How Not to Be a Perfect Mother. Libby Purves

bags in launderettes still mutter joyfully about Auntie Helen who was Never the Same Again after what she went through with her second; about Our Brenda who never had a day without pain (and it was Twin Beds from the day she came out that hospital until the day he passed on, the dirty beast); about dropped bits and ruptured bits and Specialists down from Lunnon who had never seen anything like it in 40 years. The advantage of this great female legend in its heyday was presumably that when the terrified young girls actually came to have babies, they found it nowhere near so bad as they expected; and in their subsequent relief felt positively light-hearted about the few residual aches and pains. The disadvantage was (and is) that the more frightened the mother, the worse it hurts. The legend was thus enabled to live on, with ever more refinements of detail (‘Ooh, you should have seen my stitches. I tore 3inches. Doctor said he’d never seen anything like it …’).

      The great legend took a bashing with the advent of the childbirth movement. New childbirth, natural childbirth, Birth without Fear, whatever you call it, the symptoms are much the same. They include a refreshing blast of technical knowledge, a refusal to admit that it hurts much and, at the more extreme limits, the claim by Sheila Kitzinger that ‘birth is the most exciting sexual experience of a woman’s life’ (depends on all the others, I should say … ). The new prophetesses use ‘birthing’ as an active verb, admire Leboyer’s vision of a child drifting into the world to gentle music and dim lights and warm water and love. They point with enthusiasm at Michel Odent’s squatting, naked mothers and athletically involved fathers at the Pithiviers clinic, and publish books of exercises to stretch every useful muscle. They write blow-by-blow accounts of their own beautiful labours, surrounded by friends playing guitars, nourished by ancient honey-and-raspberry-leaf infusions, and culminating in the joyful eating of the placenta in an iron-rich stew.

      This approach, like the other one, has its disadvantages for the nervous, bone-idle, easily confused primagravida. The pursuit of knowledge is useful; being urged to frenzied activity during labour is a very good thing. (Hospitals ought to have ping-pong tables. At least husbands might, for once, let their wives win as they approach 5 cm dilation, and it would be less boring than flinging yourself on a beanbag.) And the scorn poured on painkillers has at least stopped medical staff from their famed practice of shooting women full of pethidine to make them shut up groaning.

      On the other hand, all that fulsome praise of Nature tends to infuriate the large minority whose babies, in Nature, would not have had a lot of fun getting out; Caesarean, drip induction, epidural anaesthetic and forceps victims have developed a tendency to complain bitterly about being ‘cheated of the experience of birth’, which must sound incredible to the howling-and-bedposts school of obstetrical fantasists. Like complaining about being cheated of the rack or the thumbscrew. Almost as bad is the awful guilt, felt by the likes of me, that no baby can have a calm and silently magical Leboyer delivery if the first sound to assail its little slimy ears is the sound of its mother swearing like a Billingsgate porter and punching its father in the neck.

      Now, on top of this struggle between the earth-mothers and the doomsters, comes a sneaky but influential lobby which says ‘Look, spare yourself the hassle, keep the diary tidy, go for an elective Caesarean.’ Earth-mothers, and some doctors, are outraged by the ‘too posh to push’ lobby; however, you may come under subtle pressure from mothers who chose Caesareans for psychological or social rather than medical reasons. Don’t give in without thinking hard: a Caesarean is a serious, major abdominal operation; you will take longer to recover, be unable to drive or lift heavy things for weeks, and compromise your chances of having a natural birth later. Infections, even fatalities, are not unheard-of. It’s a safe enough operation if you need an op, and preserves many lives; but if you don’t need it, it is not an option to take lightly. Perhaps the most disgraceful example of medical advertising ever was the US ad for Caesareans beginning ‘Keep your tubes honeymoon fresh!’

      On the whole, reading ‘birthing’ books is more useful than listening to your mother-in-law delivering the Gypsy’s Warning, or your overconfident friends telling you how their system was best (all mothers have to think their own choice regarding babies has been best, at every stage. It’s a safeguard against the gnawing guilt we all feel most of the time. You learn to discount it). When it comes to choosing which hospital, you can get some good information from friends, though, and the underground network of mothers’ groups, and the hearsay evidence of your classmates at the heavy-breathing sessions. I heard, this way, that a certain hospital has one obstetrician who is gay and can’t stand the sight of women’s breasts; that another plays country ‘n’ western muzak in the delivery rooms (babies’ heads, emerging, feel exactly as if they had concrete Stetsons on anyway, without any such uncomfortable musical suggestion); and that yet another hospital has a tendency to bring in six medical students at a time to gaze at your perineum and gasp at your language. (The woman who told me this had actually raised herself on her elbows, between pushes, and demanded ticket money from the growing crowd at her feet. Two of them were so startled they actually began fishing in their white coat pockets.) At least if you know all this, you are prepared.

      One awful warning came my way about home births. These are so difficult to organize, for a first baby in Britain, that one couple dedicated two months of lobbying, changing doctors, persuading and campaigning to win permission to be tended at home. Finally they got it; and as soon as the thrill of the chase had worn off, misgivings set in. The woman confided, a little shamefacedly, that in her excitement at beating the system, she never once thought about the work and disruption it would cause – not to the medical staff, but to her own house. On the day she got the official list of things to prepare (like high blocks to put the bed on, and vast quantities of plastic sheeting for the bedroom carpet) she longed to recant, but didn’t have the face to. Her husband eventually spent half the delivery night clearing up, and the next morning washing the dozen teacups and biscuit plates emptied by the community midwife (the doctor had most of the Scotch afterwards). Both parents, occasionally, still have wistful thoughts about nice clean hospitals with unlimited laundry and professional tea-ladies.

      My own husband, having cheered me on through two hospital deliveries and revelled in the fact that someone else would clear up, now says after ten years of farming that these matters are best carried out in outdoor lambing-pens, with all present in Wellington boots. So, round here, only sheep are allowed home births.

      (I should admit, though, that I am not the most impartial person to discuss home births. With my first child, I discovered to my shame that I am a complete hospital junkie; I loved every moment, became institutionalized within two days, had to be dragged out, complaining, at the end of eight days; and for months afterwards, I indulged in yearning fantasies about going back to the lovely maternity ward. One weary night, when Rose was two months old, I announced this longing; my husband asked, ‘What is so special about hospital, for heaven’s sake?’ and I apparently sobbed: ‘They bring a trolley of laxatives and sleeping pills round at nine o’clock sharp every night. I never actually have anything, but at least it shows that someone cares.’ Mystified, the poor man took to offering me a laxative every night, just before the nine o’clock news, to show he cared; but it wasn’t the same, somehow.) But then, I was lucky in my hospitals. Not everybody is; and more recent practice is to chuck the new mother and baby out pretty sharply after the birth, to go through the rest of the recovery stage at home.

      So, to the birth itself: every birth is slightly different. All I can usefully say is: beware of Legends, and beware of Irrelevant Campaigns.

       Legends

       ‘A woman always knows when she is in labour.’

      Oh no, she doesn’t. Hospitals get women arriving two minutes from birth, still wondering vaguely if anything is amiss; and countless others turning up a fortnight early with indigestion and nerves. Keep an open mind about it, and don’t be too easily fooled by the spectacular Braxton-Hicks contractions which sweep over you while you’re watching