The SIMCA Study Protocol: Factors influencing the implementation of the Midwifery Continuity of Carer (MCoC) model of care in NHS maternity care in England: A mixed methods cross case analysis involving clinicians, women and policy makers.

Background: During pregnancy, labour and early motherhood, most women in the UK receive care from different midwives. NHS policy change in England sought to introduce a model of care whereby each woman is cared for by the same midwife throughout antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal periods, supported by a small team of midwives to cover off-duty periods. This model is called the Midwifery Continuity of Carer (MCoC).

Barriers and facilitators when implementing midwifery continuity of carer: a narrative analysis of the international literature.

Background: Midwifery continuity of carer (MCoC) is a model of care in which the same midwife or small team of midwives supports women throughout pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. The model has been prioritised by policy makers in a number of high-income countries, but widespread implementation and sustainability has proved challenging.

Methods: In this narrative review and synthesis of the global literature on the implementation and sustainability of midwifery continuity of carer, we identify barriers to, and facilitators of, this model of delivering maternity care.

Further Hierarchies of Loss: Tracking Relationality in Pregnancy Loss Experiences.

The article extends Robson and Walter's concept of hierarchies of loss by describing further factors which afford differential social legitimacy to death-related losses. Drawing on our separate research with women in England who have experienced pre-viability pregnancy loss through different types of miscarriage and termination for foetal anomaly, we note that closeness of relationship to the object of loss does hierarchise pregnancy loss. However, other relational elements are also implicated, including ontological positions on what it was which was lost, in relation to other individually and socially experienced losses.

Too big, too young, too risky: How diagnosis of the foetal body determines trajectories of care for the pregnant woman in pre-viability second trimester pregnancy loss.

Women in the English National Health Service facing pre-viability second trimester pregnancy loss through foetal death, premature labour or termination of pregnancy for foetal anomaly find themselves in a particular trajectory of care. This usually involves the requirement to labour and birth the foetal body and may involve undergoing feticide in cases of termination. Drawing on ethnographic research investigating women's experiences of second trimester pregnancy loss, I argue that the determining factor affecting care trajectories for the pregnant body is the biomedically diagnosed status of the foetal body.