Buch lesen: «Blooming Birth: How to get the pregnancy and birth you want»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE Pregnancy for busy women

CHAPTER TWO Birthing for beginners

CHAPTER THREE Fear and pain

CHAPTER FOUR Second time around

CHAPTER FIVE Your options

CHAPTER SIX Surgical birth

CHAPTER SEVEN Expect the unexpected…

CHAPTER EIGHT Blokes, birth and babies

CHAPTER NINE The love of a good woman

CHAPTER TEN Frozen peas and pyjamas

Notes

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading

About the Authors

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

When I was pregnant for the first time, I was your typical swotty mother-to-be. What to Expect When You’re Expecting was my bible. I diligently attended childbirth classes, toured my local hospital and performed regular antenatal yoga exercises. I was supposed to push the baby out with my breath but ended up with every intervention known to modern obstetrics (at least that’s how it felt). I was healthy, educated and – supposedly – informed but still the reality of childbirth floored me. And I’m not alone. One 2005 survey of 3,000 first-time mothers found that for the majority of women giving birth in the UK today, childbirth is a scary ordeal that leaves us in a state of shock. Eight out of ten of us say we were frightened at some point during labour, and that giving birth was more painful than we had ever imagined. One-third of us, meanwhile, say ante-natal classes didn’t prepare us for the reality of childbirth.¹ Our preparations, it would seem, are not exactly hitting the mark.

When I got pregnant for the second time, I was really scared about the birth. I had just moved to the States where doulas – women who are trained to give you emotional and practical support during pregnancy and childbirth – are widely available and people kept telling me I should hire one. Figuring I had nothing to lose I started to interview doulas. There was something about Julia that stood out – a combination of practicality, pragmatism, realism and genuine empathy. She also has impressive credentials. Julia is a mother of two, a doula and childbirth teacher, trained and certified by the world’s largest doula organisation (DONA International) to give women emotional and practical – but not medical – support before, during and after childbirth. She has 14 years’ experience of helping women through pregnancy and birth and is a certified counsellor and hypnotherapist. She has also worked with all kinds of mothers: she founded and ran the The New Hope Doula Project in Seattle, connecting volunteer doulas with women giving their babies for adoption. She also founded a non-profit support group for women who have had caesareans (and are upset by them) and she designed and set up a popular network of mother’s groups – helping women connect with one another for support, companionship and ideas across the States. Julia was, to put it mildly, a lucky find.

She worked closely with me for the rest of my pregnancy and showed me that truly preparing for childbirth is about admitting what scares you, making good choices, staying open minded and learning brilliant ways to cope with whatever labour throws at you on the day. It’s about understanding, and accepting the areas over which you have no control – without becoming a fatalistic loon about the whole thing. When I went into labour for the second time, I was prepared to handle whatever happened (including my worst case scenario). My son’s birth was an amazing, positive experience. As a journalist used to disseminating information, it amazed me that I’d come across no book or resource that could compare with the work Julia did to help me prepare for childbirth. It was clear to me that her methodology and experience could – and should – be made available to any woman who simply wanted to have a better birth. Julia’s work with me – and with countless other mothers and mothers-to-be over the years – forms the backbone of this book. It will be relevant to you whether this is your first baby, or you have a whole brood already. Blooming Birth is for any woman who simply wants to give birth without feeling shocked, terrified, upset or horrified by the experience.

Though doulas are becoming more and more popular in Britain, they are still a relatively new phenomenon here. Not all of us can afford, or find, one where we live. This book will give you some useful doula tricks for coping during childbirth. It will also show you what your partner – and anyone else who’ll be supporting you during this birth – can learn from doulas.

The actual writing of this book was my department. As a health writer for newspapers like The Guardian, I’m used to grappling with ideas, interviewing experts and translating their arcane medical jargon into something that normal people can actually understand. Since I specialise in writing about pregnancy, birth and babies I’m also used to finding the best expert, support group or information source for these particular issues. This is where my professional skills come in but, above all, I’m writing this book as a mother. I have three children (my third baby, Ted, was born somewhere around Chapter 5 so I’m certainly up to date on birth in Britain). I am, then, your average ‘punter’. I’m not a childbirth expert, a childbirth nut or medically trained in any way: I’m a mother like you, who simply wanted and got a better experience of childbirth. I used the ideas in this book to prepare for, and cope with, Ted’s birth: they worked brilliantly (again).

This is not a medical book, but we have worked closely with doctors, midwives and other experts to give you the basic facts. You should see Blooming Birth as a springboard when it comes to medical matters – we show you what preparation means and the details are up to you. To help you do this, we’ve given you book lists and online resources so you can find the more detailed or specialist information you need.

We have unashamedly set out to give you the nitty gritty of birth here, not some neat, textbook version. We don’t talk about ‘discomfort’, we talk about pain because if you’re to cope with it you need to know about it. Between us Julia and I have certainly run the gauntlet of birthing experiences – from prolonged labour, failure to progress, epidurals, forceps delivery, a broken tail-bone, a 4th-degree tear, an infected scar and an emergency caesarean to drug-free labour, vaginal birth after caesarean, homebirth in a tub and homebirth on dry land. We’ve also interviewed over a hundred women from brand-new mothers to grandmothers about pregnancy and birth: you’ll learn what worked, and didn’t work, for them and you’ll learn the tips, strategies and awakenings that come from simply getting babies out.

Or witnessing this – Blooming Birth is for blokes too. Virtually every man we spoke to for this book said he, too, felt utterly unprepared for the reality of his baby’s entry into the world. If properly prepared, your baby’s dad can have a hugely positive influence on how you experience this birth. So, even if he’s not an avid reader of birth books, at the very least get your partner to read Chapter 8: Blokes, Birth and Babies.

By the time you finish reading this you may not actually be looking forward to giving birth but you’ll certainly feel more confident about it. You’ll know you can’t control everything that happens, but you’ll understand more about what might. You’ll understand the maternity system and how to negotiate it so it serves you best. You’ll know how to get the support you need, before, during and after the arrival of your baby. And you’ll know where to go, what to read and who to talk to if you need more help or information.

Finally, we don’t have any hidden agenda here. Neither Julia nor I are obsessed by natural birth and New Age philosophies have largely passed us by (we will not, for instance, be asking you to mould your vagina in clay or write poetry to your fetus). We genuinely do not care if you want an elective caesarean, an epidural at the first twinge or a troupe of nuns in your delivery room singing Land of Hope and Glory as you push – as long as it’s a genuinely informed choice, based on what you know about yourself, and about your realistic options. We want you to cope brilliantly with this birth – whatever crops up – so that you can become a healthy mother (of one, two or more) with no regrets or lingering upset. We want you, in short, to become the kind of mother who forgets that she ever needed a book like this.

Chapter One: Pregnancy for busy women

‘Nobody can really tell you what to expect when you’re expecting because every woman feels it differently. My sister adored her expanding belly and said she felt like a sexy goddess throughout her pregnancy. I felt like an increasingly mad, swelling gorilla.’

FAITH, 32, MOTHER OF HARVEY (2)

EIGHT POSITIVE THINGS ABOUT BEING PREGNANT

1 Your love for this baby one day will be stratospheric.

2 People will treat you as if you are deeply special (well sometimes, at least).

3 You are not alone. Around 596,000 other women in England and Wales alone are having a baby this year too.

4 You have maternity choices and rights like never before. You have the right to question your caregivers, change hospitals, midwives or doctors, see your records and make informed decisions.

5 The laws on maternity leave have never been more in your favour and there are organizations to help you sort out what you’re entitled to if you’re confused. (See Resources.)

6 You are giving birth as the ‘doula’ movement is taking off in Britain – you can now find one-to-one emotional and practical support throughout this pregnancy and birth, even if the NHS can’t provide it.

7 You can still be glam: clothing companies are finally waking up to the fact that you may not want to wear leggings and bloke’s t-shirts for nine months. High street shops like Hennes, Dorothy Perkins and even Mothercare are coming up trumps; designer maternity lines are springing up all over the place and online maternity shopping is a constant temptation. (See Resources.)

8 You can look forward to nine months free from tampons, pads, PMT and condoms.

Welcome to the Alarmist Club

Brace yourself. You are pregnant. You’re probably floating in a world of stupendous self-admiration right now (you’re growing an actual, real BABY in there). But you may also have noticed that people now want to start scaring you about all the things that could go wrong. This will get worse. Over the next nine months you will be fed a load of neurosis-inducing claptrap about what you must eat, drink, breathe, think and do to keep that baby ‘safe’. There will be some good, solid, sensible information in there – things you really need to know – but it can be hard to isolate this from the endless conflicting advice you’ll get on how to ‘optimize’ your chance of producing a healthy baby. Pregnancy, these days, has become pathology. Friends, relatives, colleagues, books, websites, health professionals and even complete strangers will conspire to fill you with fear, guilt and self-doubt. You’d think it was some insane, risky, reckless ordeal you’re embarking on, not something basically ordinary, that women have successfully achieved since time began. In this chapter we’ll give you the ‘need to know’ information, and hopefully lay some of the neuroses to rest.

We won’t provide you with medical minutiae about obscure conditions or rare complications. Other books have done this far better than we ever could (though we’ll give you resources and ideas of where to look if you need to know more). Instead, we’re going to give you a solid sense of some of the oddities you might experience over the next nine months, along with practical tips from professionals and other women about how to handle them. We’ll show you that you can, indeed, have a basically healthy pregnancy whilst remaining a viable member of ordinary society.

Goddess or gorilla

Pregnancy can make you feel unbelievably beautiful; replete with hope and womanliness. It can be a blissful time, not least because those of us who’ve spent the last ten years trying to disguise our flabby bellies get to show them off in tight tops. Pregnancy can be a time when you’re treated like a goddess by your partner; a time when blokes in white vans look on protectively as you cross the road; when people give you seats on the bus (well, occasionally) and when strangers congratulate you. You may, as the months go by, look more and more fantastic, and feel amazing: have thicker hair, better skin, stronger nails and a beatific glow. It’s a time, in short, when you feel that life is the oyster inside the pearly shell that’s you.

But this may not be the whole story. For most of us, pregnancy doesn’t feel like glorious fruition all the time. At times it can feel distinctly disempowering to be up the duff. You can’t control what’s happening to your body and you may feel as if you’ve been hijacked by medical professionals and, indeed, a small alien. You may be constantly vomiting. You may have mood swings. You may feel shattered. You may also swell to the size of a house, sprout varicose veins and become a borderline psychotic. Pregnancy involves huge contradictions – physical and mental. Pregnancy books often use words like ‘blessing’, ‘joy’ and ‘gift’. A pregnancy may be all of these things but at times you can feel more like an overstuffed mammoth than a fecund goddess; more axe murderer than earth mother. Much of this is hormonal. Much entirely reasonable, all of it normal.

Staying sane in pregnancy

The good news is that though you can’t do much about the hand your pregnancy deals you, you can influence how you react to this manic, blissful, awful, amazing, fundamental new condition.

YOU CAN CHOOSE TO:

 become well-informed but not obsessed.

 take what people tell you with a pinch of salt until you know it’s true.

 research and understand important medical matters that affect you.

 embrace what works for you and reject what doesn’t.

Most of all, you can remind yourself, when you are being prodded, poked, advised and bossed, that it is still your body and your life – even if you do look like an inflatable hippo when you’re in the bath.

That blue line

Julia’s heard some odd stories about how her clients know they’re pregnant:

‘It’s not always the obvious things that make you aware you’re pregnant – aching boobs, test kits, or late periods. Many of my clients tell me they knew they were pregnant when smells became stronger. Many – particularly second time mothers – tell me they had weird dreams that made them rush out and buy a test kit. And more than once I’ve heard of women dreaming about giving birth to a squirrel or mouse and discovering the next day that they’re pregnant.’

Finding out you are pregnant, however you do it, is a moment you’ll remember forever. The pictures of each of my three test sticks with the thin blue lines are stamped in my mind like little Polaroids. I remember where I was sitting, how I felt, what I did when I saw each one. (One thing that’s worth knowing is that while negative pregnancy tests in the very early days can be wrong, positive ones rarely are.) It can be a moment of exquisite happiness to find out you’re having a baby, but also a huge shock. Most of the literature on pregnancy assumes that you’ll simply pat yourself on the back at this point and become a saintly consumer of organic-only foodstuffs. But even if you planned meticulously, took your own temperature and peed on ovulation sticks for weeks on end, actually becoming pregnant can feel quite intimidating. Suddenly, your life (and soon your body) has taken on a shape all of its own. There’s a baby in there and it’s only going to get bigger. And it has to come out. And then you have to look after it for 18 years or more. If you’re used to at least a superficial sense of control over your own destiny, that moment of discovery can be daunting.

Going it alone

Facing motherhood alone can be a panicky, if exciting, time whether you have deliberately chosen to do this, or not. Your pregnancy may have come as a surprise, or it may have been a longed-for result: these days, more and more single women in their thirties and forties are choosing motherhood alone, sometimes using donor insemination. Telling people you’re pregnant can sometimes be tricky, whether the baby is planned or not, but the good news is that there is plenty of support and advice available. While one in four families in Britain today is headed by a single parent¹ (that’s 1.75 million families) most of these happen because of marriage breakdown (usually once you have kids). You may, then, find it helpful to seek out specific support if you are single and tackling pregnancy and birth on your own. Even if you’re not a ‘joiner’, building up some kind of network once you are a parent can make a huge difference.

Where to go for help:

One Parent Families 020 7428 5400 www.oneparentfamilies.org.uk Parent-run charity Gingerbread 020 7488 9300 www.gingerbread.org.uk

Further reading:

Single Mothers by Choice: A Guidebook For Single Women Who Are Considering or have Chosen Motherhood by Jane Mattes (Three Rivers Press, US, 1997) This is an American book, but many issues are the same, wherever you are in the world. www.mattes.home.pipeline.com

Unplanned pregnancy

About one in five pregnancies is unplanned. If this fetus is the result of some Chianti-fuelled madness, or if you thought you practised the contraceptive equivalent of Fort Knox, discovering you’re pregnant can be distressing. Many of us won’t admit to such thoughts – it feels shameful even to consider not wanting a baby when other women out there are devastated by infertility. But many of us – at least initially – do feel this way. ‘My first baby, Mia, was five months old,’ says Kate. ‘She hadn’t slept for more than two hours at a stretch, screamed all the time, and we were shattered. One night, we drank a bottle of wine and had reckless sex – some kind of stress relief I think. Conrad was the result. When I discovered I was pregnant again I sat on the bathroom floor and cried. Mia cried next to me. Jim came in, and cried too. It was like some kind of Greek tragedy.’ They all came round to it in the end, of course, and Conrad is the light of their lives but really, pregnancy test kits should carry a mental health warning.

HEALTHY PREGNANCY: WHAT TO STOP DOING RIGHT NOW

STOP:

 smoking cigarettes. Cigarette smoke contains more than 4000 chemicals that cross the placenta into your baby’s blood. It can lower your baby’s birth weight by 12 to 18 grams per cigarette consumed per day and doubles your chances of having a premature baby. It is associated with bleeding, pre-eclampsia, stillbirth and miscarriage.

 taking over the counter drugs (without a doctor’s advice). Though paracetamol is considered safe to take in pregnancy, anti-inflammatory pain medication like ibuprofen can increase your risk of miscarriage. Best to check with your midwife before you take anything.

 taking all recreational drugs (including cannabis)

 taking all street drugs

 drinking more than a couple of glasses of wine a week

 soaking in saunas or hot tubs

 having x-rays (unless suggested by your obstetrician)

Where to go for help:

QUIT helpline 0800 002200 www.quit.org.uk

NHS Pregnancy smoking helpline 0800 169 9 169

American Lung Association (US) www.lungusa.org/tobacco/