Stand and Deliver!: And other Brilliant Ways to Give Birth. Emma Mahony

women who are tested routinely during their pregnancies, and then retested because the result was mis-read or read as a ‘false positive’ – and who sometimes having to wait weeks for the result – this most magical time can turn into a fearful one. There is a lot to be said for ignorance being bliss, and my mother would argue that her 1960s generation, pre-ultrasound, was a lot better off when they simply looked forward to starting a family come what may. And this from a woman who didn’t know she was carrying twins until she went into labour!

      Ultraconfusing Ultrasound

      While ultrasound has its uses (such as assessing more accurate dates, identifying twins and the presentation of the baby for delivery at the end of the pregnancy), it carries with it ethical dilemmas that far outweigh its uses, and any mother who doesn’t want to be scanned during pregnancy is quite within her rights to refuse it.

      When you learn that 20 years ago, when scanning was in its infancy, thousands of women were scared silly by being told their babies had ‘golf balls’ in the brain (which turned out to be perfectly healthy brain tissue), it reminds you how recent all this new technology is. The other day, a woman rang the AIMS helpline in tears when a sonographer told her to ‘come back next week, I can’t see the baby’s head’.

      Some radical groups maintain that the effects of ultrasound on growing babies and adults in later life have never fully been researched. While the effects are obviously nowhere near as dramatic as the rise in childhood leukaemia after X-rays were used on pregnant women (and Britain was the last country to stop irradiating pregnant women), it nevertheless makes you wonder why we are exposing something as fragile as the beginnings of life to unproven technology.

      What is also forgotten in the rush to wave the magic radiographer’s wand is how vulnerable pregnant women are to information. It’s no surprise that most women don’t want to know the sex of their child in this country (it is given as a rule in the States – unless the parents specifically request otherwise). We want that growing baby to be as protected as possible, a mystery up until the moment he or she is born. We don’t always want early expectations heaped upon him or her because of gender, size or some minor birth defect.

      My first son was born with a cleft-lip and palate that was corrected by plastic surgery when he was three and six months old, and I am still glad that the ultrasound department failed to pick up this ‘anomaly’. It would have added anxiety and worry to the whole family during an otherwise stress-free pregnancy. I wouldn’t have changed the course of my pregnancy knowing this, but I might have looked up unregulated sites on the internet and then worried myself stupid with other people’s tales of woe.

      Ultrasound is technology without responsibility. It is you, not the radiographer, who has to deal with the fall-out of whatever probability ratio the scan brings up, and whatever further tests you might be offered. As the Government announces plans to mass-screen every woman in the UK (at a cost of £153 million to us taxpayers), few people have questioned why. Some groups for people with disabilities have even described the decision as ‘mass eugenics’ by another name. One woman who had decided that she did not want ultrasound rang up the doctor’s surgery to inform them that she did not want to have her 13-week scan. The receptionist became shirty with her about her decision, and wouldn’t let her cancel. Finally, to put an end to the discussion, this woman simply reminded the receptionist that her baby was really none of the receptionist’s business.

      So, before you even go in for your scan, discuss the bigger picture with your partner. Talk about what you can cope with as parents, and then decide on what you’ll do on that basis. Don’t feel you have to be put on the conveyor belt without a choice.

      Don’t Worry, Be Happy

      All this talk is really an attempt to shake up a few accepted views about what happens to you during your pregnancy, and to get you thinking about what you want for yourself and your new family. You have all the answers, it may just require digging a little deeper to find them.

      For example, all women know deep down where they would feel comfortable and safe giving birth. Even if your reasons might seem ridiculous to someone else, you know best. My mother wanted to have my elder brother at home in Norfolk because she was convinced that her first-born might get switched in the hospital nursery at night. Fortunately she had a sympathetic doctor who agreed to a home birth to save her worrying further. My 11-lb brother (ouch!) was born with a fire flickering in the grate, the midwife knitting in the armchair, chucking her cigarette butts into the fire as the hours wore on (my, how times have changed). Who is to say my mother was wrong, or should have been persuaded to do otherwise (as she would have today when the scan showed a baby of that size)? Who is even to say that her worst fear might not have come true, as women are often spookily intuitive during pregnancy, and seem to know things that are not explainable in a rational way?

      So, don’t be downhearted by all the negativity surrounding our birth culture today, try shocking everyone around you by announcing that you are looking forward to the birth. You have already made a miracle by creating that baby inside of you, so why shouldn’t further miracles happen – such as enjoying the big day?

       CHAPTER 2 Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby

      If you have hitherto worn piecrust collar shirts, below-the-knee A-line skirts and sensible shoes, then pregnancy is the time to review your image as a woman. If you have traded on being a sexless sort of person in the workplace or in your domestic persona, a sensible, trustworthy sort who doesn’t sleep around with the boss, then that ain’t gonna work no more. By the very fact of your growing bump you are announcing to the world that YOU HAVE HAD SEX. Or, one hopes, YOU HAVE SEX. Everybody from the sniggering teenager to the vicar at church can now see this for themselves. That hitherto most private and mysterious part of yourself is paraded on view, saying ‘Look everybody, I am a fertile woman who is sexy enough for someone to want to impregnate me!’ You may think that your pregnancy dungarees and Doc Marten boots are saying something else, but this is the message on the most basic level that the world is receiving.

      This is no small matter. I can still remember realizing in a Biology class that I was a result of my parents ‘doing it’. I was appalled. I could only compute the idea by believing that they had done it just the two times in the marriage to produce us children. From then on, in my pre-teen state, pregnant women on the street were not gorgeous goddesses but women who had done that unspeakable act – yuk! Put that thought into the mind of teenage boys and you can see why ‘denial’ is not the place you should be right now.

      Sex and Birth

      Although you may never learn this at your hospital appointments, confronted by doctors with stethoscopes around their necks, sex and birth are closely linked. A good healthy approach to sex can help produce a good, healthy birth outcome. That doesn’t mean to say that if you can’t face a session in the sack until after the birth that you may as well book in for a C-section. There are many ways to fry a fish (sorry), and in the hand-out that accompanies the pregnancy Pink Kit from New Zealand (visit www.commonknowledgetrust.com for a look), there is a line that says ‘Women who birth well touch themselves appropriately to facilitate the experience.’ If that line makes you go ‘eek’ (and not because of the mangled syntax) then you need to dig a little deeper and ask yourself why. Being into your body and finding yourself beautiful in your pregnant state may require a thought-makeover (more cultural unconditioning). After all, waif-like models are the ideal, aren’t they? Well, no, actually. Try asking any red-blooded male, and don’t be surprised by his answer. Some men find pregnant women very sexy, and if you happen to show your bump in Greece you will be accosted by Greek men keen to rub your tummy for good luck. Just remember that the Sun does not sell 2 million copies every day because of its acute political sensibilities.

      In