Rules for a better birth

I hesitate to say that my first experience of birth, or rather the days after it, weren't that great, because you always know someone who had a worse time than you - a worse injury, a sicker baby, a meaner midwife, a more intense hormonal response, a longer labour. Nevertheless, the first time I had a baby it was very hard. Operations (immediately for me, in the near future for our child), health worries, possible infections, no sleep, five nights in hospital and the panic of first time motherhood made everything difficult. Wonderful, because our daughter was with us, but ever so fraught with fear and worry and exhaustion.

This time, everything has been easier, though it is still early days and I don't wish to count my chickens. But as a result I have come up with a list of things completely beyond your control that can lead to a better experience all round.

1) Go into labour in the morning after a proper night of sleep so you don't start the whole process tired.

2) Do not have an operation straight after birth taking you away from your partner and new baby and pumping you even more full of drugs. The drugs are great at the time, but there is a come down, and there is guilt at not being with your new baby from the beginning.

3) Get rid of any drips and catheters as soon as possible. Then have a shower, even if it's 3am.

4) Have a baby that can feed from the beginning. Or rather, feed your baby from the beginning, using bottle if breast not working. Contrary to the scaremongering breastapo, you can give your baby a bottle in the early days and still breastfeed later (as long as you don't stop breastfeeding or expressing completely). Unless I  am a freak of nature.

5) Go home after one night in hospital.

6) Accept that all of this is luck of the draw and that you cannot control it. A bad experience once does not mean you will have a bad experience a second time. None of it is your fault, or your achievement.

7) Despite the above rule, allow yourself to feel shit, or proud of yourself, or both. One day it will fade to be just part of your story. My mum said to me after my first birth, you will retell it and retell it and one day it will  lose its emotional hold on you. She's not right yet, but I see that she might be one day.

What to pack in your hospital bag

I wrote some advice to a friend whose baby is due soon, about what to take in her hospital bag, and she said I should put it on the blog for others to see too. So here it is, tidied up a bit. It's gleaned from antenatal class advice, friends, websites and personal experience. 

• Food. Lots of it, for both you and your partner. It needs to be food that doesn't need to go in the fridge and isn't smelly. Crisps, biscuits, non smelly sandwiches, that kind of thing. Before I gave birth to my daughter a friend gave me great advice - if cereal bars aren't your thing in normal life then they won't be your thing in labour or after either. Take food that you like.
• Drinks - but not fruity ones because you are likely to throw up in labour and throwing up acidic drinks is not pleasant, as you may remember from your malibu and pineapple days.
• Toothpaste and toothbrush for both you and your partner - in case the food you eat, or post nap breath, is smellier than you think it will be.
• Camera and battery charger and phone and phone charger, obviously.
• Socks - because even though hospitals are very warm your feet always get cold.
• A pillow - because hospitals never have enough, or comfortable, pillows
• Flip flops - because they are funny about you walking around barefoot, plus you may want to shower in them
• Bendy straws - that way your partner can give you a drink whatever position you may be in at the time, be it on all fours giving birth or lying down breastfeeding.
• Flannels - at least one to put on your forehead as a cold compress during birth and one to put on your bits as a warm compress for the first post birth wees.
• Money - you need it for food, for card to get tv access and for lots of other things I can't remember now but know we needed.
• A proper big fluffy bath towel so you can have a shower. And shower gel and shampoo etc. 
• Any beauty products you might want before being photographed or receiving visitors. No need of course, but if you usually dye your top lip every few days or pluck your eyebrows daily or whatever, you might want to do the same if you're in hospital for a few days.
• Bottles and ready made formula - received wisdom is if you have it to hand then you won't persevere with breastfeeding. Patronising bollocks. If you decide that is best for you and your baby then that is best for your baby. Hospitals provide it while you're in hospital but you might not want to ask each time you need it. You'll find various advice on sterilising but next time I suspect I'll go the warm soapy water and a bottle brush route. 
• Wet wipes. You'll be told to change your baby's nappy using cotton wool and water. But a friend from my antenatal classes who was having her second child told me, quite rightly I suspect, that no one uses cotton wool for their second baby so why put yourself through it for your first. 
• Sudocrem and/or vaseline for nappy changes - early poos are sticky and horrid and this will help you protect and clean the bum.
• Many more maternity pads than you think you'll need. There's lots of blood and wee and other fluids, and that's just from you. 
• Comfy big knickers you can treat as disposable (because of the blood and fluids etc) - better than paper knickers in my opinion. 
• Magazine type reading - if you have an epidural it might get a bit boring (in a good way). You might want something to do.
• Lots of clothes for you and the baby - more then you think as it gets weed on and pooed on and sicked on and bled on.
• Pen and paper - your brain really is a bit mushy for those first days (make that weeks, no make that months) and you might want to write down any questions you have for midwives or doctors in case you forget them later, or medication details etc.
• Spare carrier bags for rubbish and dirty clothes etc.

Plus three more bits of advice:

• Make sure you know how to work the car seat in advance. You do not want to be having an argument in the hospital car park as you prepare to take the hospital home for the first time.
• Have a thermos flask ready at home, and any likely visitors primed to have one too. My hospital served lukewarm tea and wouldn't give me any hot water for hot squash despite me having a sore throat. My husband and my mum however kept a steady rotation of hot water coming in thermos flasks.
• Pack your bag as if you are staying for one or two nights, but have another bag packed at home with clothes for you and the baby in case you are in for longer. That way your partner doesn't have to guess what you want bringing in, they can just pick up your ready packed bag and bring it to you.

Hope this helps - feel free to add other suggestions in the comments below. 

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With my journalist hat on I am running a course on how to get ideas for www.journalism.co.uk. It's 6.00pm-9.00pm at Friends House in Euston. London. It's £95 which means if you sell just one article off the back of it then it will more than pay for itself. Book here...

Any other time...

I've been talking to friends about recent births and those first few weeks - how awful it all is, and the utter exhaustion. And the recovery time, not just from birth and hormone surges, but often from major surgery. And I've bene thinking about the surgery in particular - I had it myself very shortly after giving birth to remove the placenta which refused to budge. And you know what, in absolutely any other situation in your life in which you have surgery, be it a wisdom tooth taken out or an ingrowing toenail removed, a bone resetting or a lump removed, you would be told to rest as much as possible, to sleep and to rest and not to worry, that anaesthetics make you woozy for several days, and please rest some more. So why is it, after the major abdominal surgery some women have, after the drug fuelled ops that follow hours of labour, we're just left to look after a baby and never get more than three hours sleep. How can we recover, how can we look after another, when we need looking after ourselves. There must be something we can do to help women in this situation?

Why are you crying mummy?

During the first evening of my baby’s life she nearly died. A passing midwife noticed that she wasn’t just coughing, as I had thought, but was turning blue. The midwife grabbed her and, yelling ‘crash’ and pressing a button on the wall, ran from the ward taking my baby with her. I was left tied to the bed by my catheter for seconds? minutes? hours? Long enough to know that the worst had happened. Long enough to think about having to send a message to everyone cancelling the birth announcement I had sent out a little earlier.

When I realised my catheter would unhook and my legs, numbed by a spinal, would carry my weight, I found my baby in a side room. “Is that my baby?” I asked the midwife. I had not known her long enough to recognise her yet, something that haunts me still. That was my first question. “Is she alive?” was my second. She was. They had a question for me too. “Why are you crying mummy?” asked the midwife, the hero midwife who saved my baby, the monster midwife who could not understand why I might be upset.

I still do not know how to answer that question. Is it because I thought my baby was dead or is it because she was alive?

Over a year later mostly I manage to put this to the back of my mind. I have a healthy baby who has become a wonderful mischievous loving toddler. The world is her oyster, which easily becomes lobster, which is tantalisingly close to the Yiddish word lobus which means little monster, in an affectionate cheeky way, and which although conventionally only used for boys is used in our household for our beautiful girl. The world is her lobster, and this lobus is our world.

A healthy happy baby is all anyone wants. That we have one is magical. Every day I appreciate it and most days I choose not to remember the moments when I thought it had been taken away just as it began. Yet sometimes, in the shower, driving alone with the radio on, walking through the park, I remember that night, and anyone who sees me and my tears may well also ask that question, “why are you crying mummy?” And still I cannot really answer.

Some blogs and articles I like (an occasional series)

This is a really moving post by Ghostwritermummy on the importance of dads before, during and after birth.

Related post: Ways to improve postnatal care #4: Allow partners 24 hours access

Ways to improve postnatal care #5: A debrief for all new mums

What would really have helped me in the days post birth would have been a medical professional come and talk me through what happened. I could have asked why labour went the way it did, what the implications of the medical procedures I had were and got an explanation of the medicines me and my baby were being given.

Instead I got information piecemeal - some when I was out of it on drugs, some when I was out of it on elation and some when I was out of it on tiredness. All of which means I was still piecing together what happened months later.

You might ask does it matter given both me and the baby are okay. But it matters to me. And it matters to many women.

At the moment you can request an appointment with a midwife post birth to go through your notes, providing they haven't lost them of course. But this needs you to know you can do this and to be proactive.

Instead it should be offered to all women the day after birth, or before leaving hospital, so any gaps can be filled and any questions answered. That way we'd begin our parenting experience feeling empowered by information, rather than vulnerable through a lack of knowledge.


Related posts:
Ways to improve postnatal care #1: Don't call me mum
Ways to improve postnatal care #2: Change the sheets
Ways to improve postnatal care #3: Help us buy the basics
Ways to improve postnatal care #4: Allow partners 24 hour access
Why I love the NHS

Ways to improve postnatal care #4: Allow partners 24 hours access

This applies to labour as well as postnatal care. One of the recurring themes that comes up again and again when women share their birth stories is that their partners were sent home, either when they were in labour and on the ward, having to soldier on alone and in pain, or shortly after delivery. 

Of course our partners need rest, and of course we need rest too, but it would be more helpful for our partners to be able to come and go so that we can manage our time ourselves. That way if the baby will only stop crying between 3am and 5am while being held, or indeed if you will only stop crying by being held, they can be on hand to do this. 

After all, in hospitals it's the nights that go on forever, when overstretched staff take ages to answer the call button, when you need help to get to the loo at 2am and when someone fetching a snack would be most useful. 

Related posts:
Ways to improve postnatal care #1: Don't call me mum
Ways to improve postnatal care #2: Change the sheets
Ways to improve postnatal care #3: Help us buy the basics

Why I love the NHS

Why I love the NHS

I've been writing a series of posts (to be continued) on ways to improve postnatal care in order to make those difficult scary first days with your baby a bit easier, or at least not harder, but it has struck me that I should also write a positive post about the NHS and the care we received. Because most of it was excellent. 

The antenatal appointments checked that the baby and I were safe. Blood tests were taken using clean equipment and results came back quickly. I had choices over pain relief. Pregnancy bleeding led to a trip to casualty and to the early pregnancy unit where both times we were seen quickly, scanned and reassured. My blood pressure was frequently checked. The baby's heartbeat was often listened to. Had I needed to get to hospital in an emergency I knew I would have been able to call an ambulance. We had scans to pick up and monitor any problems. I had my own room to give birth in and was constantly monitored by midwives determined to safely deliver me a healthy baby which they did, and to leave me as unbattered as possible, which they did. Doctors operated on me post birth in a clean operating theatre using strong drugs and great skill. Midwives and doctors looked after my baby when she was sick in the first few days, and looked after me too. The wards were clean. I was given food. The medicines were plentiful. The most up to date technology was used to diagnose my baby and to treat her. And in the days and weeks and months since the birth every time we have needed to see a GP, we have been able to, all
medicines needed have been free and all hospital appointments have been with experts. Wow. 

I have complaints and suggestions for improvement but it's important, I think, not to lose sight that all of this was free at the point of use, available to anyone who needs it and delivered in a clean and safe environment by well trained staff. 

So this is a post to balance out the ones about improving postnatal care and to say how grateful I am to the NHS and all who work for it. How lucky we are to have it. 

Related posts:
Ways to improve postnatal care #1: Don't call me mum
Ways to improve postnatal care #2: Change the sheets
Ways to improve postnatal care #3: Help us buy the basics

Ways to improve postnatal care #4: Allow partners 24 hour access

Ways to improve postnatal care #2: Change the sheets

I had hoped my experience was just a one-off and that by staying in hospital for several days after my baby was born I somehow got lost in the conveyor belt of people going home six hours after their baby was born, but having spoken to many new mothers since becoming one myself, I realise that I am not an unusual case. But while my baby and I were in hospital after her birth, I had to ask for my bedsheets to be changed. I plucked up courage to ask twice which meant they were changed twice, in a five night stay.

Yet the days post birth are particualrly yukky. You bleed. Lots. You may be a bit leaky when it comes to urine. Your breasts produce liquid, not necessarily to order but nearly always when you have found a dry patch to lay on. The baby poos and wees, also not to order, and as you don't yet know how to do a nappy properly, this also leaks. Current policy seems to be not to wash the baby post birth, but to let the fluids that cover it when it is born come off naturally over the next few days, so this too gets everywhere. Then there's sick. And of course spillages of food and drink that come from trying to grab a mouthful whenever you can while juggling your slippery newborn.

So you're sitting there in poo and wee and blood and sick and food and you think that's okay, whatever else it is nurses and healthcare assistants do, changing the sheets is key and they will be along to do it soon. And you wait. And wait. And wait.

The dirty sheets are not only a health risk but a downer on morale too. Change the sheets, every day, maybe twice a day, and don't wait for women to ask.

Ways to improve postnatal care #3: Help us buy the basics

Ways to improve postnatal care #1: Don't call me mum

No pain = lots of gain, or why I chose an epidural

I didn't really feel any contractions. My waters broke without any and, due to the infection risk, 24 hours later our baby was induced. As I was confined to the bed anyway, which is considered one of the main disadvantages of an epidural, my indecision over whether or not to have one disappeared and I decided to take the drugs. Don't worry - we had our fair share of pain and issues that night and subsequent nights, not least because my placenta refused to budge, but contractions were not one of them. 

I don't buy into the idea of pain as a positive force. I wouldn't have my wisdom tooth extracted without pain relief or my heart bypassed or any other operation without anaesthetic, so why would I for childbirth? But the pain of childbirth, unlike the pain of toothache, is so deeply embedded in our culture (Damn you, Eve) as something that women should go through, somehow I feel as if I cheated a little. 

Isn't that ridiculous? I took a positive decision to make the most of modern medicine, to save my energy for when the baby arrived, to dull the pain that many women describe as making them feel they might die, and I don't think well done me, what a great decision, but I think I cheated. How deep misogyny runs huh, even amongst women, even against ourselves. 

Ways to improve postnatal care #1: Don't call me mum

This is a plea to midwives, nurses, doctors and health visitors who see women in the hours, days and weeks following the birth of their baby. Don't call me mum. There is one person in the world currently allowed to call me mum, and she can't speak properly yet. 

I know it's easier to just call everyone by the same name, but you manage to use names in every other ward so let's do it in maternity too. You may have put your hands up our most private bits, you may have seen us grunt and cry and bleed and push and poo as our babies came out, but pretend for a moment we're not just on the birth conveyor belt and that we're individuals with names and feelings. That way we might just feel your plans for our health and the health of our babies are individualised too. 

Ways to improve postnatal care #3: Help us buy the basics

Ways to improve postnatal care #2: Change the sheets

For whom the tears flow

We had a difficult beginning, our baby and us. No more so than many people and quite a lot less so than lots of people but it was difficult nevertheless. Feeding issues and possible illnesses and moments of intense worry plus all the tiredness and emotions everyone who has just had a baby feels.

When I tell friends the detail, and the detail is what everyone wants to hear, I often find myself in tears. I'm a crier so it's not that unusual, but also it's incredibly easy to imagine myself back in those moments and to feel everything I felt then again.

And sometimes people say to me that yes, it sounds horrid, what a difficult beginning you had, but look at your gorgeous girl and how well she is now and how beautiful and lively and amazing she is, and how she thrives, so don't cry.

But what they don't realise is that much as life as a mum is bound up with a willingness to give up anything necessary for the wellbeing of your child, it is not an entirely selfless life. For at these times the tears aren't for her - she is indeed beautiful and lively and amazing and oh how she thrives - the tears are for myself.

Related post: Best of times, worst of times

A dress to give birth in - wtf!

I like to look through the catalogues of child related things I get sent and play a game with myself where I look for the most ridiculous purchases.

For a while I thought it was the sock-ons, sold at £4 a pop by Jojo Maman Bebe but I do at least concede that it's hard to keep socks on the feet of your baby and this product would do just that, though I personally am of the school of thought that thinks if your baby wants to pull their socks off they should be allowed to do so.

Yesterday though I received the Great LIttle Trading Company catalogue, full of mostly superfluous but really rather expensive items. Two in particular caught my eye for the ridiculous purchase game. The duvet grippers to stop your child's duvet falling off, and the inflatable bath spout cover. Yes, really.

Still, nothing has yet beat the NCT shop's Birthing and Maternity Dress so that you can feel feminine whilst giving birth. As if giving birth wasn't feminine enough. It's one of the many reasons why I have become ever so anti the NCT.

Practising what you preach

Apparently my ante-natal teacher, yes the one who counselled us against opting for an epidural, who told us to while away the early hours of labour by building a 'nest' of pillows and duvets in the corner of a room to retreat into, who suggested we might like to go through birth using hypnotherapy techniques we could pay her to teach us, let slip that she had a boob job and a tummy tuck after having her kids. 

The general message her classes put across (and I will blog another time about the misogyny of the ante-natal lobby) is that intervention is bad, painkilling drugs are for the weak and medicalised is a dirty word. So all I can say is I hope, when the scalpel was cutting open her tits to insert silicon bags under the skin, when they were stitching together skin on her belly and separating strands of muscle (I'm making this up - I have no idea how surgeons tuck tummies or expand breasts), well I hope she practised what she preached and said "thanks for the offer of anaesthetic but I will just breathe through it while visualising my childhood home."

These books saved my life

Well, not my life, but my sanity. The first, What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing, was a present from a very good friend of mine. I started reading it when my baby was about two weeks old. Already I was reeling from the shock of it all, and here was a book full of anecdotes from other women like me about how hard it was. It wasn't that it said things would get easier (though they do), rather what helped was knowing the thoughts and feelings I was having were normal. I could read bits to my partner and show him I was normal too. Thank you Naomi Stadlen, and thank you very good friend who got it for me. I shall buy it for other friends in return.



The second, Life After Birth by Kate Figes, I found in a charity shop when the baby was a couple of months old. It talks about the shock of both birth and of having children and again it showed me I was not alone, that the highs were normal and the lows were normal and that having a baby (birth), and having a baby (it actually being here) is difficult. Wonderful, but difficult. Thank you Kate Figes.