A friend came to stay with me last week after spending 9 weeks in the Fremo Medical and Birth Centre, “a beautiful and safe haven for the mothers of the Kawangware slum on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya.”

Michelle trained as a midwife 6 months ahead of me at St Mary’s Paddington, and delivered my own child at my home in a pool. The next day she came round and blitzed the house from top to bottom and filled the fridge so that I could emerge from bed with nothing to do that day but learn to be a mother.

Michelle and I talked about midwifery and birth, antenatal care and poverty, first world and developing world pressures on women, and I realised just how much I missed being around pregnant women, new mothers and babies. Not continuing in midwifery is one of my biggest regrets, though the relentless and harmful pressure that midwifery has been under for so many years has ameliorated that sadness.

My own labour was textbook – healthy antenatally I knew that there was no reason to anticipate anything other than a straightforward birth, that deep warm water can reduce pain and that St Mary’s was 15 minutes away.  Everything went well and still, it was the closest thing to madness I’d ever experienced. I’ve no regrets about not having pain relief but bloody hell, it was powerful.

Remembering all this, listening to Michelle’s enduring enthusiasm for her work, made me realise that I have a particular background that can be useful to women – and men – who are moving towards and into parenthood.

We don’t have rites of passage any more, we don’t sincerely mark transitions we just accept as a fact that yesterday you were not pregnant, today you are. Yesterday you were not a mother or father, today you are. The most important immediate recognition is medical and then form filling for employers and the tax office. Families can be great, employers and friends can be supportive but what about the engagement with intimate, complex and very normal joy and enthusiasm, doubts and fears?

Midwives report that they hardly have time to be with women in labour, and I remember the disappointed faces from an antenatal clinic 20 years ago when women realised that there wasn’t time to answer all their questions. When you can’t have a conversation about how difficult it is to give up smoking the opportunity to engage in an hours one-to-one conversation about your anxieties and fears becomes remote.

Right now, I can’t offer a community that recognises, welcomes and values women and men as they make the unalterable transition to parenthood (though that’s not by any means impossible) but I can offer a specialist type of counselling. This is important support for all parents, not just those who can afford it, and so I’ll be looking into ways for women and men who find it difficult just to keep the lights on to also access it.

 Let me know if you have any ideas. Pass the message on.

So here it is, my ebook. It will guide you through all the processes of counselling, from where talking therapies fit into a lineage of changing consciousness, to how much you can expect to pay via why people don't come to therapy and what happens during and after it.

Click here to download it onto your Kindle for £3.39 or free when you borrow it. Let me know what you think.