‘I was devastated’: MP hopes her story will help improve maternity care for disabled women

When doctors tried to work out whether Marie Tidball would need a specially designed birth plan, one asked her to lie fully clothed on the bed and spread her legs in the air so they could see how far they could open.

The incident was one of several occasions when Tidball, now a Labour MP, felt neglected during her pregnancy and early motherhood because of the NHS’s failure to adapt on account of her physical disabilities. Tidball has physical impairments affecting all four of her limbs and had major surgeries on both her hips and legs as a child.

She is speaking publicly about her experiences for the first time to highlight a report showing that disabled mothers and their children have significantly worse neonatal and postnatal NHS care than others.

Speaking about the doctor’s request to open her legs, Tidball told the Guardian: “I was shocked, really, that that was their approach, rather than actually looking properly at some of my medical history and the notes around my hips.

“They didn’t think about how that orthopaedic surgery might interact with birth, but also [about] carrying the baby and the way the baby was lying in uterus. They just hadn’t really thought those intersections through.”

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 5 March 2025

Related reading on the hub

• Diagnostic safety: accessibility and adaptations– a (un)reasonable adjustment?