Top News

One Born Every Minute is coming back to TV after an eight-year break, but don't you think that sometimes things should stay gone? The TV show faced a lot of controversy which resulted in plummeting ratings despite its initial strong start, and not one part of me is remotely surprised. There are a number of issues with the Channel 4 show, most importantly is the representation of childbirth. Naturally, TV shows heavily rely on drama to air something to their viewers, so it makes sense that One Born Every Minute is often filled with dramatic births that really don't show what a birth can look like. For women who use it as their sole birth education, it's quite damaging.

One important aspect about having a positive birth experience is the flow of oxytocin (the love hormone) and if you're feeling terrified and your brain is casting its mind back to a horror birth you just watched on the Channel 4 show, well there's not going to be much of that flowing, is there? If it's going to come back (and it is) Channel 4 needs to make some changes, or it'll go downhill once again.

The most important change they need to make is in relation to covering statistics across the board. Of course some births are dramatic, but there needs to be an average mix, based on how many births it applies to. We should see non-medicated births, water births, medicated births, inductions, C-sections, and any which way, rather than focusing on the most dramatic scenes that can air. This will actually help women prepare for what is about to come. There is a demand for people having more insight to birth and that's why mum influencers are doing so well at the moment, because they share what really went on behind the scenes without adding dramatic flair. It's real and raw.

I think it also needs to be made clear to the people involved that at any point they can decline to continue filming and won't be in the show. Maybe this was made clear before, but from what we saw on TV it didn't always seem like they would have wanted a film crew in for such an intimate moment. Things can take a sudden turn and get incredibly overwhelming.

What I'd love to see from the new series is serious representation changes on how birth goes ahead and a true insight into what actually happens in hospital and the care received. We don't need backstage drama. There's already enough going on. There have been too many scandals from the former series that isn't needed, such as the midwife who was involved in an affair with the partner of the woman whose baby she helped deliver. Another was the constant need to have people who were choosing unusual baby names feature on the show.

Eventually, people grew tired of the same old format which is why it's now so important for them to make the changes that need to be made. If they go back to the old way of the show, it'll just lose its viewers once again. I'm not saying it shouldn't come back, but I am saying it needs to change before it does.