Navigating Conflicting Advice in Pregnancy
Cultural Practice vs Evidence-Based Care
Something I come across time and time again as a pregnancy yoga teacher is the sheer number of contradictions women face during pregnancy.
Different advice from different professionals.
Conflicting opinions online.
Well-meaning guidance from family and friends that doesn’t quite match what someone else has said.
It can feel incredibly confusing, especially at a time when you simply want to know what is safe, what is helpful, and what is right for you and your baby.
When advice doesn’t match
Recently, one of my pregnancy yoga students was told by a healthcare professional that she shouldn’t be doing deep squats late in pregnancy.
Now, I don’t know her individual medical history, and there may have been a very valid reason for that specific guidance.
But in general, deep squats are widely considered safe in pregnancy, and in some cases even encouraged.
Research, including observations from cultures where squatting is a normal, everyday position, suggests that squatting can support pelvic mobility and birth preparation.
So when women receive blanket advice that contradicts broader evidence, it naturally raises a question:
How much of maternity care is truly evidence-based, and how much is shaped by culture and tradition?
The hidden history of maternity care
There’s a common belief that maternity systems are always structured purely around the best interests of women and babies.
But historically, birth wasn’t managed inside institutions at all.
For most of human history, childbirth was a female-centred community event, taking place at home, supported by midwives and surrounded by mothers, sisters, aunties, cousins, and friends.
Knowledge was passed down through generations.
Birth was seen as a normal rite of passage, not a medical emergency.
With industrialisation and the rise of modern medicine, birth gradually moved into hospitals.
Routine interventions were introduced, often without strong evidence, and quickly became normalised within maternity care.
An example that feels shocking today is that, just 50 years ago, women in labour were routinely given enemas and perineal shaves before birth.
This was considered completely standard practice until research showed it offered no benefit and potential harm, and the guidance finally changed.
Looking back, it’s easy to ask:
What practices today will we question in another 50 years?
Cultural practice still exists today
Even now, not all maternity guidelines are built on strong evidence.
One study examining Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists guidance found that only 9–12% of recommendations were based on Grade A evidence, with many guidelines citing other guidelines rather than high-quality research.
A powerful modern example is the routine use of vaginal examinations during labour.
These examinations are intended to measure cervical dilation and assess whether labour is progressing “normally.”
They’re invasive, intimate, and often offered every four hours as standard.
Yet a 2022 Cochrane review (considered the highest quality level of research evidence) concluded that we cannot be certain which method is most effective for assessing labour progress, and that more large-scale trials are needed.
In other words:
Something deeply routine in maternity care may still be cultural rather than evidence-based.
And the potential downsides for women, discomfort, increased infection risk, accidental rupture of membranes, or simply not wanting an internal examination, are rarely centred in the conversation.
Why this feels so hard for pregnant women
Women are expected to navigate:
Complex medical systems
Conflicting professional opinions
Deeply emotional, life-changing decisions
All during one of the most vulnerable periods of their lives.
And often, they must do this without clear, unbiased guidance.
That is an enormous and unfair burden.
What actually helps: preparation and self-trust
If opting out of the maternity system entirely isn’t realistic for most women, the real power lies in preparation.
Preparation might look like:
Accessing high-quality antenatal education outside the system
Rebuilding trust in your body and intuition
Staying physically active and connected to your pelvis and posture
Creating flexible birth plans that honour multiple outcomes
Building a supportive postnatal community
Marking the transition to motherhood with intention and ceremony
This kind of preparation doesn’t promise a perfect birth.
But it does offer something far more valuable:
Confidence, clarity, and a sense of agency, whatever path birth takes.
A gentler way forward
My work as a Pregnancy Yoga Teacher is rooted in one simple intention:
To offer women evidence-informed, compassionate, realistic support
so they can move through pregnancy and birth feeling:
calmer
stronger
more informed
more connected to themselves and their babies
Because women deserve more than confusion and contradiction.
They deserve clarity, respect, and trust at one of the most important transitions of their lives.
