccines. We should have a
balance to view on any of it. Yeah, he was
pushing vaccine. Whereas I just think, now, hang on a minute,
I'm learning that we should we should know every single
ingredient of everything before it's even put into our arms
or our mouths. We should know it, and we're not.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
You had this conversation the other day, didn't we about
the vitamin K, which you know I would like you
to obviously share it with our listeners, because I was
quite disturbed and it actually got me into like a
once I'd heard what you had had to say and
what you had sent to me give me a lot
of anxiety because I have allowed all four of my

(48:34):
children to have the vitmin k injection, and I think
if there was more awareness about it prior to I
wouldn't have been allowing my kids to have that injection.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Absolutely, But when you're at UNI, you've got all these
drugs right in pregnancy, there's only a small selection of
drugs that could be used in pregnancy, but actually no
drug is safe or effective in pregnancy. Now, if you
follow Sheryl Grainger, she work for pharmaceutical companies that would
go out and get you to buy certain brands. She

(49:05):
always said through her whole career, nothing was ever safe
or effective. They're the words you could never use. All
of a sudden, Vitamin K, covid, flu whoop, and coff
are all safe and effective. Well, it doesn't work like that.
So in order to absorb vitmin k, I'm just reading
from this thing, you have to have a functioning billery
and pancreous system. A baby's digestive system isn't fully developed

(49:28):
at birth, which is why we give babies breast milk
and delay the solids until they are at at least
six months old, and why breast milk only contains a
small amount of absorbable vitamin K too. Much vitamin K
could tax the liver and cause brain damage along with
other things. So when you start thinking, right, when I
was at Uni, I never learned vitamin K. I had

(49:50):
to pick one drug out of an array of drugs
and then listen to my fellow students talk about their Well,
how do I know that they researched it properly? And
you don't have the time to go away and research
every single drug. So that's the truth of it. If
I went in there now and asked every single midwife

(50:10):
to tell me all the side effects of lobita, lol,
they wouldn't be able to do it nonether than would
So actually, you're giving a drug that you do not
know the side effects of, right, So I didn't know
that vitamin K had these had these concerns with regards
to its ingredients. Oh my goodness. It was a punch

(50:30):
in the guts because I've given it to all my children.
And then when you look at the high mercury in
the flu vaccines and what's in the whooping cough vaccine,
and yet you'll only allow one small tin of tuna
because of the mercury. It doesn't add up. It doesn't
add up, and I you know, to me when I
saw COVID and my brain was like scratching, like no

(50:53):
one's got COVID, but they've all got illnesses or dead
babies or having heart attacks. And then you start looking
at the COVID, the twenty two page list of the
COVID side of vaccines, What the hell? What the hell?
And that it just like I say, it didn't happen
all at once. It was like my brain opened up

(51:15):
and then flooded in and then I had to jigsaw
it all out and now I'm like, it all makes sense.
It's all there. So if you imagine your baby's coming
out and you're giving it this viitmin k within an
hour of life. Oh I just I'm so mad at
myself because I wish I'd had the inclination to read
more and not look at the evidence based on NHS apps,

(51:39):
because they're the ones that fund the evidence, they're the
one that fund the doctors. Now, Dave Cartlan told me
that he went and did a a his Masters with
the British Heart Foundation and when he did a particular
he did a trial on a particular drug, he got
a different outcome to what they did and they wouldn't
put it through because they didn't want people to know

(51:59):
the truth about the drugs.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
That's interesting, But they're funding all the research so that
it's coming back how they want it to be presented.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
I'm assuming why would doctors need to be paid money
to promote astrazenica.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Or why started on.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
Amanda? If we got a card or gifts, we had
to write it down what we received. Really, we had
to write it down. But doctors can have a twenty
two thousand planked in their bank account to go on
the Telly and talk about COVID vaccines. I think, hang
on a minute, there's a balance here. We all we
need is a balance.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
That's not sounding that legal.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Right.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
That's interesting.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
So this guy was like, she's gonna kill loads of babies,
and I'm like, hang on a minute, no one's killing
a baby. If you give information and it's not NHS evidence,
and someone reads two parts, they can make their own choice.
I don't tell them not to give their baby a vaccine.
I'm just telling you read the bloody evidence. This is
what I've seen. It's got a twofold risk of leukemia

(53:08):
for children who've received intramuscular vitamin K given universally at
one hospital compared to the other that did not promote
the job. You know, it's frightening, all of it. We've
got more childhood leukemia, more childhood cancer than we've ever had.
When I was younger, cancer was rare friends, mums, and

(53:28):
now I know five people that want five people that
have got cancer. It's crazy. Where's it coming from? What's
how's this happened? I think we know.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
It's definitely food for thought. I think for our listeners
to maybe, you know, obviously go into that within their
own thought processes, but I'm just want to really go
into what type of advocation you've been doing now at
the moment. So you've been focusing on the on the
vitmin K and different types of vaccines, and you've also

(54:02):
been focusing on the work that midwife so are being
taught to give within the hospitals that isn't up to standard,
isn't a clime service. And I know you've had a
lot of talks recently, and I just wanted you to
really just tell our listeners about that and if there's
anything that you would like them to obviously maybe go
look into any groups that you could recommend.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
Yeah, so I think it's quite a broad area that
I'm covering, and it covers a lot of a blanket
of it. So I'm not only just talking about now
certain drugs or you know, I did a talk about
the certain beta blockers that block the labor receptors. But
you give it to them and then induce them, Well
that that's account that contriindication of it all. Anyway, it's

(54:46):
absolutely crazy what they're doing. I talk about the induction
of labor rates at fifty percent. Now yours is there
in section rates that are around about percent sometimes fifty
in other parts of the country. You know, twenty years
ago they were seven percent. What the hell is going on?
You've got an a bubby head, Yes, a normal blairth
would be about fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred quid, you know,

(55:10):
as a Xerian section as anywhere up to eight thousand pounds,
depending on what you're having, what induction it was, with,
what drugs were involved. It's an absolutely astronomical moneymaker. So
I talk about all of that, and then I've talked
about you know, it costs three hundred and five pounds
a night for a bed space in the NHS, but
if you're plunking four hundred and ninety five women a
day in these beds to be induced, why do twenty

(55:32):
one year old women need to have as an elective
sarian section at twenty one years old? What the hell
is going on? That is ridiculous. That's happening.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
It shouldn't be happening unless there's an actual, real medical concern,
I think. But obviously you know, I'm not a medical professional,
but I mean, you wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
Have cut someone's Oh, I'm just going to cut your
abdomen open and just check to see if your vowel's okay, exactly,
you don't you know? I can get I can understand
in some instances why people want us as air in section.
I think they need lots of counseling around that because
there's just a lot around it that I don't think
people fully understand. So I talk about all of those things,

(56:11):
and then I talk about the Nursing and midw Free
Council and the Royal College of Midwriffree, who are like
the gatekeepers. They're private corporations. I'm going to do a
live excuse me on Thursday about this. I want people
to be educated on their corporation, which means they cannot
be a public authority. They do not have public patient
safety at the heart and the core of who they
are because they've got a Dun's number and a V

(56:33):
eight number, which makes them a private corporation, no different
to McDonald's.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
People do not know this. So you're nursing a midriffree
body who is supposed to be there for patient safety,
for public interest and safeguarding. Are a private corporation and
has been since two thousand and one. People do not
get this, So you're contracting with a private corporation that
only care about their CEOs, nothing else, nothing more. So

(57:01):
I talk about that the Royal College of Midwives, loads
of us have had problems with the REPS, going amongst
the stuff into the management, leaking parts of your grievances
and talking to management without your say so totally wrong.
And then I go on to other bits about healthcare,
talking about trauma, I talk about doulers, birthkeepers, and I

(57:27):
just talk about everything across my tech. One day I'll
wake up Amandra and it'll go today You're going to
talk about this, and I just go with that, and
other days I talk about council tax, because I've now
done a huget if you listen to my voice this morning,
I've done a huge thing on council tax. But that
all links into all of this as well. It's everything
is linked.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
It's all good.

Speaker 3 (57:48):
Yes, So then I obviously campaigning on all of those things.
So I just go and do talks or podcasts on
certain things. I think it's so multifaceted. It's so hard
to talk about in one podcast. You have to have,
like I almost need like a series to be able
to talk about all these different things. But I've had
a lot of interest now from bigger podcasts, you know,

(58:11):
like James English came forward and I went on his,
and someone else has now come forward. I don't like
mentioning anybody's names because they get sabotage, so I'm just
waiting to hear back from them to see when they
can get me in. So it's just it's about this
is about getting out to the numbers and the grassroots.
Now the big thing for me is to say getting
the word out to the grassroots. You need to have

(58:33):
your due diligence when you get pregnant. You need to
know what is ahead for you where you're going to
go and what you're going to do, and you need
to be prepared because the birth rate age has risen.
So we used to see teenage rates quite high. We
don't now women are I think the average age for
a women is twenty eight to have their first baby,
which is you know, crazy. But the thing that I

(58:55):
would suggest is that people follow Nikita Stark when push
comes to shit. She's a decentralized maternity system outside of
the system, and she only employs people. They're all self employed.
But she only brings people in who have done the
inner work, whereas a lot of midwives have never done
the inner work probably and meet women who have never

(59:16):
done the inner work. And then you've got a traumaed
pregnancy in birth and then a baby. So she's amazing,
and she's got lots of women all over the country
and all over the world in her campaign. It's amazing.
I absolute adore her. And then you've got Tess Lovely
who's a new whistle blowing midwife from Devon. She's a

(59:39):
good one to talk to. I would probably get her on.
She's got a Instagram page call and TikTok called Birth
from Within and she's done a lot of the inner work,
but she's also got twenty odd years of midwifery experience.
She's got the degree and the diploma. She's whistle blowing. Actually,
you can't stop her. Now, That's what I love. She
was silent, She's like, oh, want to do this, and

(01:00:01):
I'm like, just let's just come over on Thursday and
or chat about it. So she's got that. Then you've
got a girl called Yaz who's got birth Beautiful on
Instagram as well. All these women have birthed and also
been in the system, and I think for me, I'm
not ready to go down another road yet because I've
got too much to do. But also I've got too

(01:00:22):
much to unpick with the bad practices that I've adopted. Like,
for instance, I watched a baby being born the other
day in the water on Instagram, and the baby didn't
breathe within a few minutes and I was having a
heart attack. But these doulas are like, this can be normal,
and it's about when you intercept that baby was absolutely fine.

(01:00:43):
But that wouldn't happen in our hospital. You would be
you would have called the bell, got the kneea nates
down they would have done it full like resuscitation, intubation. Oh,
it just makes me think, what are we doing? What
are we doing? Are we making things worse by not
giving time to things? So I've had I've got to

(01:01:05):
unpick a lot of those practices before I could ever
move on, if I ever do move on in that road.
And right now I still say no, I'm not ready.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Well, I'm like, honestly, I would have loved to have
give birth a water birth, I myself personally. But of
course everyone is free to close and say will is
there anything that you want to leave our audience with
Victoria that you think, will you know, help them or
guide them or anything you want to say?

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
Yes, Question everything, Question every bill that comes in your door.
Question why you're paying your bills? Question why you've got
to go to work nine till five. Question why we
had to buy houses. Go back and do your history.
Go back and read the witch trials, Go back to

(01:01:54):
thirteen oh two when the pope changed everything in our lives.
Go back to history and see why we are where
we are today. Because midwif three today is a product
of the Witch Trials. It's a remnence, It's a haunting.
I call it of what's happened before. It's just a

(01:02:15):
whole different attent on people's lives. People might think I'm
crazy saying that, but I have studied and read hundreds
of which books. I mean Witchy, Burning the Witches, And
when you actually look at what they were trying to eradicate,
they were trying to eradicate what everything that birth was

(01:02:36):
about and why it was so special. So we lost
fifty thousand men, women and children who were burnt because
they were around people who might give care in childbirth
or healthcare. It's really really harrowing. If you go to
boss Castle in Cornwall, there is a witch museum and

(01:02:58):
you should see the torture equipment that they used on
these women and children and men. So, if you were
an apothecary, you were a herbalist, you knew how to
do a wound dressing, you knew how to care for someone,
turn a baby stop bleeding with all your herbs and
your medicines, and you had that deep, profound ancestral knowledge.

(01:03:18):
You were burnt, you were gone. So they had to
eradicate everything in fear of the churches and of the
religion and of the misogyny and it all came at
a time that that went on for it. Well, the
last witch that was tried in England was nineteen forties.
Nineteen forties. She was a lady called Helen, Helen Duncan,

(01:03:42):
her name was, she was nicknamed Hella Schnell and she
was tried for lots of different things. But when you
actually read her story, she was very spiritually connected and
understood things. But she happened to predict that one of
the HMS ships were going to sink, and they called
her a witch and tried her for it. So when
you start thinking about what women went through, then we're

(01:04:04):
just going through a whole different witch trial in a
different way. Now. So question everything that you ever thought
you knew everything. And I'm talking about why you're taking
a drug, what's in that drug? Who made that drug,
where did it come from, who distributed it, who packed it?
Try and burn it and see what happens to it.
Just put a lighter on it and see what happens

(01:04:25):
to that drug you're putting in your gut, Look at it.
Question everything. You don't have to be arrogant or difficult,
just question everything. And I think I'm at that place
now where you can become a bit lost because you're like, oh,
I don't know where I belong and I don't. I
used to be in a world where I was I
was squeezed into a box, and now I'm free. I'm like, oh,

(01:04:47):
where are we going? What are we doing? It is scary,
but then you take full control of yourself. And I
would tell anybody to follow the realm of England. The
realm e oh eriars, the realm of England. Now I've
got a hoodie because I've been working with these guys.
The realm of England. You need to get this, go

(01:05:08):
on your podcast. He is amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Here's more than welcome to come on here. Tell me
what he's backing or advocating for.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Let's hear the realm of England is real me. He
me is incredible and he has been instrumental in all
of my administration. Terry is known as the last blue
Boar of England. He is absolutely incredible. He's got just
set up his own website and we are trying to

(01:05:38):
teach people about returning to their true living woman, living
man in If you start using this language in your documentation,
it removes yourself from the quasm of their world and
we gain control of our own world. Is a bit
like the all caps name. But it's not none of
this Freeman of the land rubbish. It's a whole different.

(01:05:58):
I shouldnt say rubbish because some do really really go
down that you really have saying that. But I've walked
this walk and it's worked really really well. So yeah,
just question everything and question healthcare, question drugs, question dementia,
question your cancer. Question a balance of medicine and herb.
There is always a counter because a lot of medicines

(01:06:21):
are created from the thought process of a herb or
a plant, you know. Question everything. Question why we have scans, mammograms.
I don't have a mammogram, I never will and I
will never have a smear again. I won't go near
any of it. Whatever's meant to be in my life,
I will. I will deal with it with love and
respect and whatever that turns out is meant to be.

(01:06:43):
And that's how strong I feel in myself now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Thank you so much, Victoria. Victoria. I know that we're
going to be hearing a lot more from you across
all different socials, and I really appreciate you taking it
at the time to obviously share with us today. Thank
you so much for being on.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
You're so welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
Right, so, guys, thank you so much for listening and
from anyone watching, and please do subscribe to Across the
Pond across all platforms and hit the notifications fell on
YouTube to never miss an update and we'll be back
next week with a new episode. Speak to you guys.

(01:08:00):
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