Eighteen years ago this December, I had a baby. Two months after that, I had a horribly infected and impacted wisdom tooth removed.
Ask me which experience has me wincing and gripping the arm of my chair in horror when I recall it — throb by throb, howl by howl — and the tooth wins hands down.
The baby, you see, was a breeze. There, I said it, out loud, without apology. I arrived at the Whittington Hospital in North London for an antenatal check a couple of weeks before my due date, stood up when my name was called, and my waters broke.
Julia (pictured) after giving birth to her second child, Joe. He was delivered naturally, with no drugs. He came ‘shooting into the world like a buttery torpedo’ according to Julia
I was ferried off to a side room, called my husband, and a couple of hours later Joe came shooting into the world like a buttery torpedo.
No drugs, no assistance and no actual midwife in the room (she’d gone to see if a birthing suite was ready for me). I swear I still had one leg in my knickers.
Afterwards I had to be stopped from popping down to the canteen to get a bowl of soup. I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t. I felt absolutely fine and fancied a stroll.
I enjoy telling this story now, partly to embarrass that same baby boy (now 6 ft tall), but also to reassure any rabbit-eyed, terrified pregnant young women I meet.
I feel it’s my duty to tell these women, who’ve been drip-fed a series of horror stories which seem to have grown more awful over the years, that childbirth isn’t always ghastly.
That completely unassisted, straightforward births — even super rapid ones like mine — vastly outnumber the blood, gore, cruelty and neglect ‘penny dreadfuls’ that seem to be exchanged on the mummy networks. It’s just we don’t hear about them.
Julia (pictured) enjoys telling the story of Joe’s birth to reassure other pregnant women who may have been drip-fed horror stories of childbirth
Recent figures from the Royal College of Midwives recorded 65.5 per cent of births as ‘normal’ (that’s vaginal birth without drug or medical intervention, such as forceps, epidurals or intravenous drips to speed up labour).
The Caesarean rate remains around the 26 per cent mark. Most births start spontaneously. Most don’t last more than eight hours.
But for many years in parenting groups, I kept quiet or embellished my experience with a few negatives, accounts of hanging out the door, begging for a midwife (that was my husband) and biting someone (John again, I think) or I’d get frozen out of the conversation.
Most recently we heard the terrible story of Grazia Editor Natasha Pearlman, who says she was left psychologically and physically traumatised and fearful of having another baby after a 33-hour, mostly drug-free labour three years ago.
A fully-paid up member of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), she’d wanted a natural birth and ended up begging, on her knees, for morphine before her daughter was literally yanked and ripped out of her with forceps.
Give this poor woman the option of natural childbirth or a tooth extraction, and I think I know which one she’d opt for. My heart went out to her, but at the same time I felt my usual rush of indignation when I read the story.
Births don’t have to be like that. And mostly, they are not. Natasha spoke of a ‘childbirth conspiracy’, where no one admits what it’s really like.
Grazia Editor Natasha Pearlman (pictured) recently said that she was left psychologically and physically traumatised after a 33-hour drug-free labour
Well, I’d argue there’s another one. The silent majority for whom childbirth is actually straightforward, but who keep quiet through fear of offending the suffering, and increasingly vocal, minority.
Note I use the word straightforward, not easy. No childbirth is easy. It bloody hurts. It’s how we choose to manage that pain that defines our experience.
And that doesn’t mean ‘internalising’ and ‘breathing through’ the pain, like some chanting martyr — which I definitely am not. It means taking control of it and doing what is right for you and your baby.
I’d argue every birth is ‘normal’, if both mother and baby end up healthy and alive, and to suggest otherwise is only fuelling this dangerous obsession with perfection and competition.
Joe was my second child. His older sister, Lois, was a totally different experience, but one I still look back on fondly and without anger, self-recrimination or blame. That was 40 hours from first twinge to babe in arms. I had an epidural for the last eight hours, which was bliss.
I left hospital feeling everyone — the midwives, the doctors and I — had done a magnificent job. But by NCT standards, my birth wouldn’t be classed as ‘normal’. Some would think I ‘failed’.
I tell new mothers-to-be that story too, especially first-time mothers as the first labour is often way longer and can be more likely to end in complications simply because your body has never done it before.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. Be positive and empowered whatever the outcome. No baby is the same. No birth is the same. I always sign ‘good luck’ on maternity’ cards at work and ‘TAKE THE DRUGS!’
And that’s what I think the problem is. Childbirth, like so many other things in life, has become competitive.
Julia Lawrence with her second child, Joe (pictured). She argues that every birth is ‘normal’ and that if both mother and baby end up healthy and alive, to suggest otherwise is only fuelling this dangerous obsession with perfection and competition
The NCT movement, set up in 1956 to wrestle control away from doctors and empower women, to educate them so they could make informed decisions about childbirth, was a truly worthy one.
But I fear that nowadays it’s led many high-achieving young women to see ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ birth as the equivalent of the school hockey cup, the clean sweep of A*s at A-level, something they must have and are distraught when they can’t.
Suddenly, they find a natural phenomenon more powerful than them (let’s not forget that childbirth has killed women for millennia and still does, regularly, in many countries), and they’re racked with self-loathing and anger when they can’t master it.
Sometimes you can’t choose your birth experience. But the odds are in your favour, so play the hand you’re dealt and you’ll probably be OK. That is what I think the NCT — and other mothers — should be shouting from the rooftops.
Older women I’ve spoken to are more outspoken on the subject. Kathy Gyngell, co-editor of Conservative Woman, says feminism has ‘indoctrinated women out of their reproductive responsibilities’, leaving many completely ignorant of the process, and unable to cope with it.
Now 67, she last gave birth 30 years ago, but she says her experiences still make her smile. Drug-free and straightforward — and at home, which was unusual at the time — she still feels reticent about describing it to others who weren’t so lucky.
‘I totally bombed at a post-birth NCT meeting,’ she recalls. ‘I felt I had been insensitive to those who’d gone through hell. I felt like I was rubbing salt into their wounds.
‘Much as I have wanted to share my (two) good natural birth experiences I felt I had to shut up for fear of upsetting other less lucky mums, or irresponsibly setting up mums-to-be with hopes unlikely to be met.
‘Today it’s only ever the horror stories you hear, a virtual competition in pain and suffering. You’d be forgiven for believing there is no such thing as a normal birth.
‘I know mums whose labour pains began at 8 am, they set off for hospital at ten, had given birth by 11 and were home again by 5 pm, on the sofa with a cup of tea feeding their newborn. This is not the story you’ll ever hear though, for fear of being hated.’
But Kathy warns, ‘It is perverse and ignorant of the NHS to campaign for natural childbirth with endless lectures on how giving birth without drugs or medical intervention is best, when it suffers from a chronic shortage of midwives (let alone experienced ones) and has no dedicated home midwife service.
Julia, Lois and Joe (pictured) in hospital together. Julia feels that today’s generation of girls has never been less equipped to handle what should be a natural process
‘Having confidence in reliability and the continuity of midwife care is critical for a natural birth; nothing is more counterproductive than anxiety or fear.
‘No wonder the negativity surrounding childbirth has never been higher. Modern “mums-to-be” have no antidote to this narrative, and little experience to fall back on.
‘The birth rate is declining,’ Kathy explains. ‘Women have their babies ever later. They no longer inhabit a domestic sphere in which women share their birth lore. They inhabit a world of work which, influenced by feminist orthodoxy, encourages them to turn their backs on all things maternal.
‘No wonder modern women appear to be losing the ability to give birth naturally. It is as though Western society has forgotten how to do it. Too many obstetricians and midwives have never seen a completely natural birth.
‘Today’s generation of girls has never been less equipped to handle what should be a natural process. They’ve not even watched a dog or cat giving birth.
‘They’ve always been the best at everything. Scared, hurt and disappointed young mothers point the finger of blame at the very concept of a normal and natural birth. Understandably they tell the world it is a deceit. It does not have to be.’
Anthropologist and feminist Jeannette Kupfermann, a mother of two and grandmother in her 70s, was one of the pioneers of the NCT movement back in the Sixties.
Julia (pictured) with her first child, Lois, posing for the camera whilst on holiday in Crete with her family
She puts this new band of birthing horror stories down to a mixture of poor teaching, unrealistic expectations, with the media portraying childbirth like medieval torture, and a lack of resilience in the ‘snowflake’ generation, who’re used to a pill for every pain and being swaddled away from life’s difficulties.
‘As an antenatal teacher I could tell within about two minutes who’d run into problems, who wouldn’t, and the bulk who’d fall in between,’ she says. ‘There is definitely an “ouch, this hurts” band of shrill, vocal, competitive women who think they are somehow entitled to choose every experience as they choose sofa covers or beauty treatments.
‘Add to this an increasingly anaesthetised society where every feeling, every sensation, must be deadened, and you’re left with a dispiriting vision of a time when increasing numbers of women will be unable, or even allowed to give birth naturally, just in case there’s an ouch somewhere,’ she adds.
‘Of course, I feel enormous sympathy for any woman who has a brutal experience of childbirth, and who would deny that some do? NHS maternity is understaffed.
Frightened mothers are often left alone for hours, and harassed, overworked midwives can appear unsympathetic, harsh and unhelpful. The fear, plus increasing numbers of inductions, means labours will inevitably be harder and more difficult to cope with.
‘Increased monitoring, while promoting greater safety, and raised expectations have compounded difficulties. Women have become competitive. Whereas our mothers would say, “Well it may hurt, but you soon forget it,” modern women somehow expect something both safe and akin to a religious experience and through social media will compare themselves to other women.’
Our experiences may vary, but I think there’s one thing on which all women will agree. Let’s do away with the concept of ‘normal’ childbirth and congratulate ourselves on being able to bring a baby into the world, whatever the circumstances. Mothers are all brilliant, in all our different ways.