Our NHS is lucky to have many skilled and dedicated obstetricians and midwives looking after women before, during and after childbirth, and this report will help frontline maternity professionals to improve the care that they provide to women and their babies".
While women are still, as she argues, patronised or disempowered by some maternity professionals, you might see the NCT's desire for a man at the helm, like the children in Nina Stibbe's brilliant novel of that name, as yet more of an affront to the women he now guides on health matters than were 17 years of leadership, for members of Mothers' Union, by a man called Reg Bailey.
Despite the increased availability of evidence-based information describing obesity-associated complications, maternity professionals do not necessarily incorporate this into their interactions with pregnant women [ 11, 12].
This study assessed how aspects of maternity professionals' lifestyles and personal characteristics potentially influenced their consultations with pregnant ow/ob women.
3 The burden on staff is demonstrated internationally in studies of maternity professionals who report that caring for families experiencing a stillbirth is a stressful aspect of their work.
Although American studies have assessed obstetric provider recommendations and knowledge [ 12, 16], we could find no studies in this area which assessed aspects of maternity professionals' lifestyles and personal characteristics against selected elements of clinical practice.
Recent research has also highlighted confusion and uncertainty amongst maternity professionals regarding the most appropriate approach to take when counselling their obese patients, with concerns articulated about being effective but not offensive, in the way they convey information [ 16, 17].
Hence, the onus of responsibility on maternity professionals to ensure appropriately timed, evidence-based, information is disseminated to their clients, especially those who are ow/ob at the outset of pregnancy as they are most at risk of excess GWG.
Our findings highlight the need for smoking cessation services to feed back to maternity services whether or not individual women have attended their services and their outcomes, so that maternity professionals can proactively support and encourage women who are finding smoking cessation difficult.
A strength of our research is that, to the best of our knowledge, it is the first Australian study to examine maternity professionals' knowledge, attitudes, practices, and lifestyle behaviours, in conjunction with a clinical guideline and maternity care provided to ow/ob pregnant women.
Also of note, five of the six survey items yielded significant differences in responses between midwives and doctors, indicating that attitudes and beliefs towards the legal rights of the woman, fetus, and health care professionals differ across maternity care professional groups.
