EBB 398 – Supporting Neurodivergence in Birth and Postpartum with Victoria White, Doula and Author of “Why Neurodivergent Birth Matters”

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:00:00:

Hi everyone, on today’s podcast, we’re going to talk with Victoria White about neurodivergence in pregnancy and birth. Welcome to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. My name is Rebecca Dekker, and I’m a nurse with my PhD and the founder of Evidence Based Birth®. Join me each week as we work together to get evidence-based information into the hands of families and professionals around the world. As a reminder, this information is not medical advice. See ebbirth.com/disclaimer for more details. Hi everyone, and welcome to today’s episode of the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. Today, I’m so excited to welcome Victoria White to talk with us about neurodivergence in pregnancy and birth. Victoria is a birth and postnatal doula based in Northeast Scotland and mom to two girls, one of whom is autistic and has ADHD. Following her daughter’s diagnoses, Victoria herself was diagnosed in her early forties as autistic and with ADHD. Victoria’s passion for improving perinatal support for neurodivergent people led to the creation of the Neurodivergent Birth Podcast in 2023 and the Neurodivergent Birth Community Interest Company in 2024, a not-for-profit social enterprise which provides antenatal education tailored to meet the needs of neurodivergent women, birthing people and their families, and accredited professional development training for the birth professionals who are supporting them. In 2025, Victoria authored the book Why Neurodivergent Birth Matters which was published by Montag and Martin. Victoria, welcome to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast.

Victoria White – 00:01:42:

Thank you, Rebecca. This is one of my favorite podcasts. So I’m having a bit of a pinch me moment to be joining you today. Thank you for the invitation.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:01:49:

You’re welcome. And you have your own podcast yourself, which we’ll get into later. But I was wondering if you could start off by telling us your story. What first opened your eyes to the gaps in care for neurodivergent people during pregnancy and birth?

Victoria White – 00:02:05:

Yeah, absolutely. So my background actually is marine biology. So I’ve really gone off course of what I kind of initially set out to do. But I have two children, two girls, nine and seven. And following the birth of my eldest daughter, I was so motivated to work in a supporting role for other new families. And I embarked on doula training and I worked as a doula back in around about 2020, back in the pandemic. Around about that time, as a family, we were also navigating a whole new world and trying to understand how to better support our eldest daughter, who at the age of five was diagnosed as autistic and having and laterally with ADHD as well. And to be honest, it made me just think about her future. It made me think about what it might be like if she is to one day go on to have children and what her experience of maternity care might be like. Would people understand her way of navigating the world and her way of communicating and I started to think, wow, we are really not talking about this, I thought at all. It turns out people are doing some amazing work in this area and there’s lots of great academic research going on but I didn’t feel like anybody was talking to you. The pregnant women and birthing people who might be navigating this time and feeling unsupported and not really knowing about the sorts of things that might help them. So it started as an Instagram page, it became a podcast, and then it’s kind of evolved and gotten a bit out of control. And now, yeah, it’s a full movement. We are working at a policy level with the government in the UK, and we’re providing training within our National Health Service and within other birth organizations. And we have antenatal education that’s specifically for neurodivergent audiences as well.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:04:06:

Oh, that’s like a huge scope from becoming a mom yourself to all of a sudden being involved in the national level on this topic. So from your experience, you know, being a parent, a parent of a neurodivergent child and also a doula, a trained doula, what are some of the most common challenges that you’ve observed neurodivergent people facing during pregnancy or maybe during the birth itself?

Victoria White – 00:04:30:

So we like to talk about at Neurodivergent Birth, the four support pillars of neurodivergent birth. So these are sensory processing, communication, executive functioning and mental health. And the reason that we talk about these four themes is because they are all areas where neurodivergent people often experience some challenges, some differences, sometimes some positives too but they’re also all areas that are hugely impacted during pregnancy, birth and the postnatal time. So a couple of examples might be if we think about sensory processing, you know, often what comes to mind is bright lighting if you’re giving birth in a clinical environment. Loud noises, beeping machines, other people being around, unfamiliar smells and temperatures. But it’s so much more than that. If we think about in pregnancy, our internal sensory experience, what we refer to as interoception. Changes dramatically because our body changes so much and everything is shifting and moving and we just feel so different in that body. To how we did before we were pregnant. We also have the sensations related to our babies moving inside of us. And there’s a huge difference between those sort of early fluttering sensations in early pregnancy, and then the sensations of a fully formed limb sweeping inside of us when we get to term. And I think society often puts pressure on us to celebrate those movements. And they’re really important in terms of thinking about health, health of the baby and our health. But from a sensory point of view, they can be really quite challenging and difficult for people. Some examples with the postnatal time include the baby itself. So the baby is a very sensory thing. It produces a lot of sensory output. And we’re also navigating, looking after this being with all of its sensory outputs alongside the mess of the postnatal time where we’re bleeding, where potentially you know, lactating and milk and dampness and wetness and everything can just feel quite overwhelming. 

I think probably next to the sensory processing side of things, communication differences can be one of the biggest barriers. Often it’s assumed that people take in the same information in the same way. So often antenatal education is delivered in the same way. Appointments with medical providers are the same length for most people. And we don’t take into account the diversity in the way that people process that information. So for example, I’m not great at processing verbally. I won’t remember it very well. My working memory is compromised a lot of the time, particularly if I’m feeling overwhelmed. So I need that written information to take away with me, to process on my own timescale and to come back to and ask questions about. But we don’t always provide information in the sort of variety of ways that people might need to receive it. Our third pillar is executive functioning. So executive functions are all the cognitive skills that we use on a daily basis to meet daily obligations. They include planning and organizing. So they include being able to attend appointments and to plan for the arrival of the baby, to pack a hospital bag, everything that we might need to kind of get ready and to get organised. It also includes recalling information from our working memory, impulse control and emotional regulation as well. And a lot of neurodivergent people experience executive dysfunction. So we have challenges in these areas. So, for example, people with ADHD develop their executive functions 30% more slowly than those in the general population. That’s based on the work of Dr. Russell Barkley, who is a leading researcher in ADHD. So we might be, you know, mid-20s having a first baby, but actually our executive functioning age is somewhere much lower than that. And that can be a real barrier. And it can lead to a lot of judgment from others in terms of our ability to attend appointments and to get ready for the arrival of the baby. 

And then our fourth pillar is mental health. And we talk about mental health in its own pillar because so many neurodivergent people come to this time of their lives, having a baby, starting a family, with a foundation of challenge with their mental health. And this might be due to having had difficulties in educational settings, experiencing stigma in the workplace, really just navigating life as a neurodivergent person in a world that’s, of course, set up to meet the needs of the general neurotypical population. So we’re at a much higher risk of, for example, experiencing postnatal depression. Studies have shown that 60% of autistic people who have babies will have postnatal depression, higher risk factor also for postnatal anxiety and for birth trauma too. So those are, in a nutshell, some of the areas where, yeah, we can face some challenge and we need support.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:09:55:

That’s a lot of information, but I love how you have the four pillars and so I’ll say it again for my own sake. Repeat the sensory needs, communication needs, executive functioning needs, and mental health needs.

Victoria White – 00:10:10:

Yeah. Correct.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:10:11:

Okay. And while you were talking, one common thread I was thinking that might affect all these is sleep deprivation. Like, do you see that impacting everything ranging from your ability to tolerate or deal with sensory input to executive functioning and mental health?

Victoria White – 00:10:30:

100% everything we’ve just spoken about is impacted by sleep deprivation and actually neurodivergent people often already have issues with sleep before. Coming to pregnancy before at navigating nighttime with an infant. And that’s due to things like sensory overwhelm. It might be due to hyper-focus and hyper-fixation on things, which mean we just don’t know that time has passed and it’s time to go to sleep. Window of sleep is smaller. But there’s also differences in circadian rhythms and melatonin production. Quite a lot of neurodivergent people will take melatonin to help them get off to sleep. So it’s already an area of challenge. So it compounds some of the other challenges that we’ve had.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:11:17:

I mean, you add the discomforts of pregnancy and the postnatal period of raising a newborn baby who doesn’t allow you to sleep that much it probably makes all these things more difficult or more challenging.

Victoria White – 00:11:30:

Everything’s magnified and a lot of the things that i’ve just described are are challenging for everybody right i think a lot of us would would relate to it being overwhelming from a sensory perspective when you’re on the postnatal ward and you’re sharing your space with other people but I think the important thing to think about is how that is magnified for neurodivergent people that might have sensory differences, sensory sensitivities. Communication barriers and some of these other, other challenges, but positives too.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:12:02:

What about hormonal challenges? I noticed on your website, you talk a little bit about estrogen. Could you explain how the hormonal changes of pregnancy and postpartum can impact these areas?

Victoria White – 00:12:17:

Yeah, absolutely. So this is a fascinating area, an emerging area of research at the moment, because unfortunately we don’t know a lot about this because historically so much of what we do know about autism, ADHD and other neurotypes has focused on on the male experience. You know, it’s experienced that bias that a lot of clinical research has experienced. So we’re kind of catching up on understanding the female and assigned female at birth perspectives. And this includes the interaction of hormones. So for example, what we do know is that when we’re pregnant and the estrogen levels or estrogen, I’m saying it in the UK way, but we spell it with an O when estrogen levels climb, for example, often people who have ADHD find that they’re feeling pretty good. They’re feeling better. Some of the challenging symptoms that they might have experienced before are alleviated. And that’s because the increase in estrogen. Promotes the availability of dopamine, the neurotransmitter, feel good neurotransmitter in the brain. And so we’ve got kind of more freely available dopamine than we did before. 

But the problem then comes when our babies are born, the placenta is born, and then we have this huge crash and people talk about falling off the hormonal cliff. And it very much can feel like that because the huge crash in oestrogen means that our, some of the more challenging ADHD symptoms can really return with a bang. And at a time when we’re often feeling more vulnerable anyway, because we’re recovering from birth and we’re kind of getting to grips with all these sensory things and the changes in routine and all the executive functioning challenges. So we do know a bit about that and we know a little bit about the interaction of female hormones and the autistic experience. Most of that is related to the menstrual cycle. We know a little bit about how it impacts menopause and can infer from that, that yeah any other major kind of life transitions in terms of hormones. Like. Pregnancy and the postnatal time are going to be you know, different for neurodivergent people. Why exactly that is, is still an emerging area of science, but it’s such an important area of science because it could hold so many answers in terms of how to better support. And neurodivergent women and birthing people.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:14:44:

That’s fascinating. Thank you for sharing that. So Victoria, I know you mentioned in your bio that you were diagnosed with autism and ADHD later in life. How did that shift your own understanding? Did you look back then on your experiences and realize some of the things that happened to you or that you felt or experienced were different? Just tell us about that eye-opening experience.

Victoria White – 00:15:07:

I think before I was clinically diagnosed, I was already kind of going there in my mind as I researched this topic more and more. And through the podcast, we’ve spoken to over 60 people with lived experience who share their stories. And so much of it was so relatable. I think I was slowly starting to think, gosh, maybe this impacted my experience as well. I think what the clinical diagnosis has brought me is some validation, but I’m also still processing it because, you know, you’ve spent 41 years of your life kind of living it and not really knowing this about yourself. And then just knowing that there were struggles in some areas and you felt different and then you kind of somebody hands you a piece of paper that tells you why, and it takes a lot of time to process that. But I think one of the main things that I really struggled with postnatally was the lack of kind of good quality evidence-based knowledge in other people, if that makes sense. So everything that I came across, every challenge that I came across, and we did have lots of challenges. My daughter was tongue tied. We had allergy issues. I had two postpartum hemorrhages. There were lots of things going on, but everything, every challenge that I faced, my way of processing it was to do deep, deep research. So I would research things to the nth degree. I would read all the original scientific papers on the topic. And then I would be really frightened and kind of probably quite frustrated when I went to get professional support. And I found that I knew more about the topic than the person who could provide the professional support. And that sounds big headed, but when you get hyper focused on a topic and it becomes like an all consuming thing to know everything about it, then you do come across that. You do end up speaking to professionals and they don’t have that level of detailed knowledge that you do.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:17:17:

Right, It’s become your special interest. And you’re like, why do you not know this information? You’re supposed to be the expert.

Victoria White – 00:17:22:

A hundred percent. And I found that really frustrating. And I kind of had this like white hot rage sometimes. I remember going to an appointment with a doctor when I had mastitis. And the advice they gave me was so incredibly wrong that I got this like white hot kind of, yeah, all body rage from that. I think the other thing that my daughter and I both struggled with, because obviously we didn’t know at the time, but she later on was diagnosed herself, is that we were just in complete sensory overwhelm the whole time, both of us. So we kind of navigated the postnatal time like we thought we should in terms of going to all the pregnant and the baby groups and getting out the house as much as possible and feeling like we had to do all the things or i felt like we had to do all the things but that just resulted in a very very overstimulated infant and a very overstimulated mother. And then she wouldn’t kind of sleep in the way other babies were sleeping. Feeding was something that was a real struggle for us. And that feeling of isolation of why am I having such a different experience? What’s being mirrored back to me by my peers in these groups is so different. And that just felt really quite frightening. So now I can look back at that with a new lens. And with that just comes huge amounts of self-compassion, just recognizing that, of course, I was struggling because it was a really difficult time. It was a very kind of raw human time and I now have a bit more understanding as to as to why why we were having a bit of a different experience.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:19:05:

I’ve talked with a lot of moms and parents in the U.S. here. You know, it’s often difficult payment for issues like this is different and people can’t afford to get a diagnosis in their adulthood. So it’s kind of like you say, it’s validating to have the clinical diagnosis. But I’m sure there’s people who are listening who are like, yes, I experienced all that, but never been officially diagnosed.

Victoria White – 00:19:29:

Absolutely. And actually, it’s the same in the UK, because although we have the National Health Service, the demand for this at the moment is so overwhelming that you’ll wait up to 10 years to get an assessment. So I myself was through great privilege, I recognize went privately and got my assessment and my diagnosis. On the private healthcare system. And I think that it’s a really important point, Rebecca, because when we’re talking about supporting neurodivergent women and birthing people, a lot of us will not know that we’re neurodivergent, or we certainly won’t have that access to that diagnosis. So self-identifying as a neurodivergent person is very valid, and we need to support that in the same way. And also just kind of recognizing that it’s unlikely that somebody that we’re supporting is going to come to us and say, look, here’s my diagnosis. It’s more about being curious around some of the themes that we’ve spoken about with everybody, and kind of getting a sense from there about what might be helpful for some people.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:20:32:

And it reminds me of how like for birth workers and healthcare workers, if if you kind of treat everybody as if they’re on some level of the spectrum of neurodivergence, it actually improves care for everyone. Because a lot of the things you were talking about earlier about making sure you provide written information, making sure you give people extra time and appointments to ask questions and to feel comfortable and making sure that someone’s sensory needs are taken care of in labor and birth. All of that seems like it would obviously be necessary for someone who’s neurodivergent, but could be helpful for everyone.

Victoria White – 00:21:07:

Oh, I couldn’t agree more. We have this in our CBD workshop, we talk about raising the tide. Because any improvements that we make for neurodivergent people, when we look at some of these different sensory sensitivities, They just improve experiences for everybody. There’s nothing that we talk about that…

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:21:26:

Takes away from anyone else. For sure.

Victoria White – 00:21:29:

And it’s the old kind of canary in the coal mine analogy. And I’m kind of reticent to use that sometimes because I don’t want neurodivergent people to think that their experiences are only valid because they kind of highlight other areas for neurotypical people. Everyone’s experiences are valid. But ultimately, if in the neurodivergent community, we’re more sensitive to some of these things, we are facing more barriers to accessing the information we need, then we’re the ones, sadly, that kind of struggle sooner or in a kind of more obvious way, potentially. And that can show us where we need to do better for everybody, the areas of maternity care where things need to improve for everyone.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:22:14:

Yeah, that’s a really interesting way of thinking about it. So you’ve mentioned a couple of, you know, mitigating or supporting factors, but I was wondering if you could walk us through some evidence-based or maybe they don’t have evidence, but they’re just practical, easy to do strategies that can help neurodivergent people feel safer, more supported and more in control during birth. In the postnatal period.

Victoria White – 00:22:39:

Yeah, absolutely. I think when you’re preparing for your labor and birth and you’re thinking about making a plan, it’s about also planning for your sensory and cognitive needs as well. So for example, just having a think, especially if this is your first pregnancy, having a think about your sensory profile and the sorts of things that might be challenging and being explicit about that in your birth plan can be helpful because then you can look at reducing the stressors, the sensory stressors in the birth environment where possible. And it’s also important to remember that we’re not just talking about sensory sensitivities, we’re talking about sensory seeking behavior as well because sometimes sensory seeking behavior can help regulate our nervous system. So you might want to think about putting together a sensory toolkit that helps you to regulate. That might include things like fidgets, it might be noise cancelling headphones, an eye mask, it could be familiar objects from home, all the things that would help oxytocin anyway, right? That’s the great thing about this whole conversation, like we’re talking about all the things that are going to help labour progress anyway because they’re going to help you to feel safe and regulate your nervous system but really thinking about that in advance can be helpful and we do have, on our website, we have a downloads page. There’s an infographic on there, which can help prompt you to think about those things. Also food, food is so much more than, you know, calories, nutrition. It’s a very sensory thing. And a lot of us have safe foods that we rely on, or we have foods that are perhaps crunchy or chewy and just give us that great sensory input. So planning to access those in advance is also really important. And then I think the other thing for me would be communication. So, thinking about what you could do. If suddenly verbal communication wasn’t available to you, or you were in a place where you felt that, you know, you needed somebody else to communicate on your behalf. And doing things like role-playing some scenarios with your birth partner in advance might help. So role-playing some conversations around pain relief options or interventions that might be offered to you. Even having communication cards that are pre-written that perhaps say something like, I am autistic, I need more processing time, I will get back to you. Whatever works best for you. And again, putting that in your plan, in your birth plan, what your communication preferences are can be really impactful when you need it in the moment.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:25:24:

So for someone who maybe feels like they can’t speak in labor because they’re overwhelmed, they might find it easier to point to a card with what they need.

Victoria White – 00:25:33:

Absolutely. If you’ve got those pre-made cards. Or even a hand signal with your birth partner or doula that just lets you know that they need to talk for you at this point. And you’ve kind of gone through that in advance about what that might look like.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:25:50:

What about birth planning needs? You kind of mentioned putting your communication preferences on a birth plan. You talked earlier about executive functioning. And so what are your thoughts on how birth workers, maybe doulas or childbirth educators can help someone who’s neurodivergent create their birth plan?

Victoria White – 00:26:09:

So often being given a blank piece of paper and somebody saying, make a plan, is just too overwhelming. So you can support people with planning. And breaking it down into more manageable pieces. So we’re not just looking at the whole thing at once. We’re perhaps thinking, okay, today we’re going to think about what it’s like when in the early stages of labor at home and what’s going to help you and we’ll put that on the plan and build it from there but I think I love doulas for so many reasons but particularly their roles in support in neurodivergent birth because this is where we can learn everything about a person’s support needs and we’ve got that continuity that sometimes medical providers don’t have. With the person and then we can advocate for those support needs on their behalf. The other really useful thing that birth partners, doulas, birth workers can do is reduce the cognitive load on the individual. So when we’re experiencing executive dysfunction, things very quickly become overwhelming. And things like attending appointments, remembering that there is an appointment to attend, can be supported by things like keeping a calendar of appointments. Sending texts to remind people or going along with them to appointments, but not just as their, you know, advocate, but because you’re going to take notes and then debrief the information and come back to the key points with them multiple times when they’re processing it after the appointment itself. Anything that helps with planning, packing the hospital bag, or even things like baby care, if you can use visual aids, visual reminders, rather than like lots and lots of writing, that can be really helpful and impactful. And things like navigating healthcare facilities. I mean, I’m sure it’s the same with you. In the UK, some of the places that we give birth are part of these huge, complex kind of campuses of medical facilities. And just navigating them, getting to the right place on the right time is really challenging. So things like maps, photos for staff recognition, these can all just really help reduce the cognitive load on the individual.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:28:27:

What’s one shift, you know, speaking of these large campuses full of healthcare workers, what’s one shift you wish healthcare providers or healthcare staff would make to better support their neurodivergent patients? Or maybe you have multiple suggestions. I’ll take whatever you can give.

Victoria White – 00:28:43:

Okay. Well, the thing that we’re really passionate about sharing at the moment, and I’m wearing a pin actually that says it on it. So it says, think neurodivergence first, because often when people are different, they have different ways of being, they communicate in different ways, different ways of parenting. Sometimes those can be seen negatively and people are labeled as difficult, or they might even be labeled in some cases as a safe potential safeguarding risk because their way of being is so different from what we expected. And I’m just really, I get really saddened when I hear about people who, you know, are autistic, for example, being labeled as difficult, and then that impacting the care that they get afterwards. So we just encourage every healthcare professional to pause, to be curious about what might be going on. So is somebody’s different way of being, or is somebody’s behavior because there is an unmet need, because there is a sensory overwhelm being experienced, or a communication, a different style of communication, for example? And is this about making an accommodation for that person, rather than thinking that they’re difficult or you know that there needs to be some sort of intervention or safeguarding referral so yeah just getting curious because as I said before it’s unlikely that those people will arrive on the labor ward with a with a stamp on their note saying that that they are neurodivergent so many of us are yeah not aware ourselves or we come to have awareness of it after we’ve had our children that’s a very common story and so just being curious about everybody and about their neurology their way of being and not assuming that everyone experiences things in the same way is really what we need.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:30:33:

It seems like that would go the same for partners who might be neurodivergent as well. Like they could be labeled as a difficult partner when perhaps they’re just experiencing sensory overwhelm and they’re shutting down and can’t process what’s going on.

Victoria White – 00:30:48:

Absolutely. And so often partners are kind of forgotten in all of this and often they don’t have access to the same support that the birthing person does. But yeah, everything we’ve talked about, you know, if the birth partner is a neurodivergent person. They’re in these same environments. They’re also trying to process information, make informed choices with their partners. Then we need to be doing all the things that we’ve talked about for them as well. And I think that’s just not spoken about enough because ultimately so much of the focus is of course on the health of the birthing person and the baby but supporting the family unit is what leads to good outcomes too and we really need to do that.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:31:31:

I have a slightly different question just from looking at your website. I saw you had a resource for people, neurodivergent people who are having Cesareans or C-sections. Can you talk just briefly about the needs and how they differ? Like what are some of the things about having a Cesarean birth that might be challenging?

Victoria White – 00:31:52:

I think, again, it comes, I think the handout that we have on the website comes back to our four support pillars and just looking at those in turn in relation to what it might be like to have a Cesarean birth. Obviously, a Cesarean birth can be an option for some people. Some people who have an elective Cesarean section will have chosen that for good reasons. Like, for example, it might be that the predictability that comes with knowing the day that your baby is going to be born is really helpful because for a lot of neurodivergent people, the uncertainty part of the whole perinatal time is really difficult to kind of manage. But of course, when we’re having a Cesarean section, it comes with so many other sort of layers to things like the sensory experience. So we’re often going to be under very bright lighting in busy theatres with lots and lots of staff. So kind of having an awareness of what that might look like in advance can be really helpful. When we think about communication, when we’re having a Cesarean section, a lot of medical information is shared with us kind of on another level to when we’re looking at physiological birth. So trying to, again, make sure that there aren’t barriers to understanding that information and to making informed choices around that information is really key. I’ve seen people on their way to theatre in the throws of contractions just be bombarded with information about the section and the various risks and the medical jargon. And there’s just no way that that person is making an informed choice in that moment. It’s just not, it’s kind of ludicrous in the moment that that’s how information is being shared with them. So we just need to be a lot better about clarity around how we’re talking to people and sharing information with them. And then I think, you know, when we think about the recovery postnatally from a Cesarean section, particularly if you’re somebody who needs to move around a lot, a lot of people are proprioceptive seeking, which means they need to move a lot. They need to be kind of interacting with their spatial environment in a way that regulates them. If you’re recovering from a C-section, then the restriction in your movement may make that particularly challenging so it’s about kind of knowing that in advance and perhaps preparing for other ways for you to kind of get that sensory input while you’re while you’re healing.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:34:24:

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So Victoria, I know your website, we’ve mentioned a couple of times it’s ndbirth.com, correct?

Victoria White – 00:34:32:

Yes.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:34:33:

Can you tell us a little bit about like resources people can find that are available there?

Victoria White – 00:34:38:

Yeah, sure. So on the website, you can book on to our monthly CPD workshops for professionals. So they are held every month. There’s six hours in total, but we split them over two days. We have like a three hour session one day and then another on the second day. And we’ve had people join from all over. They’re not just UK-based. If the time works for you, time zone-wise, we have the states, people from the states, Canada, Australia, we’ve had Denmark, we’ve had Norway, we’ve had a real kind of mix. And that’s fantastic. Those are the best sessions because we can compare notes on what’s going on in different countries. And we talk about the legislation, the equality legislation that underpins all of this. And it always makes for a really interesting conversation. So you can book onto those and you can also go to our downloads page, which just has free resources. We’ve got fact sheets about hormones. We’ve got a fact sheet about hyperemesis and neurodivergence. We’ve got the Cesarean one. We’re about to have one on synesthesia, which is really interesting. So that’s when people, for example, see colors, perhaps when they’re experiencing things like pain or they see colors when they see a certain letter, there’s loads of different types of synesthesia. But yeah, all those resources are free, as is the Neurodivergent Birth Podcast, which you can find on all the regular podcast hosts.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:36:02:

And so are the workshops the same every month or are they slightly different from month to month?

Victoria White – 00:36:08:

Yeah, they’re the same one. The same, they’re the workshops that we run in the National Health Service when we train midwives, but they’re suitable for anybody who’s working in the perinatal time. So they’re not clinical. You know, we’re just talking about supporting people within those teams. And they’re written by neurodivergent people. So everything is, you know, nothing about us without us is really important. So they’re all written by, we have a team of midwives, of breastfeeding counselors, health visitors, doulas, and we’ve all collaborated together to write this training. And it’s CPD accredited in the UK. But as I said, it’s it can be applied to anybody who’s working with people perinatally across the world.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:36:53:

Okay. So if you want to get trained in neurodivergent birth support, that is available once a month on your website. And like you said, you have lots of downloads. You also have a directory of professionals and you have a book as well. Tell us about your book.

Victoria White – 00:37:09:

So the book is called Why Neurodivergent Birth Matters. And it’s part of a wider series of Why It Matters books, which are by a publisher called Montag and Martin based in the UK. And they just cover loads and loads of different topics in the perinatal time. And I really felt that this was like one of the missing topics, like having been a fan of these books, there’s over 29 of them at the moment and they’re still making them. We’re number 28. I really thought that neurodivergent experiences voices needed to be part of of that book series so um to my delight, the publisher agreed. And yeah, it’s really a book for professionals, but for pregnant people too, because every chapter takes you through what you might want to consider as a professional and what’s applicable to you in terms of kind of practical strategies that you can use as a neurodivergent person. And we cover the four support pillars, but we also go much deeper than that. We look at lactation in more detail. We look at hormones and we look at kind of why mental health can be so kind of difficult for people in our community before we even get to the perinatal time and why it’s really important to know about that and to support it.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:38:27:

Any other resources or good ways to follow your work?

Victoria White – 00:38:31:

Yeah, so we work a lot with a group of researchers in the UK called the Maternity Autism Research Group. So their acronym is MARG. I think they thought Marge Simpson would be their kind of mascot women. So they can be found, just Google Maternity Autism Research Group. And they’re a group of researchers who are doing academic research into specifically autistic experiences of maternity services. We also have an online resource that we wrote with Pandas, which is a perinatal mental health charity. And it takes people through the four support pillars, but also does some great signposting to resources that they can use to help support them with their mental health.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:39:22:

And of course you have your podcast, which people can find on any podcast platform, the Neurodivergent Birth Podcast. And I also saw on your website that, was there a law recently passed in the UK about reasonable accommodations and healthcare settings? Yeah. And I saw you have resources about that. Can you explain that briefly?

Victoria White – 00:39:42:

Sure, and this is really important actually for people listening in the States as well, because it is equivalent legislation. We just need to be talking about it more to get the awareness and then get it embedded in maternity care. So in the UK, we have the Equality Act 2010. And under that act, neurodivergence is considered a disability, whether or not an individual considers themselves as disabled. And the public services in the UK, which include our National Health Service, have a duty of care to make reasonable adjustments so that a disabled person, a person with a chronic illness, can access the same quality of care as anybody else. And this means in the maternity context that things like asking for a private room if there is one available, asking to wait in a quieter area, not the main waiting area, asking for more for double time appointments, for example, asking for the sensory experience of the birth environment to be different. These are all examples of what we call reasonable adjustments and the equivalent legislation in the U.S. is the ADA, American Disabilities Act. Am I saying that right? American Disabilities Act. You have reasonable accommodations and on paper this would also apply to neurodivergent people and their access to maternity care. However, I think what’s probably missing at the moment is just that level of awareness within those settings about what reasonable adjustments might look like. And my overarching message is often it’s really small things that make a big difference. We’re not asking people to overthrow the whole system or know everything there is to know about autism or Tourette’s or anything like that. It’s just making very small, small changes that then impact how a person feels, how validated their experience is and how they feel supported. And yet we have a download on our website called the Reasonable Adjustments Toolkit. It’s a bit like a birth planning tool. It’s icons that relate to the sensory experience your communication needs. For example, you can tick the box that says, I find my making eye contact difficult. Thank you for your understanding. It’s a way of communicating what reasonable adjustments might be useful for you. And you don’t have to use the document as it is. You can just use them as a prompt for considering your own potential support needs.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:42:19:

It sounds like something you could add even to the top of a birth plan, just like a statement about your neurodivergence and what some of your requests are for accommodations.

Victoria White – 00:42:28:

Absolutely.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:42:30:

Yeah, that’s amazing. Thank you so much, Victoria, for educating us today. It was lovely to talk with you. And I feel like hopefully we’re all walking away with some new tip that we can use to support neurodivergent families in pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.

Victoria White – 00:42:45:

Thank you, Rebecca.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:42:48:

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