For such a feminine arena, it’s ironic how childbirth continues to be mired in needless machismo. Harry Kane, the England footballer, has come under fire for praising his fiancee, Kate Goodland, for giving birth to their second child, Vivienne, saying he was “proud” of her for having a water birth, “with no pain relief”. After heavy criticism, Kane amended this to saying that women could give birth however they liked and he was just proud of Goodland for doing it how she wanted.
Kane’s remark was unhelpful (let’s just put it down to excitement). A far bigger problem lies with the toxic culture of natural childbirth machismo and those who buy into it. After all, this bizarre “pride” in natural births isn’t confined to partners or the medical establishment – women also do it to each other. In some circles, women are pushed towards natural birth and those who manage to do it are considered stronger, and their experiences more profound, while women who opt for pain relief are branded as lesser, weaker, over-medicalised “failures”.
What a medieval crock. While labour (bringing new life into the world) shouldn’t be downgraded to any old pain, nor should it be fetishised as so enriching that a “real” mother should be afraid to miss out on it. Significantly, only mothers/women are subjected to this entirely fabricated test of their primal mettle – only labour pain is thus measured and politicised. There’s no other medical situation where rather sensibly avoiding agony is considered a weakness. Nobody ever says: “Doc, I want my appendix removed naturally.”
Childbirth doesn’t always give you a choice anyway. With both my births (the first fast and natural, the second an emergency caesarean), a “birth plan” would have been about as useful as yelling at an approaching meteorite to slow down. Are women such as myself “excused” because we had no choice – is it only those who consciously opt for pain relief and interventions who become “unnatural birth” pariahs?
It seems odd that a woman could give birth and yet might still feel judged, pressured and graded about how “brave” she’d been. Who cares? A woman’s capacity to suffer during childbirth isn’t the point. She has just one job, a huge, important one – and that is to get her children safely delivered. This could be done “naturally”, “unnaturally”, painfully, painlessly, silently, noisily, on a bed, in a pool, on all fours, in a tutu, whatever. The main event remains the same – getting the child out as safely as possible, while staying as safe as possible yourself.
Next to the biological crapshoot that is childbirth, quasi-macho achievements such as “refusing pain relief” could start looking supremely irrelevant, even rather sad. Women escaped being bossed about by a mainly male medical establishment, having their feet pulled up in stirrups and worse, for what – to harangue each other with yet more anxiety-inducing “rules”? Here’s a secret – there’s no single “right way” to give birth. More importantly, women have nothing to prove.
Ant is one celebrity who needs to get out of here to make a full recovery
Anthony McPartlin, of television duo Ant and Dec, has announced that he won’t be doing any presenting until 2019, in order to concentrate on his recovery from alcohol and painkiller addiction. Declan Donnelly will present I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! either solo or with a stand-in, and Saturday Night Takeaway will return in 2020, for those who require a warning.
Seriously, good for McPartlin. After he was found guilty of drink-driving, it was definitely time to face his demons and not with a creaking showbiz smile or feeble jazz hands.
If McPartlin’s sanity and career were aboard a nosediving aeroplane, this is definitely a scenario where the former has to put on its oxygen mask first to help the latter.
While obviously he has money, McPartlin’s decision also illustrates how recovery is a gruelling process, with no cheeky short cuts. The pat narrative would have had him returning in a blaze of glory by now; back in the real world, he’s still very unwell.
Let’s hope that McPartlin’s decision to try to look after himself will generate more understanding for people who have similar difficulties, but not the insulating power of fame and wealth.
Far be it for me to mock those who worship the sun...
A&E departments reported record admissions during the heatwave, sometimes for minor-sounding complaints. I like to think that this supports my admittedly unscientific thesis that certain British people may have finally accepted that they can’t hack hot weather.
These are probably the same smug characters who sneer at people like myself for our constant, wholly justified whingeing about hot weather. If I were an overpaid Ibiza DJ, I’d do a “scratch-mix” (or whatever the Young Folk call them now) of their righteous opining: “Get over it/ Embrace life/ Stop being such a miserable goth/ Look at fabulous-me, I’m sat cross-legged, meditating in the park, wearing the same tie-dyed pantaloons I wore on my trip to Goa/ Oh yum, this watermelon and frog spawn ice lolly is so thirst-quenching, and only £9.99 from a pop-up shop in Hoxton/ Hey everybody, look at my little hand-held fan, which I’m holding rigidly right in front of my face, because otherwise I’d faint going all of three stops on the bus…”
Then along comes a genuine “scorcher!” and they all end up in A&E like the pathetic cry-babies they really are. OK, it might not be the same people. Still, surely now it’s obvious, even to sun-worshippers, that hot weather in the UK is a human rights calamity – sunburn, dehydration, sticky cream, surreal, sweaty nights, with whirring fans that bring on fitful dreams that you’re trapped inside Gene Simmons’s codpiece at a Kiss revival concert. And you’re not on holiday, you’re working, so where are the crowdfunders and GoFundMes to get this country adequate air-conditioning?
However, while people like myself have always complained about the sun, and probably always will, we don’t generally end up in A&E. Who are the sun-wimps now?