Looks like nobody ever had a baby before
I get the feeling that life on the maternity ward would be so much easier if childbirth classes were to include one whole session of drumming it into expectant mothers that they are not the first person to have a baby, nor will they be the last.
Having babies is probably womankind’s most common shared experience – well, second most common, because the first doesn’t always result in a baby.
Imagine just how much less angst there would be if the breathing trainer, or whatever they’re called, were to say repeatedly:
“Remember that trillions of women have had babies throughout history, and that you’re doing nothing special. Even if it feels like you’re the only woman in the world to give birth, you’re not.”
Then they could put it on a banner and hang the banner up at the front of the childbirth class for good measure.
But of course, none of that is going to happen because it would be considered unnecessarily offensive. It’s not too much to expect, however, that pregnant women absorb this salutary fact all on their own.
Not so long ago, women who had babies just got on with it. It was another day at the office. Now that far fewer children are being born and their parents turn them into a project called ‘having the perfect child while being the ideal parent’, pregnancy and birth have become a supremely big deal.
And here’s the irony: never have pregnancy and birth been less risky.
In the days when women died having babies, they took pregnancy in their stride. Now that women who give birth are surrounded by a medical team and all the equipment necessary to save their life and that of the baby, it’s a carnival of fuss and bother.
I think the story of Marissa Bose and David Ellul – oh, and by the way, it’s relevant to include the fact that he is 42 and she is 19 – captured the public imagination because we understand at some level that making a huge production out of having a baby is just ridiculous.
The Bose-Ellul combo got on our nerves, if the online barrage is anything to go by, precisely because they behaved as though they are somehow special and different, and may God help any doctor or nurse who intimated otherwise.
The aim of anybody who has anything to do with expectant mothers nowadays (except male obstetricians, who tend to be notoriously gruff, as well they might be) appears to be the cultivation of the belief in new mothers that they are doing something quite extraordinary and that their experience is unique simply because it is unique to them.
So really, you can’t then expect these women, when their big moment arrives, to accept the fact that they are package no. 20 on the delivery conveyor belt that morning, and that this might be the zillionth wailing infant the midwife has wiped clean in her career.
When I had my second baby, I found myself tended to by the same midwife who had delivered my first a year earlier. “Oh good, I’ve got you again,” I said. She looked at me blankly, without the merest flicker of recognition, and then I remembered that she had probably delivered well over a thousand babies since then.
My regular, long-term readers will know my views of the Cult of Childbirth and its breakaway Cult of Breastfeeding. So we won’t go into any of that because I really have no time for a sack-load of letters and emails from the Queens of Suckling.
Suffice it to say that both are the direct and perhaps inevitable result of the dwindling birth rate and the Cult of the Project Child (‘this will be our only one so everything has got to be perfect’) and even of the Consumer Cult, which has parents researching every aspect of having a child with much the same attitude that they would research the purchase of a new car.
You’d think that this level of fixation would result in a deeper desire to give birth in a hospital, as that is by the far the safest place to do so, but no.
Instead, the Cult of Childbirth decrees that women should go back to the days when babies were born at home in the marital (or, as is increasingly the case, the cohabiting or single) bed. ‘This is how it is meant to be,’ the childbirth gurus boss and bother. ‘Having a baby in a hospital is false and artificial. Why must you have a doctor with you when you should have a doula? It goes against nature and it is wrong.’
The one thing these Cult of Childbirth gurus won’t tell their ‘everything must be perfect’ audience of expectant mothers is just how many women and babies died during or immediately after birth back in those halcyon days when the neighbours milled about downstairs with teapots and towels while the lady of the house screamed, hollered, bawled and strained upstairs.
Before hospitals and advanced medical care, pregnancy and childbirth were properly regarded not as joyful experiences but as extremely dangerous, evils made necessary by the need for children (and still they took it in their stride).
It is thanks to hospitals and advanced medical care that we have been divorced from the biological fact that childbirth kills. Yes, it kills.
Hospitals and advanced medical care are artificial, true, but this is precisely why they are so wonderful. Nature, red in tooth and claw, is often hideous and cruel, and childbirth is one of the most obvious examples. Even when all goes according to plan, even when there is no ripping, cutting or slicing, it is gruesome.
In their beautiful artificiality, doctors and hospitals have conquered nature, which seems determined to kill off a sizeable percentage of women and babies.
It is because of doctors and hospitals that women in developed societies no longer die in childbirth, and why the infant mortality rate has been driven right down to negligible. We have become so accustomed to this state of affairs that we think it exists in nature, and that it is normal for women to give birth without dying. But it is not.
In the primitive and undeveloped societies which first-world ‘health freaks’ wish to emulate with their squatting and their chanting and their refusal to let a doctor anywhere near them, women give birth as nature intended because they have no choice, and not because they want to.
Most of them would probably walk over hot coals to a hospital if there was one anywhere near them. While the health freaks in Europe admire them for their squatting and their corn-grinding while in labour, they would think that the health freaks are nuts for refusing medical care and a hospital bed. But there you go.
People like Marissa Bose and David Ellul are the new bigots: so sure that they are right and special, and so intolerant of and condescending to any opinion other than their own, that one begins to question their intelligence. People like this tend not to be religious but have a great deal in common with the religious bigots of yesteryear, would but they understand this.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
46 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Sorry to interrupt – but there is this on The Times (about the judiciary):
“Moreover, the profession comes at an even greater price – complete withdrawal from society. You see, because they get to tell us what to do and how to do it, we don’t really want them hanging around with the rest of us, committing sins of the flesh. Which makes the life of a judge a pretty lonely business.”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20101121/opinion/scraping-the-judicial-barrel
Well done, Daphne! Another well-written, focused article. Modern women should be grateful for hosptals and a medical team during childbirth. Only ‘bigots’ can look down on protecting a newborn child, because it has disrupted their planned ‘natural birth’ agenda.
This is an excellent article on pregnancy and delivery of babies by a mother of three.
“People like this tend not to be religious but have a great deal in common with the religious bigots of yesteryear, would but they understand this.”
I didn’t understand this part. Are you trying to ask, if they would understand that despite not being religious, they still act like fanatics? People who are fanatical often don’t even realize that they are, let alone know that they share a lot in common with other fanatics and even if they did, they’d never admit it.
Anyway, if they want to put their children and themselves at risk, so be it. If anything it would put a stop to this new-age rubbish, because those who believe in it would either die or see their loved ones dying and maybe then they would understand the level of their stupidity.
[Daphne – Children who are put at risk by their parents are rightly made wards of court. This devolves from the principle that one human being cannot own or have rights of possession over another. In the situation you describe, children would have the same legal status as slaves of their parents, but slavery is banned.]
If it was up to me, those people who openly take alternative medicine and fight science should not be able to use any service which is based on science.
Science changed the world and instead of showing gratitude towards scientists, who changed their lives for the better, they thank fictional beings and swear that diluted water cured them or that giving birth au naturel is the best thing since sliced bread and what not.
Then when things get a little hard, they are forced to seek out science. The same science they fought and called artificial and fictional, and instead of being thankful for getting the same treatment as the father of the prodigal son did (i.e. doctors won’t refuse treatment for people who speak out against it), they become spiteful and even more deluded.
In the US, there are some states which teach intelligent design alongside evolution (which is proven by the overwhelming amount of evidence which backs it up) and this is because we were too nice with these people, but by being nice we ended up fuelling their pipe dreams, by offering them services based on science (when we know they would thank God or their shaman instead).
This is a great article.
Women should be trained to be psychologically strong, and not only about to get a better figure after childbirth and how to breath in and out during the delivery.
Some only think about decorating a nursery and buying the sweetest clothes, but do not think of the sleepless nights and all the other difficulties, and when they have to face the reality they are panic-stricken. Psychlogically, you have to be prepared for the negative and the positive of this wonderful experience.
And even the famous “nanniet” should stop fussing around. Sometimes they create more panic in the life of the new mother, when unfortunately they think that they are being of very great help.
It’s interesting to note that the membership of the Baby Pea Facebook group has declined somewhat since I last checked it out last Friday.
I recommend looking up the term ‘post-mortem photography’ on the internet. It’s not for the faint-hearted, although the portraits were taken with tenderness and finesse, and the children appear to have merely fallen asleep on a sofa or bed. Nonetheless, it is a sharp reminder that when photography became affordable, around a hundred and ten years ago, families leaped at the opportunity to capture a final, fleeting image of their dead or dying children. Not a few of the pictures show both mother and baby, sometimes with the father and his surviving children standing by, staring grimly into the camera.
If one reflects that our ancestors, each in his or her own small way, strove so that we can be where we are today, it is nothing less than an insult to their efforts for us to romanticise, their suffering.
A married couple went to hospital to have their baby delivered. Upon their arrival, the doctor said that the hospital was testing an amazing new high-tech machine that would transfer a portion of the mother’s labour pain to the baby’s father.
He asked if they were interested. Both said they were very much in favour of it. The doctor set the pain transfer to 10% for starters, explaining that even 10% was probably more pain than the father had ever experienced before.
But as the labour progressed, the husband felt fine and asked the doctor to go ahead and kick it up a notch.
The doctor then adjusted the machine to 20% pain transfer. The husband was still feeling fine. The doctor then checked the husband’s blood pressure and was amazed at how well he was doing.
At this point they decided to try for 50%. The husband continued to feel quite well. Since the pain transfer was obviously helping the wife considerably the husband encouraged the doctor to transfer ALL the pain to him.
The wife delivered a healthy baby with virtually no pain and the husband had experienced none. She and her husband were ecstatic.
When they got home they found the postman dead on the porch.
Antica Roma!!
Brilliant article. I am very much of the “Harden The F**k Up” school of thought, so this is right up my street.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20101121/local/muscat
It seems that Joseph Muscat is unaware that the Central Bank governor annually makes a keynote speech giving his views on the present state of the economy and government finances.
Instead of rebutting the Governor’s statement with cogent counter arguements, Joseph Muscat opted to go down the well trodden path of envy and lanzit reminding us of Mintoff at his best; one might well ask: earthquake , what earthquake?
If our politicians opt to adopt a head in the sand attitude to government spending on health, education and social services, then it seems that they have not learned one iota from the experiences of Greece, Ireland etc.
We should be seriously thinking of asking ourselves whether a household having an income of ,say, Euro 25,000/Euro30,000 should receive free medicines, full children’s allowance and also, why not, University stipends.
The underlying idea is that if I pay so much income tax and social security contributions , then ,by hook or by crook, I have to get these back from government. Why are our young people not being encouraged, even with tax incentives, into starting a pension plan to eke out what will be a paltry social security pension when they retire.
Anthony, we must post one fact clearly first: people on salaries who have 25 – 30k euro income will have very little left by the time Tonio is finished with them. Why should salary earners bear the brunt of taxation (60% of our budget comes from income tax, NI and VAT)?
Those who are forced to pay their taxes to the last cent deserve everything they can get. And another thing, people on 25-30k will not get full children’s allowance, heck, even disability allowance isn’t given to people with a certain level of income.
As long as so many people slip through the tax net (I won’t bother saying who), while those on wages and especially, half-decent salaries foot the bill for everyone, what you say doesn’t really hold water.
The problem is that most of those in the 25K-30K bracket are families where both husband and wife are employed whilst the 100’s if not the 1000’s that are either registered self employed or registered “unemployed” might be within the same bracket or earn even more.
So in couple of words – how shall one plan a reasonable and well regulated means testing?
It would be good to know if the information published by Dr. Muscat about the remuneration of the Governor of the Central Bank of Malta is information available in the public domain through Bank or government sources, or whether it is private and confidential information obtained by someone through a position of privilege.
Information relating to the Central Bank is usually highly confidential.
The family income of Euro25,000/Euro30,000 I mentioned was just an example for starters but a threshold should be established.
When are tax audits going to be made of those who declare an income of, SAY, Euro 20,000 and yet have a lifestyle compatible with an income running into the hundreds of thousands of euro; after all details of real estate, cars, yachts and other assets should be easily available in this IT age; this lack of tax audits could be due to lack of political will and a policy of not rocking the boat, you scratch my back and I scratch yours – you get the trend. Meanwhile those on salaries/wages have their tax and NI contributions deducted by their employer ( who sometimes does not even pass them on to the CIR but uses it for his working capital!).
“trillions of women have had babies throughout history”
That’s what I thought before I had my first baby- how bad can it be – I must have been the most relaxed mother-to-be ever. I was petrified having my second child because then I knew exactly how bad it could be.
Unwittingly, I found myself reading your article soon after I read another article, written in a related vein, in Focus Italia, “Dove Muoiono le Mamme” (Focus, November, 2010; 217, p. 38).
This article explains in excruciating and scary detail how women in Subsaharan Africa, Sierra Leone being the worst with high mortality records, due to lack of medical care, doctors, midwives and hospitals.
“Mettere al mondo un figlio diventa cosi’ una scommesa” (Consequently, childbirth becomes a gamble): hence describes Focus childbirth in Subsaharan countries.
The figures are chilling enough: 2100 women dead out of every 100,000 live births. The Lancet (as quoted in Focus) states that the figure is 3 in every 100,000 live births in Italy (which is one of the lowest in the Northern Regions). This low figure is arguable though in Europe, the average is 12-13 deaths every 100,000 births.
Why am I submitting all these figures? Let’s not underestimate medical care and our excellent medical systems. As with everything else, if we let nature take its course, we would all be dead by 30-40.
I always try to imagine these health and fitness fanatics face up on their deathbed whilst wondering what the f*** they’re dying of.
Dear Daphne
Spot on as usual, I checked with my team here in Congo, and of the 14 deaths registered that they took leave for, two of them were for their wives dying in childbirth.
If “disperati” was here, then he’d have needed more than his Swiss Army knife and bottle of vodka to assuage his fears.
daphne you are a prolific writer, i really compliment you for your talent, i admire you when you do not indulge into politics. stay out of politics and rest assue you will be respected by 100% of the population. remember when you insult pl thats now more the 50% of the population. so be balanced ,rest assure you will feel much better inside.
[Daphne – I feel fine inside, Ray. And what makes you think that my aim is to be admired by as many people as possible? Please don’t put me in the same ‘keffa’ as those Super One journalists who become lawyers biex forsi isiru nies.]
And you never mentioned that our hospital is state-of-the-art (Alfred Sant).
Absolutely right. These ‘back to nature’ freaks are deluded and irresponsible. I have never understood those who are fixated on home births, nor those who boast about having refused painkillers and epidurals during labour.
Presumably the reason they make a fetish out of ‘nature’ is because they are totally out of touch with it. The chances are that these parents won’t stop here, either.
Baby P will probably be breastfed until she is 3, then weaned on rice milk and raised as a vegan. Her parents will refuse to vaccinate her and will dose her with home-made herbal infusions when she is ill. They will be infuriatingly smug as they do this and will perceive themselves to be heroically subversive and anti-establishment. Poor kid.
@ lola
‘These ‘back to nature’ freaks are deluded and irresponsible. I have never understood those who are fixated on home births, nor those who boast about having refused painkillers and epidurals during labour. ‘
I am not qualified in any way to challenge your opinion (I’m not even a woman), so I am only asking. Don’t women refuse painkillers etc etc, because they plan to breastfeed, and are wary of passing on the chemicals via their milk? If so they should be admired. Mind you I am not putting down those who take chemicals (probably if it was me, I’d take a container load).
[Daphne – No, nothing to do with that at all. They don’t take painkillers for the same reason that loads of people don’t take them for headaches even if they are crucified with pain: they are suspicious of painkillers.]
On a separate note, this evening lawyer Andy Ellul was preaching about some legalities regarding the judgement in Fortunata Spiteri’s murder case. He was cleverly being questioned by Charlon Gouder…
[Daphne – Hbieb tal-hbieb.]
He was cleverly being questioned by Charlon Gouder….on One (of course).
what, prithee, were the clever questions?
They were not, obviously, on Net or PBS but on One news. Andy Ellul was imparting some legal knowledge (e.g. what is meant by life imprisonment, that’s quite difficult for us plebs to ever decipher) which Charlon Gouder might find useful come his exams at university.
This is a prime example of why women are chosing out of hospital birth, attitudes like yours. Your statments are mysogynistic and condescending and unfortunately that is the way many women are treated while giving birth. Yes, women give birth every day but that is no reason to treat it as anything less than the amazing event that it is. Why is it such a bother to honor a laboring and birthing woman? If every life is precious, why is the person bringing that life into the world so disrespected? You are devaluing women including yourself. I find what you have written to be utterly disgusting on just about every level.
Wow…someone’s angry? And if you read the article properly you will see it is nothing of the kind.
How can Daphne be a mysogynist, being a woman herself? I think that’s taking gender equality a bit too far.
Secondly, why do you and your ilk have to misread whatever does not conform to your primitive and dysfunctional way of thinking?
Whoever said that women, whether in labour or not, are not to be honoured? Who was talking about honour anyway?
Daphne did not devalue anyone. She has taken exception to conceited individuals in the past and the Ellul-Bose type (and you can now honourably join their ranks as well) are certainly not going to fall beneath her radar.
Much before Daphne even wrote about these two idiots, I had read the article myself and not without much chagrin. I have never had much truck with bullies and certainly, Ellul comes across as your typical bully – ignorant, cowardly, inane, rude and arrogant. The Italians have a better word for it – prepotente. Insufferable individuals who cause much suffering to others.
This is what Daphne wrote about.
What exactly do you mean by ‘honour’? What would you have the rest of us do, exactly, that we are not doing already?
The system at the moment, is that for the nine months of your pregnancy friends and family warn you to be careful, carry stuff for you, offer you a chair at every opportunity, refuse to let you do a thing if they can help it. Then you are taken to hospital and the the midwife, obstetrician and nurses do their damndest to make sure you and your baby go home alive. When the worst is over and the baby and you are safe and sound, family and friends come cooing around.
At what point in all this do you feel disrespected?
Or would you prefer to be surrounded with people ‘honouring’ you while your contractions fade away, your baby suffocates and you bleed to death?
If you are pregnant (and sane – that’s important) your concern will be ONLY that the baby lives. You, if you are sane, will have no time to pout and sulk and feel disrespected. If you are sane.
If you believe that Daphne is disrespectful, hateful or evil then, by default, you will misread whatever she may write. There is no point arguing.
In the World Health Organisation’s ranking of world health systems, the WHO ranked Malta in fifth place among 190 countries. Canada was ranked in thirtieth place.
I can now understand Mr. Ellul’s concern.
Food for thought for the “natural birth” obsessives:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1331367/Christy-Turlington-I-died-giving-birth-I-wasnt-rich-Western-model.html
Just for the record it’s misogynist not mysogynist.
Malta Transport reform…
one of the biggest reforms ever to be implemented in the country.
and this is all that Maltastar had to say! http://maltastar.com/pages/r1/ms10dart.asp?a=12939 – and listent o the commentary the guy sounds pleased that the bus got stuck twice! u le xi hsara ghandhom – ta xejn jibdlu l-logos!
The case in question is extreme and, thankfully, more the exception than the rule. I am pretty much on the same page with you on this but I would have spared a word or two for the other, more common, side of the coin – the part-time parents – those couples who conceive children without putting any particular love and effort into raising them. Yes, I am talking about newly parents who continue to lead their old lives as if nothing ever happened; leaving their work and pastime schedules unchanged, and letting their own parents, or whoever, take care of the poor things in their stead.
I am also referring to those formula-is-good-enough mothers who, despite not having a medical reason not to, would not even consider nursing their child, some of whom simply for not ruining the shape of their breasts, or because breastfeeding is painful or too big a commitment. To me, parents who simply refuse conventional medical assistance when giving birth are just as irresponsible as those who outsource the raising of their children.
Well, my wife did consider it, it was her decision after all.
Then we ignored the “shocked and scandalised you’re a bad parent and showing your tits in public is ok brigade” and joined the “formula is just fine thank you” side, and guess what, all children are fine, by far the tallest in their class and seem to have an inbuilt force field against any infection!
Having a no-nonsense English midwife first time round rapidly convinced us!
Only downside for me was I had no excuse not to wake up to feed them at 4 am!
On a completely different topic – Minister Austin Gatt is under fire because of the comment he made regarding tourists who cannot afford a weekly ticket of Euro 12. One has to admit that he is not exactly a diplomatic guy but that is his style. I would suggest that we come down to earth and realise that Euro 12 for a weekly tickets comes to about 5 Malta Liri – is that too much to pay ? I am sure that the tourists would not go into the nitty gritty of the subject. Once you are on holiday you do tend to spend more and not worry about having to pay that little bit more. I do when abroad and I do not bother – I do not have a phobia are the MHRA seem to have that we are all screwing the tourists.
We never have had so good in this part of the world and we still grumble. In third world countries mothers simply find a quiet spot near a tree and pop it out. Half the time mum with babe at her breast walks back for the next chore. The other half simply do not make it and are forgotten.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipXwqFB4jb8
It seems like people can’t even afford to eat a slice of pizza lately… they end up fighting over it.
I suppose the police were busy monitoring St. George’s Bay when this happened.
I think you are right that €12 isn’t bad for a weekly ticket, but wrong in saying that tourists don’t mind spending money.
The whole travel industry is virtually taken over by low price airlines, low price packages, low price hotels, low price this and that. Even when reading travel reviews (at least in Sweden), the comparative price of local goods in contrast to other destinations tend to always be mentioned. Another thing that always comes to mind is whether people feel cheated when purchasing in some countries, which is why this price structure is so devastating.
So it seems the Catholic Church is shifting its position on condoms. We should always do what we feel is right and not what the Catholic Church says. There are examples that should open our eyes: the condemnation of Mintoff’s 6 points and the appology years after, Galileo and his pardon 500 years after, and I am sure one can quote more. What will they say about divorce in years to come?
how has the church shifted its position on condoms?
well I said “shifting” not completely yet …maybe in a year’s time 2 or 500 !
I wonder what the Cult of Childbirth thinks about this…
http://www.corriere.it/cronache/10_novembre_29/donne-mortalita-parti_eadeb272-fbe8-11df-bfbe-00144f02aabc.shtml