The Times - UK (2022-02-23)

the times | Wednesday February 23 2022 27

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The joy of childbirth is being ousted by fear

We must invest in maternity care, support families and stop the horror stories if the birth rate is not to fall even lower

new parents can recover and bond

with their child.

Meanwhile, many British women,

with so little support, can flounder.

Those who have one child may be

unsure they want to repeat the

experience. Books with well-meaning

instructions and advice on

milestones your baby should be

reaching often cause more anxiety

than reassurance.

Britain may have better maternity

leave than in America, but parenting

can look like a thankless uphill

struggle in the early years. Women,

now educated to assume they are

equal to their male peers, are still

made to feel guilty if they don’t focus

selflessly on their children, in the

way that they were once expected to

be compliant wives. A genre of books

and Instagram accounts focus on

“slummy mummies” who can only

cope after several glasses of wine.

The government needs to

prioritise birth and young families.

The NHS must start investing in

maternity care and ministers should

upgrade subsidised childcare, in

which Britain lags second last in

Europe. But we also need to talk

more about the elation of giving

birth and the enjoyment of having

children rather than the exhaustion

of looking after them. Many women

don’t feel maternal, but if they do,

they need more encouragement and

help and fewer horror stories.

targets to limit caesareans to focus

instead on safe births.

Even at the turn of the century

women often had a more reassuring

time. They were usually given a

personalised midwife who guided

them through the process. Now they

are likely to be surrounded by

overstretched strangers as they open

their legs. Last week the Royal

College of Midwives petitioned

Downing Street about plummeting

numbers, with two thirds of its

members saying they are not

satisfied with the safety of care they

deliver.

There is very little back-up after

the birth either. Most new mothers

stay in hospital only for a couple of

days, there are antenatal classes but

no postnatal sessions, and many

aren’t regularly checked by a health

worker despite being at heightened

risk of depression. Most of Europe

has better postpartum care. In

France new mothers can spend two

weeks in hospital as they learn how

to breastfeed and nurture their

infant. German midwives visit daily

for up to eight weeks to help with the

baby, cook and do housework so that

are a compassionate profession”.

The series is about the worst cases.

While we must improve the birthing

experience we should make it clear

that it can and should be one of the

most extraordinary, empowering

days of your life even if, like I did,

you end up in labour for 30 hours.

More than 600,000 babies are born

a year, the vast majority successfully.

But my 32-year-old neighbour who

runs marathons and has set up her

own company is having second

thoughts about motherhood. The

pandemic has made it worse, she

says, as her friends faced going to

scans and giving birth without their

partner. No wonder birth rates have

dropped to a UK low of 1.53 children

per woman, below the rate required

to keep the population stable. Partly

it’s due to the young worrying about

the prohibitive expense of raising

children, spiralling housing costs and

the lack of financial help for

childcare. But it may also be because

having children is so often seen as

joyless.

Younger women, most of whom

have never been near a hospital since

they were born, must worry about

such a medieval-seeming event. For

decades women have been told they

should push unless they are posh

enough to afford a caesarean. They

are made to feel like failures if they

don’t have a natural birth. It was only

last week that the NHS axed its

T

he rain was pouring down
and the winds were
howling around the car
when Lauryn Vartan
realised she was about to
give birth at a roundabout near
Felixstowe. As her husband
screeched to a halt and battled to
open the door, he could see the
baby’s head. With nothing but a
dressing gown cord pulled from his
wife’s overnight bag, he delivered
their daughter, Florence. But the
most extraordinary part of this
Storm Eunice tale was Lauryn’s
words afterwards. “I feel total
euphoria,” she said. “Such a lovely
feeling ... such a lovely experience.”
It’s rare now to hear anyone
publicly eulogise giving birth. The
event is increasingly portrayed as a
nightmare. Millennials and
Generation Z are bombarded with
stories, books and films about how
demeaning, demanding and even
dangerous it is to have a baby and
how shattering it will be to nurture a
child for the first few years.
This is Going to Hurt, the BBC’s

adaptation of Adam Kay’s memoirs

of his time working in “brats and

twats” — the obstetrics and

gynaecology department — is a huge

incentive to take contraceptives. It’s

meant to be funny, but it’s traumatic

if you’ve ever given birth or thought

you might be tempted. The stirrups,

forceps, stitches and buckets of blood

are all true to life, but it’s the casual

way pregnant women are patronised,

the exhaustion of junior doctors,

arrogance of consultants and

indifference of midwives that are

terrifying rather than entertaining.

It’s a war zone, and looks worse on

screen than it sounded in the book.

This mirrors what some new

mothers feel about their

dehumanising birthing experience,

where they are expected to feel

grateful for having produced the next

generation while stoically bearing

the pain. Milli Hill, founder of the

Positive Birth Movement, calls the

drama “women’s trauma being

played for laughs”.

The system “is so overstretched

and you’re so overworked”, a midwife

friend explained, “it’s hard to feel

endlessly nurturing even though we

Younger women must

worry about such a

medieval event

In France new mothers

can spend two weeks

in hospital to learn

Alice

Thomson

@alicettimes