good books to start with
Birth and Beyond: Pregnancy, birth, your baby and family – the definitive guide by Yehudi Gordon (Vermilion, UK, 2002). Gordon is obstetrician to the stars – the ones in North London who aren’t ‘too posh to push’ that is. He’s into holistic care, and this book is packed with excellent medical stuff as well as some more ‘alternative’ angles (he’ll tell you about homeopathic remedies and yoga poses as well as giving you obstetric facts).
The New Pregnancy and Childbirth by Sheila Kitzinger (Penguin, UK, 1997) Kitzinger’s life work has been to empower women about birth: this includes helping you to avoid unnecessary medical interventions.
Solid advice for first timers
Conception, Pregnancy and Birth by Dr Miriam Stoppard (Dorling Kindersley, UK, 2000)
The National Childbirth Trust Complete Book of Pregnancy by Daphne Metland (Thorsons, UK, 2000)
Books about fetal development
From Conception To Birth: A Life Unfolds by Alexander Tsiaras and Barry Werth (Doubleday, US, 2002)
What’s Going on in There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life by Lise Eliot (Bantam, US, 2000)
Online
Mumsnet online chat, information, bonding for mothers-to-be and mothers who’ve been there www.mumsnet.co.uk
Baby World includes a ‘pregnancy complications’ section with ‘click on your complication’ function (!) www.babyworld.co.uk
Baby Centre endless resources on pregnancy, birth and babies including a function that sends you weekly ‘updates’ on your fetus’s development. www.babycentre.co.uk
Glossary
Amenorrhoea absence of menstrual periods
Amniotic fluid the ‘bag of waters’ that surrounds your baby in the womb. This usually breaks before or during labour, letting the water rush out via your vagina – the ‘breaking of the waters’.
Antenatal before the birth
Cervix the neck, or opening, of your womb.
Fundal height The distance between the top part of the uterus (the fundus) and the top of the symphysis pubis (the junction between the pubic bones). Midwife measures this to check that the womb is growing as expected in pregnancy, shrinking as expected afterwards.
Oedema swelling during pregnancy.
Postnatal (or postpartum) the period after the baby is born – usually the first 12 weeks.
Quickening First point at which you recognize the baby’s movements in early pregnancy. Can feel like butterflies in your lower abdomen. Or wind.
Trimester three months. Hence pregnancy is divided into 1st, 2nd, 3rd trimesters.
Chapter Two: Birthing for beginners
‘When I think back to Lorelei’s birth, I think of it as the time in my life that I was the strongest I’ve ever been. Contraction after contraction came, and I made it through each one. Each contraction felt like nothing I had ever known, but the feeling of coming through each one was exhilarating.’
SUSAN, 34, MOTHER OF LORELEI (3)
SIX REASSURING THINGS ABOUT LABOUR
1 Labour is finite and at the end of it, you’ll have a baby.
2 In labour you have choices: you are giving birth at a time when your choices for how, when and where you labour have never been taken more seriously by the medical establishment.
3 In labour, you will cope: you bought this book – you are therefore well on the way to working out how to handle giving birth, whatever happens.
4 You can now hire someone to support you in labour: doulas are specifically trained to give you and your partner unconditional encouragement, information and support in labour – all without resentment or hidden agendas. (See Chapter 9: The Love of a Good Woman.)
5 In labour, social niceties don’t matter: uniquely, this is a day when demanding drugs and/or pooing in front of strangers will be perceived as neither insane nor illegal, and may even be greeted with genuine excitement and pleasure.
6 In labour, you can be rude: you can shout obscenities at your partner (or sister, or mother-in-law) safe in the knowledge that none of them can hold it against you or answer back.
Losing control and why it can be helpful
My experiences of childbirth were so different that it’s hard to imagine they involved the same body. From Izzie’s caesarean to Sam’s vaginal birth and Ted’s homebirth, my labours were virtually unrecognizable to me each time. Midwife Jenny Smith likes to remind women that this is because ‘there are three of you – you, your partner and your baby – and you’re in this together.’ There’s a lot you can do to influence this dynamic, but ultimately if your baby decides sometime during labour (or even before) that she’s unhappy, there is little you can do but accept it and change your plans accordingly. As Jenny Smith puts it, ‘Your baby’s brain, and the rest of her life, is more important than your birth plan.’
Perhaps the first thing to accept then, about childbirth, is that there are certain things you cannot completely control:
When labour will start
What position your baby will be in
Whether you, or your baby, will develop an unforeseen medical complication
Whether you will need medical intervention or drugs.
Even the most straightforward birth involves an unprecedented relinquishing of bodily control. Unlike most things in life there’s no going back if you decide labour has all been a terrible error. You can’t stop the contractions because you don’t like them, there are no guarantees that your efforts will lead you exactly where you want to go, and there are no meaningful ‘standards’ by which to measure yourself.
This is worth embracing if you possibly can: actively losing control – at least of your conscious, rational brain – can be a good thing in childbirth. It allows your body to really get on with giving birth. In the final stages of producing Ted, my third baby, I felt like there was some huge force field coursing through my body, ushering him out of me. I just had to surrender to it. This kind of experience, if you’re used to calling the shots, can be unsettling to say the least – and deeply shocking if you’re not prepared for it.
This loss of control turns many sorted, empowered women into fatalistic loons when it comes to childbirth. You’ll hear women who mastermind multimillion pound deals, fire and hire staff, make momentous professional decisions and run their families like clockwork, tell you that birth is all about ‘luck’ and there’s nothing you can do with the ‘cards you’re dealt’.
This is not wholly true. Yes, certain aspects of birth cannot be controlled. And yes, your options are limited somewhat if your baby really does want to enter the world bottom first; or if you develop pre-eclampsia or some other medical complication. But you can exert a vast amount of influence over the hundreds of variables that will make up your so-called ‘birth experience’. Your willpower, endurance, courage, confidence and determination