Your First Grandchild: Useful, touching and hilarious guide for first-time grandparents. Paul Greenwood

and Baby, June 1965, suggests just how clinical birthing had become. Pregnant women were told:

       At the beginning of the second stage you will be taken to the labour room … This is a small, bare room with a high bed in it where your baby will be born in aseptic conditions. The doctor and midwife will don masks just as for a surgical operation … The obstetric bed is steel-based and provides good support for you in the pushing stage. You will be placed on your back, thighs wide apart and your legs up in the air, supported by two leather stirrups. This is called the lithotomy position and is used to enable whoever is delivering you to control the descent of your baby’s head through the birth canal. You will, of course, be draped in sterile towels and you will find the position quite suitable for the hard work you have to do.

      Tests and Scans

      Most expectant mothers do not need to be encouraged to have all the tests and scans that may be necessary. In fact, it’s sometimes older people who think there may be too many of these, and that they might cause too much stress. Most, however, find them as reassuring as the parents do. A friend of mine who is just about to become a grandmother phoned me recently thrilled to bits because she had just been to her daughter’s scan with her. ‘I was really touched that she wanted me to go with her,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it wonderful, and doesn’t it make you realize how little information there was available to us when we had our babies. Parents are so lucky these days.’

      

      One of the great bi-products of working on this book is that I get unexpected phone calls from grandparents, potential grandparents and parents themselves who offer interesting facts and stories, and ask me about some comparable circumstances.

      

      Sometimes grandparents-to-be say that to them a scan looks like a map of the dark side of the moon and they can recognize nothing even vaguely resembling a baby. Don’t be afraid to ask for it to be explained to you, and then you can share the thrill.

      

      Another friend of mine, whose daughter had to have a late scan, said, ‘We didn’t particularly want to know the sex of the child but on the picture it was quite obvious that it was a boy. Impossible to ignore that little thing waving about in the breeze.’

      

      Parents may or may not choose to have scans and tests – the decision must be theirs – but those who do can find these procedures reassuring. So much of the pregnancy experience used to be a guessing game, with pregnant women too often at the mercy of old wives’ horror stories.

       A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing!

       ‘My father was a GP with a busy practice in Glasgow. I was living in London and pregnant with my first child. My husband wasn’t particularly interested in any of my symptoms and I was far away from close female friends. Also, I idolized my father and I valued his medical opinion highly. So every day, at least once, I used to phone him.

       I knew he really loved me so it never occurred to me that I could be being a bit of a pest when I used to phone him in the middle of his consulting hours with the latest symptom. What did so-and-so mean? Should I eat such-and-such? Why was I feeling this, that and the other? During the whole nine months he would patiently explain every tiniest detail to me. My phone bill rocketed and so, I’m sure, did his, as if he was unavailable I would leave messages for him to phone me back. Eventually, on the day before my daughter was born, I went to the loo and found I had a show of a jelly-like substance. (This turned out to be the stopper of the womb and meant that birth was pretty imminent.) Immediately, I went into overdrive and phoned Glasgow: “Dad, what does it mean, this jelly?” There was a long pause. Then my father’s voice said dryly, “Well, dear, I expect it means you’re going to have a Jelly Baby.” Even a saint’s patience can run out!’

      Names

      Try to be magnanimous when the parents-to-be tell you their latest great idea for a name. Remember you can get used to anything. But it’s probably all right to point out any potentially teaseworthy names: for instance, if their surname is Button and they propose to call a daughter Pearl. I have known a girl called Dawn Pink and a boy called Rock Salmon. In both cases, I think it was the mother or father’s idea of a witticism. Not very fair on the kids, though. Schoolchildren can turn even potentially harmless names into something deadly, so it pays to be careful, even with initials – M T Head is not such a good idea. One of the reasons my parents called me Claire was because they considered it a name that could not be shortened or easily corrupted into a nickname. They reckoned without the school wit who dubbed me ‘Chocolate éclair’.

      Often parents will appeal to the grandparents for ideas, so have a few names ready just in case they do. But try not to sulk if they don’t even consider them!

      Hasn’t She Had It Yet?

      The grandparents usually find that, as the due date grows ever nearer, and the mother-to-be gets ever larger, there is more they can do to help. The last few weeks can seem to last a lifetime for the expectant mother, when every movement is an effort. So it is a time when even the smallest offering, like giving her a back-rub or cooking a meal, can be very much appreciated. Also, this is a good time to encourage the parents-to-be to go out together, because it is probably going to be a long while before they will be able to go out alone again.

      

      You may find yourself getting almost as impatient for the event as the couple, especially as neighbours and friends seem to keep asking that old question, ‘Hasn’t she had it yet?’ I remember feeling quite nostalgic in advance for the times by ourselves that my daughter and I had shared, because I knew that they could never return. But then I shook myself and thought, no those times can’t, but the new ones can be even better!

       Paul Writes

      I found it extremely touching to witness Peggy’s pregnancy advancing. She is one of those young women who blooms, looks radiant, and seems to sail through the whole thing with aplomb. She was also very busy nest-building, making a whole new flat perfect for the coming baby, in the perfectionist way she does everything. Sometimes, secretly. I felt just a little sad. I don’t know why. I can only think that it was something to do with her growing up completely, or a sense of a new era approaching (or maybe a realization of my own ageing) – I’m not sure. Also. Claire had once miscarried a child that we had longed for, and I suppose that, because my wife is rather like her daughter, it made me think of what it would have been like if she had carried the baby to term. Towards the end of Peggy’s pregnancy, we were very excited and full of curiosity about the coming child – though finally you just think. ‘Come on, baby, will you!’

      The Birth

      This is an exciting but often rather disturbing time for grandparents-to-be because usually there is nothing you can do but wait … and wait … and wait. Trying to hide any anxiety, wanting to help without being able to, feeling utterly impotent and slightly apprehensive at the same time is not much fun. Many women report a sense of total inadequacy and seem to share a primitive urge to be at the actual birth, perhaps because in the collective memory birth may often have been an all-female affair, as it is to this day in some communities.

      

      I was extremely interested to read a book about southeast Asian birth customs, which was written in 1965, a time when birth in the Western world