Friends for life v knitted vaginas: Richard Godwin joins the antenatal class debate

The knitted vaginas and battery-operated candles are no use in the delivery room but your antenatal group might just become friends for life. New father Richard Godwin weighs in
Birth-rights: the modern parent is besieged with advice on how to cope with impending parenthood (Picture: Matt Writtle)
Matt Writtle
Richard Godwin7 August 2014

During one of the mercy-breaks at my first antenatal class last year I got talking to one of the other dads-to-be. It turned out he wrote comedy for a living. “Now this,” I said, gesturing round the church hall, “this would be a great setting for a sitcom.”

“Already working on it,” he replied. Of course. A group of squeamish urbanites learning how to do the most natural thing in the world has fathomless comic potential. Only death is funnier than birth, after all.

One of my friends had to pass round a knitted vagina in his class. Another shared his with the editor of a porno magazine who cried out “Oi oi” each time anyone said “breasts”. I could just picture the characters too: the bewildered teen, the doughy hippies, the cold-shouldered-single mother, the brutally gynaecological instructor (played by Matt Lucas?). It would even fall conveniently into six episodes, since there were six classes.

So it’s no great surprise to see that the BBC has made a TV show out of the antenatal experience — even if it seems a shame that In the Club, which started this week, should be a drama rather than a comedy. Writer Kay Mellor has made something more thoughtful, drawing on her own anguished experience as a pregnant teenager 50 years ago.

Still, if you have £216 and six evenings of your life, you can create your own, bespoke, interactive sitcom version in a church hall near you. All you need to do is get someone pregnant and sign up to the National Childbirth Trust (NCT).

From pregnancy right up to the moment a stranger in Sainsbury’s tells you that your child is a bit lopsided in his pushchair, the modern parent is besieged with advice. Some of it is relevant and useful. Most of it is irrelevant, bad or simply ungraspable (“Enjoy your freedom while you can!”).

The problem is that the violence of birth is so alien to our sanitised day-to-day lives that it makes us scared — and if you’re not scared in the first place, then other people will be scared on your behalf, which will then make you scared. “Christ, we’re so unprepared for this!” you say. And the most common way to allay this fear is by signing up for NCT.

The NCT occupies a weird position in British culture. My mum is still friends with some of her NCT classmates; other parents I know say their NCT friends are great for babysitting and sanity checks. For these reasons I had always assumed it was an NHS thing, free and impartial. In fact, it is not only private (thus self-selectingly middle-class) but highly partial. In fact, the “N” may as well stand for “natural”, as we got the impression that this is the sort of birth they want women to have. By “natural”, they mean presumably no painkillers, as little intervention as possible and no hospitals or doctors or science to get in the way of what they insist will be “the most amazing experience of your life”.

It seems weird that assembling a vast paddling pool for a homebirth in your living room should be “natural”, but having a trained medical professional at arm’s length isn’t.

In the early 18th century, parish records show that around one in 100 women died in childbirth. Today, in Britain, when most women give birth in hospitals, it is more like one in 12,000. That seems a pretty good argument for modern medicine to me. Though to be honest, I don’t understand why anyone has an “agenda” re childbirth at all beyond delivering babies as safely and painlessly as possible, whether that involves epidurals and C-sections or Mozart and birthing pools. I thought feminism was supposed to be about respecting women’s choices?

Still, we figured we could put up with the wibbly-woo stuff since we were scared too and we hoped the classes would, at the very least, help us get in the right frame of mind. Besides, the main reason we were going — the main reason anyone goes to NCT, I realised — was to meet other people in our area who also have babies. If it all got a bit “knitted vagina”, well, hopefully we could laugh about it with them.

I suppose it wasn’t all bad, sitting in a chilly church hall, passing round pictures of crowning babies, or talking about what we were going to take to the hospital, or rubbing the small of one’s wife’s back in a vain bid to stimulate the oxytocin hormone. It wasn’t the “natural birth” bias that got to me so much as the general vagueness.

We spent more time discussing the benefits of battery-operated candles (apparently these too would promote the magical oxytocin) or how we would have to give our babies names (because, seriously, we had never thought of this) than we did talking about Caesareans (around one in four British births are by C-section).

Rightly or wrongly, I became slowly convinced that our instructor, bless her, had never attended a birth in her life. Imagine learning how to drive from someone who has simply heard that there are such things as cars and they’re very, very special?

But the moment that shattered my confidence in the entire organisation was when she provided us with a mnemonic to help us remember what to do if those pesky doctors wanted to do some medical stuff. We were supposed to follow the “BRAIN” analysis: question the Benefits, weigh up the Risks, seek Alternatives, etc. Only, when she came to write it down with her magic marker the poor hapless love spelt it “BRIAN”. And then pinned it on the wall again the following week. “Come on, don’t be scared, got to keep those oxytocin levels up!” she said, mistaking our embarrassment for terror.

My wife and I owe a debt of gratitude to our son, Teddy, for being born prematurely, purely because it meant we could miss the last two classes. I am also grateful to University College Hospital for its highly informative free one-day course, which we signed up to once we decided the NCT one was worse than useless. Worse, because though you may know that it’s unscientific dumb-assery to imagine that you can control your own hormone levels by means of a foot rub, this stuff still fills you with self-doubt.

Surely, if the message is that a desirable birth can be brought about simply by approaching it with the right frame of mind (much like the nonsense that cancer patients can survive if they remain positive), then the suggestion is that if something goes wrong it’s your fault for being in the wrong frame of mind. It simply adds guilt and anxiety and judgment to a process that is a) mostly out of your hands and b) daunting enough as it is.

I saw the results first hand. When our midwife suggested diamorphine as pain relief I was suspicious, as all I remembered from our NCT class was that diamorphine was BAD. It was actually precisely what was required at that moment.

When my wife had given birth and I was more in awe of her than I have ever been of anyone in my life, and she asked if I thought less of her because she had painkillers, I could have cried. I think I actually did. I was emotional. What kind of sisterhood makes women feel like this?

For us, the only good thing to come out of those classes was the other parents: all perfectly sane and lovely, no pornographers among them, all vital for maintaining sanity in the face of the real challenge — which is what happens after the birth. The group is collectively known as “BRIAN”. Did we have to go through so much nonsense first?

10 THINGS RICHARD DIDN’T LEARN AT ANTENATAL CLASSES

1. There is a vanishingly small chance that you will have the birth of your dreams. Do not become attached to any “birth plan”, as it will only cause unnecessary stress when reality rips it up.

2. It is a really bad idea to forget your hospital notes. I can’t stress enough: do not do this.

3. Your midwife may seem unfriendly or harassed at first. It is the birth partner’s job to charm him or her. Try: “Gosh, I know it must be such hard work for you but I bet it’s so rewarding delivering all those babies...”

4. Whether you have a “good” birth or a “bad” birth is luck. It’s silly to attach feelings of self-worth to it either way.

5. Trust the professionals — they’ve done this before. If they want to move you to the maternity ward/give your baby a vitamin K shot/whatever, there are probably good reasons.

6. Breast-feeding is lovely but it could equally have been designed as a method of torturing women with guilt and sleeplessness. Do what’s best all round for everyone.

7. Useful things to bring to hospital: your notes (seriously), your own pillow, mugs (hospital tea-making facilities are rudimentary at best), Haribo Tangfastics, an iPod with portable speakers.

8. Create two playlists for the birth. One soothing (for the riding-out-the-contractions bit). One energising (for the squeezing-out-the-infant bit). If you end up with Abba Gold for the “energising” bit, do edit out all the unbearable songs beforehand as it’s a faff when you’re trying to deliver a baby.

9. Birth takes a day, maybe two if you’re unlucky. Looking after a child will occupy the rest of your life. Prioritise accordingly.

10. A battery-operated candle ain’t going to do diddly squat.

FIVE THINGS YOU MIGHT LEARN AT BUMPFEST

If you are after some sensible (ish, remember the penis beaker?) intel, then hit Mumsnet’s festival next month for mothers-to-be

Weather the aftermath

Broadcaster Kate Silverton will chair a panel on what to expect in the immediate aftermath of your child’s birth. Silverton regularly anchors BBC news programmes and balances this with raising two children. If anyone knows about coping, it’s Silverton.

How to sleep

You’re worried you’re about to spend the next three years of your life catatonic from sleep deprivation. Sleep expert Andrea Grace’s masterclass will address your worries and the realities of how tots sleep.

Brain power

Yeah, you’ll love the little tykes but you’ll also find them fascinating. Try Penelope Leach’s talk on baby brain development and the impact of nature and nurture.

Keep it limber

Maternity nurse Rachel Waddilove will emphasise the benefits of being flexible. Don’t be a slave to the routine.

Laugh a minute

Birth doesn’t sound funny but comedian Lucy Porter gives it her best shot.

Phoebe Luckhurst

Mumsnet’s Bumpfest is taking place at 30 Euston Square on September 27 from 9am to 5pm. Tickets, including lunch and a goody bag, are priced £75. For an exclusive 25 per cent off for Evening Standard readers use code BumpStandard. mumsnet.com/events/bumpfest/2014

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